O2 XDA Trion / HTC Hermes

Expected soon
24th May 2006 (Updated 25th May 2006)

The O2 XDA Trion is a Windows smartphone based on the HTC Hermes handset. It is yet another result of a long collaboration between O2 and HTC,

Roughly speaking, the O2 XDA Trion is a step up from the O2 XDA Mini S (based on the HTC Wizard). It has a 240x320 pixel display in 65,000 colours, a 2 megapixel main camera with a secondary camera for video calling, 64Mb of internal memory, Bluetooth 2.0 and Wireless LAN support and a 400MHz processor (possibly an ARM-based Samsung S3C2440). There's a slide-out keyboard too (the photograph is of a German QWERTZ keyboard). The weight is not known, but we anticipate that it will be about 160 grams. We believe that the Hermes used microSD expandable memory.

The XDA Trion's operating system is Windows Mobile 5.0, and it comes with Pocket versions of Outlook, Internet Explorer, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Currently the HTC Hermes is being advertised as "coming soon" by O2 in Germany as the O2 XDA Trion. No doubt it will also turn up as a T-Mobile MDA, Orange SPV and an i-Mate and Qtek handset. As always, don't expect to get this if you're a UK Vodafone subscriber as Vodafone can't be bothered to sell this kind of kit to consumers.

Update: thanks to our many readers who wrote in to tell us that the HTC Hermes is a 3G device and may also come with HSDPA 3.5G data. As yet HTC have not confirmed the exact specifications of the Hermes.

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