Berlin — Hewlett Packard announced plans here to sell 3G PDA-phones in the United States for the first time. HP has previously offered 3G phones only outside the United States.
The new iPaq 900 Business Messenger is due by June 30 in the United States as an unlocked model at an undisclosed price. International sales will also begin by June 30, the company said during its Connecting Your World conference. The iPaq 900 will be the company’s first PDA phone using the Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 OS. The quadband unit operates in GSM/EDGE mode in the 850/900/1800/1900MHz bands and in 7.2Mbps high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) mode in the U.S. 850/1900MHz bands and foreign 2100MHz band. It also features 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, GPS and hard QWERTY keyboard. Other features include turn-by-turn driving instructions and 3-megapixel camera that directly uploads pictures to online photo service Snapfish and other photo services. Built-in Cyberon Voice Commander and HP Voice Reply technology to enable hands-free emailing and voice control of other device commands. Microsoft Internet Sharing software simplifies connecting to the Internet with a notebook PC in areas where high-speed cellular data networks are available.
The device also supports HP Enterprise Mobility Suite to allow for IT-department setup and over-the-air device management.
