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Up close and personal with the Qtek 9600 (Hermes)
French site PPCReviews has managed to score a Qtek-branded copy of the hotly anticipated HTC Hermes, and thanks to some decent Google translation, we've managed to take away quite a bit from the thorough review. Many folks are expecting the Hermes to be a superstar compared to its already good older brother, the Wizard, but PPCReviews is a bit bummed out about the switch from miniSD to microSD expansion, the lackluster battery performance, rather portly 175 grams, and lack of true VGA display. Of course, we all know the good stuff the Hermes brings to the table by now, and the review ends on a happy note, confirming that the 3G and fresh 400MHz Samsung core work wonders for the device. Pardon the interruption, everyone; you can go back to incessantly refreshing Expansys' TyTN product page every few minutes in the hope of an early shipment.[Via kaitech.hk, thanks Ajit]
Qtek 8500 gets put through its paces
HTC's Qtek brand may be looking to close up shop but they're going out with a bang, dropping their version of the Star Trek / Smartflip. TrustedReviews has posted a fairly thorough, honest opinion of the WM5 clamshell, and the reviewer has thrown a good bit of fair criticism at the phone. The shared 64MB of RAM and 64MB of ROM leave less than half for the user to play with, battery life when busting out the tunes works out to about four hours, the headset connector is of a proprietary design, and the phone is arguably not quite as stylish as the RAZR it looks to emulate. The author concludes that while the 8500 is the only real game in town if you demand a WM5 flip, there's no compelling reason to get it over, say, a Faraday.
Qtek 8500 / HTC Star Trek gets UK price, launch date, new name
Contradicting an earlier report that the Qtek 8500 / HTC Star Trek smartphone would available in the UK sometime this month, The Register is now citing an official announcement from HTC that claims the Windows Mobile-powered clamshell won't hit stores until "late June." Furthermore, Reg Hardware is reporting that the Star Trek will henceforth be known as the STRTrk, probably to avoid trademark issues with Spock and friends, due to the fact that the internal codename has seen widespread adoption. (Not sure that this will do any good, as now we'll have to include a "the phone formerly known as the HTC Star Trek" every time we mention one of the rebadges). Whatever you want to call it, the music-centric device will supposedly come in black, silver, or pink, and go on sale during the third week of June, at least according to distributor 20:20 Logistics, for around $500 before carrier subsidies.
Qtek to get its HTC Muse, the S300, early
Remember the HTC Muse Windows Mobile 5.0 multimedia phone? You know, the one with 4GB of NAND storage dedicated to media files as well as dual cameras, including a 2.1 megapixel shooter with flash? Well anyway, DigiTimes is reporting that HTC will be shipping Qtek its version of the Muse, the S300 (not to be confused with Dopod's S300, based on another HTC design called the Star Trek), earlier than expected, as part of HTC's commitment to first release their HSDPA-enabled handsets in European markets. Qtek should be getting their Muses, which also sport 416MHz processors, 64MB of both RAM and ROM, WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM tuners, sometime in the third quarter, according to "market sources." Besides its lack of a keyboard (or even a numberpad, for that matter) and frustrating inclusion of that 240 x 240 display, the Muse looks to us like a pretty hot model, and will certainly give Nokia's N91, Sony Ericsson's W950i, and Samsung's i300 musicphones some strong competition.[Via the::unwired]
Qtek 9000 gets AKU2
Qtek has become the latest company to bless another group of customers with the glories of AKU2, adding not just push email, but the extra bonus of A2DP to their version of the HTC Universal (owners of the i-mate version have had the goods for a month already). Owners of the Qtek 9000 can hop over to Qtek's web site and download the update right now. Now. So, do it already!
