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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.
Pantech's WM5-powered PN-820 clamshell for Verizon
PhoneArena has once again and gotten the dirt on a new handset, and a pretty hot one at that: a Windows Mobile-powered Pantech flip phone that's supposedly heading straight to Verizon. Courtesy of extensive documentation from our friends at the FCC, the PhoneArena gang learned that the PN-820 clamshell runs on WM5 for Smartphones, sports a 1.3 megapixel camera and miniSD slot, and perhaps best of all, has all of your networking needs covered with both WiFi and Bluetooth (well, not all of them -- cellular data seems to max out at 1xRTT). While certainly not the hottest PocketPC clamshell we've seen (that honor goes to the HTC Star Trek), the PN-120 should still be one of the easiest ways to slide WM5 into your pocket once it hits stores.[Via PhoneArena]
Qtek 8500/HTC Star Trek available for pre-order
Much to the delight of our friends across the pond, British phone e-tailer Expansys has posted a page for the Qtek 8500/HTC Star Trek claiming a May 10th availability, further stating that UK customers can expect shipment in nineteen working days. In case you've been living in a cave for the last few months, the Star Trek, also sold as the i-mate Smartflip and Dopod S300, is HTC's first flip phone, and they've managed to pack a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered 200MHz OMAP processor, quad band GSM radio, 1.3 megapixel camera, 64MB of ROM, and music playback from a microSD slot into a 99-gram package. Expansys is charging £360 to get your hands on the 'Trek, which means we'll probably be importing ours from Asia, for like, $200 cheaper.[Via Reg Hardware]
Kyocera K822 musicphone with A2DP
With the flurry of phone and mobile industry announcements this past week (Engadget Mobile even outposted the original once or twice), you'll have to forgive us if we didn't catch some of the more, um, run-of-the-mill handsets revealed at CTIA, but hey, that's what the weekends are for. Truthfully, the Kyocera K822 isn't really all that ho-hum, as it sports both a 1.3 megapixel camera and 30MB of memory complemented by a microSD slot for pics and tunes (MP3/AAC/WMDRM), packed into a clamshell design with dual color displays. Other niceties on this tri-mode CDMA model include Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP, FM radio, and external media controls, as well as a pretty attractive $140-after-subsidies price tag.
