ROAD promises Handy-PC smartphone by Q1 2006
They still haven't issued any actual product shots, but Remote Office Access Devices, or ROAD, threw out a press release earlier today claiming that they would start shipping their new Handy-PC smartphone early next year. If you recall, this was the German outfit which announced back in February its plans for a really tricked-out, clamshell-style smartphone with a spec sheet that, at least at the time, read like a fanboy's wishlist: a QWERTY keypad, a wide 640 x 240 pixel touchscreen display, an optional two megapixel digital camera, built-in WiFi, IrDA, an SD memory card slot, 400MHz Xscale processor, 64MB of RAM, and 64MB of ROM, and your choice of Linux, Windows Mobile, or Symbian for the OS. We'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt for now — now that the HTC Universal has dropped, these specs definitely seem a little more plausible — but all we gotta say is that they better have some working units on display at CES in January.
