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HTC PD53100 gets FCC approval: is this the F8181 Brew MP phone?
Gleaning valuable information from an HTC FCC filing is like getting blood from a stone, but there are a couple tidbits in the filing for the so-called PD53100 that have us thinking this might be the F8181 for AT&T that we leaked not long ago. First, the SAR report refers to it as a "touch phone," not a "smartphone" as most of HTC's filings typically do; indeed, the F8181 is a Qualcomm Brew MP device, which most folks (us included) will argue doesn't qualify as a smartphone. Secondly, it's got 850 and 1900MHz 3G, which are exactly the flavors AT&T would require to make high-speed magic happen. It's certainly not the most exciting product in AT&T's sights -- that honor might go to another HTC -- but given what we know of the dumbphone market, we'd gladly take a Sense-enabled HTC over the typical fare.
Exclusive: HTC F8181 is AT&T's Brew MP-equipped dumbphone
We'll admit, we'd kinda figured that HTC's venture into the seedy underworld of dumbphones with the introduction of the Smart earlier this year was a non-starter and that it'd quietly fade into the night before 2010 was out, but apparently not -- at least, not if you ask AT&T. We've been slid a couple shots of a new handset from HTC for Ma Bell going by the model number F8181 (it'll have a fancy name like "Bacon," "Double Rainbow," or "Nilay Patel" by the time it launches, obviously) that runs the Brew MP platform Qualcomm has been pushing this year for the sub-smartphone category; of course, it seems to us that smartphone hardware is getting cheap enough to push through nearly every price segment, but if we can expect this to be free on contract, we suppose there might be a market here. No word on dollars or dates just yet, but naturally, we'll keep you in the loop.
