14 DAY TRIAL // The leaked Vodafone Roadmap presentation that brought us the confirmation for Nokia E71 Liam and Nokia E66 Dora shows that the UK-based carrier prepares during 2008 major releases for other handsets too.
First of all, we're going to have two new devices from HP: HP Silver and HP Oak, anticipated to hit the market in July and September 2008 . Both handsets are powered by Windows Mobile, have HSPDA connectivity and, according to the available info, they both lack a photo camera. HP Silver is a smartphone packing a Blackberry-like SureType keypad, GPS and Wi-Fi, while HP Oak is a Pocket PC featuring touchscreen, a full sliding QWERTY keyboard, GPS and Wi-Fi.
Palm will also launch two new devices after the second quarter of 2008 and, unfortunately for the Palm OS fans, both handsets will run on Windows Mobile. The first handset is Palm Drucker and comes to succeed the Treo 750v model. Palm Drucker is a quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE handset with HSPDA connectivity and will pack a 2 Megapixel camera, a full QWERTY keypad, GPS and Wi-Fi. The other handset prepared by the Californian company is Palm Wanda, a tri-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE device with HSPDA connectivity; it also comes with a full QWERTY keypad, a 2 Megapixel camera and GPS.
Vodafone will bring new Blackberry phones too: Blackberry 8110 (Pearl 2) and another model named for the moment Blackberry 8xxx. The Pearl 2 should be available in the first months of 2008, providing GPS, Media Player, a 2 Megapixel camera and Bluetooth. Blackberry 8xxx is said to pack a wide 480 x 320 pixel display, full QWERTY keyboard, HSPDA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and a 2 Megapixel camera. It should hit the market in May 2008.
Another handset that will be offered by Vodafone is a mid-end 2.5G tri-band Windows Mobile phone named ODM 16xx and equipped with touchscreen, a full QWERTY keypad, GPS and a 1.3 Megapixel camera.
To sum it up, 2008 looks good for mobile users (and it couldn't have been otherwise), even though we only talk now from the Vodafone perspective. Most of the above mentioned handsets will probably be available from other operators too, so let's wait for more (official) details about them.
