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At its annual showcase in New York last week, Samsung showed off several new handsets. One smartphone raised more eyebrows than any other, however, the i730 Pocket PC Phone.

Due next year, the i730 is the follow-up to Samsung's i700 (see Review: Samsung i700 Smartphone Contender... Not Champion).

Although the i730 uses the standard tablet Pocket PC design—like the upcoming T-Mobile MDA III (also known as the XDA III, VPA III, and Siemens SX66)—it integrates a QWERTY thumb-keyboard that slides down from underneath its 2.8-inch (240 x 320 pixel resolution and 65,536 color) display, which you can view in either portrait or landscape modes.

Other known features include 64MB of RAM, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Second Edition, and an SDIO-enabled Secure Digital slot for peripheral and memory expansion.


Keyboard Retracted

Most importantly, the handset supports EV-DO. With EV-DO, CDMA carriers like Verizon and Sprint can offer the i730 for their 3G networks, theoretically transferring data at speeds up to 2.4 MBps.

Interestingly, although dimensions for the i730 are unavailable, Engadget (where the images included with this story come from) reports the i730 is similar in size to palmOne's Treo smartphones. If true, this would make the i730 considerably smaller than that other Pocket PC Phone with a retractable keyboard, the MDA III.