14 DAY TRIAL // You've seen the HTC Athena several times, in more blurry or clear pictures, you've probably already thought about what you could do with such an amazing device (I know I have) and then you found out that the Athena has been spotted in Europe and that it will be available on T-Mobile under the name of Ameo.
The only thing left to do was stare at the photos some more and wait for the real Athena to finally come out. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet, but something nearly as good did, T-Mobile officially announced the upcoming availability of the Ameo.
By simply looking at the Athena/Ameo, it should be clear why this handheld is so appreciated. Its design reminds you of a mini-laptop, although the Ameo is just a little bit larger than a PDA phone.
The Ameo can be used with or without the QWERTY keyboard it comes with, due to the fact that the keyboard attaches with a magnetic connector and can be easily detached if it's not needed.
Manufactured and designed by HTC, the Ameo provides everything its other HTC brothers include and much more. The Windows Mobile 5.0 powered handheld sports an Intel Xscale processor running at 624 MHz, a 5 inch 65k color touchscreen with a 640 x 480 pixel resolution, 64MB RAM and 128/256 MB ROM, an internal GPS module, stereo speakers, a 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and a 8GB Micro Drive that should be roomy enough for anyone's needs.
A built-in "G-sensor" will allow the user to scroll on-screen pages with hand gestures as well as save data if the device is dropped by accident.
According to T-Mobile Germany, Ameo is also compatible with Microsoft's Direct Push and RIM's Blackberry Push email solutions. As for the phone features, the Ameo will work on all the four GSM/GPRS/EDGE network bands, 2100Mhz UMTS/HSPDA networks and 802.11b/g WiFi networks. For connectivity, the handheld also features Bluetooth 2.0. Basically, should this handheld not be advanced enough for your tastes, there's a pretty big chance that you won't find anything better than this.
Although the complete official spec sheet of the Ameo is not available at this time, the handheld will be available on T-Mobile starting March for 499.95 Euro on a 2 year contract.