HTC warms up Rev. A smartphone for Sprint Nextel

HTC Corp. moved from original device manufacturer to original equipment manufacturer at Sprint Nextel Corp. this week with an HTC-branded smartphone at the high end of the price range for the U.S. market.
The Taiwan-based smartphone maker has been raising its profile globally and in the U.S. by bringing products to market under its own brand name. The company is the world’s leading purveyor of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system.
The new Mogul handset, priced at $400 with two-year contract, is Sprint Nextel’s first handset to support the operator’s burgeoning CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Revision A service-though that capability will be available “at a later date” via software upgrade. The device will initially be limited to Rev. 0 capabilities.
The slider-style device offers a touchscreen, a QWERTY keyboard and thumb-wheel controls, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and multimedia (with access to the Sprint Music Store).
The Mogul adds more functionality than the device’s predecessor, the PPC 6700 at Sprint Nextel (priced at $300), with longer battery life, 256 megabytes of onboard memory (double the PPC 6700) with expandable memory (512 MB card included) up to 2 GB, a thinner design and internal antenna, a higher-resolution camera (2 megapixels) and a thumb-wheel control.
According to Sprint Nextel’s Web site, the device is aimed at both enterprise professionals and the so-called prosumer, consumers who want both entertainment and productivity.