Here we have a manufacturer that realises the power of a good brand name, although we only had one new name this time, the HTC Magic. The other two devices focussed on from HTC were upgrades, to the Diamond and Pro.
The HTC Diamond 2 has a nice, 3.2” touchscreen, and has the excellent TouchFlo UI running over the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system. Included with the Diamond 2 is a 5.0 Megapixel camera, built in GPS receiver with aGPS, support for WiFi, HSDPA and HSUPA (High speed downloading and uploading). The Diamond has a resistive Touchscreen, so stylus and handwriting recognition is supported.
The Pro2 has a nice, full size QWERTY keyboard built in. Just slide the screen and it will sit up at an angle, so you can almost use the device like a mini laptop. Again running on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Operating System, the Pro2 includes a 3.2 Megapixel camera, HSDPA and HSUPA, WiFi and Bluetooth.
The thirds device from HTC is called the HTC Magic. Initially this device will be exclusive to Vodafone, before being rolled out to other networks. The Magic is also being nicknamed the G2, as it is a handset that runs on the Android operating system, as the G1 handset does that is exclusive to T-Mobile. The HTC Magic includes a 3.2 megapixel camera, has a 3.2” TFT touchscreen, which also supports handwriting recognition, and includes support for HSDPA, HSUPA and WiFi.
And that just about covers our round up of the new handsets to keep an eye out for in 2009. Over the coming days we will have a more in depth look at some of these devices and deliver our verdict on what we think the top selling devices will be.