HTC Pharos, the Affordable GPS Smartphone

HTC will soon come with a new entry-level GPS handset, called HTC Pharos (or P3470), according to recently leaked informations. The handset looks small, but far from being what you'd call a nice looking device. However, we've seen worse, and considering the fact that HTC Pharos is an affordable phone, its design is actually not a big problem.

The handset comes with 256 ROM and 128 RAM and relies on a Texas Instrument OMAP 850 CPU at only 200 MHz – not too great for powering a smartphone, but a similar processor is packed in HTC Touch and no one complained about it (not too loud at least). Apparently the Pharos is a 2.5G device that doesn't even have Wi-Fi, if we believe the rumors. The phone also packs a 1100 mAh battery and unfortunately the talk-time and stand-by time provided by it are a mystery at the moment.

With the above mentioned specs, HTC Pharos doesn't look like an interesting handset at all, but that's because we didn't write about its nice features, like the 2.8 inch QVGA screen, TouchFLO interface, built-in GPS (with the NMEA 0183 standard) and Bluetooth 2.0. Together with the affordable price (unknown yet), the good features can make HTC Pharos appealing to many users who want a GPS handset without paying too much for it.

What's a bit odd is that there's another GPS smartphone that has "Pharos" in its name, soon to be released by a company named exactly Pharos. The phone was dubbed "GPS Phone 600" (ten points for originality) and features Windows Mobile and GPS – obviously. So there are chances that we might see a patent infringement lawsuit. Oh, joy.

HTC Pharos should hit the US in March 2008 and after that other markets will probably follow.


MORE RELATED ARTICLES: HTC Dual Touch Becomes T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus CES 2008: HTC Libra Available Now at Verizon as SMT5800 HTC Neon Approved by the FCC HTC Kaiser Coming at O2 as Xda Stellar Asus P750 Smartphone Hits the Market