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Sprint Picks Up Pair of HTC Touches & Direct Connect BlackBerry

HTC has found a carrier-home for two of its latest Touch smartphones. Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless today that it will soon start carrying both the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro. This marks the first time these models will be available from a CDMA/EV-DO carrier.

HTC's latest Touch models are compact Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional smartphones with a new, enhanced edition of the company's touch screen interface running on top. Called TouchFLO 3D, the interface is animated to provide quicker and easier access services and features.

The HTC Touch Diamond (left below) is designed to fit in the hand and is composed of black geometric facets and metal. It includes an Opera-based web browser and a version of YouTube, as well as an edition of Google Maps that integrates with the HTC Touch Diamond' integrated GPS. Turn the HTC Touch Diamond horizontal from vertical and, like the iPhone, the browser will do the same.

It sports a higher-resolution, 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 320 pixel) resolution touch display over the original Touch models and ups the camera to 3.2 megapixels from mere 2. The smartphone also integrates Bluetooth 2.0 with support for wireless stereo headsets, GPS and A-GPS, and Wi-Fi. There's 4GB of Internal Storage, 256 MB of flash memory, and 192 MB RAM.

Sprint says the HTC Touch Diamond will support the Sprint Music Store and Sprint TV on-demand digital TV.

It should ship on September 14th for $249.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year service agreement

The HTC Touch Pro (right below) is very similar to the Touch Diamond, expect it adds a number of business-focused enhancements, including a five-row, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, expandable storage capabilities with a microSD card slot (1 GB card included) and a business card scanner application. The HTC Touch Pro's built-in camera also features a flash.

Sprint plans to make the HTC Touch Pro available on October 19th for $299.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

Picks Push-To-Talk BlackBerry Too
In related news, in addition to the HTC Touch models, Sprint announced it would carry a new RIM BlackBerry smartphone, the BlackBerry Curve 8350i. It is the newest Direct Connect-capable BlackBerry model for the Nextel iDEN push-to-talk network.

Like other BlackBerry Curves, the BlackBerry Curve 8350i features advanced multimedia – picture, video and music, an improved HTML browser, push e-mail and messaging capabilities, as well as built-in GPS

and Wi-Fi. The BlackBerry Curve 8350i is also the first BlackBerry smartphone from Sprint to offer Group Connect, allowing users to instantly set up group conversations with up to 20 other participants.

Some additional features include:

  •  
    • 2 Megapixel Digital Camera – with 5x digital zoom, flash and video recording*
  •  
    • DataViz Documents to Go – preloaded software makes it easy to edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents directly on the smartphone
  •  
    • Internal Antenna – improves design appeal and durability
  •  
    • Speakerphone – optimized for Direct Connect
  •  
    • Removable/Rechargeable 1400 mAH Battery – provides exceptional battery life
  •  
    • Expandable Memory – microSD memory card slot allows plenty of storage for pictures, videos, music and documents
  •  
    • Bluetooth – version 2.0 with support for (A2DP) stereo Bluetooth and more

    The BlackBerry Curve 8350i should become available before the end of 2008. Pricing, service plan details and an exact availability won't be announced until a later date.

    Sprint Picks Up Pair of HTC Touches & Direct Connect BlackBerry





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