Back in October, AT&T Wireless approved Intermec's 700 series of rugged handhelds for data transmission on its network. This week, the carrier has given the okay to the other half of the equation with the approval of voice transmission on its GSM/GPRS network for the Intermec devices.

"Our customers now can choose an extremely rugged device to take on the road, to the factory floor or wherever they need voice and data capabilities," said Laura Johnson, director, mobile multimedia services for AT&T Wireless. "We are glad to add the strength and durability of Intermec's handheld devices to our list of voice-certified products."

The Intermec 700 handhelds are designed to take the abuse of industrial, mobile and retail environments. The 700 Color offers an imager suitable for reading barcodes (including 2D symbologies), taking photographs and capturing signatures.

In addition, the 760 is also the only PDA currently shipping that integrates up to three radio communication options in a single device, including a wireless local area (802.11b) radio, a GSM/GPRS or CDMA wide area network radio and a fully integrated power-managed Bluetooth radio. The devices are powered by a 400MHZ X-Scale processor and the Windows Mobile 2003 .for Pocket PC operating system