Click to View

Consumers continue to wait for the first clamshell Pocket PC Phone, Motorola’s MPx, unveiled close to a year ago at last year's 3GSM World Congress.

In the meantime, T-Mobile Germany has introduced another clamshell-based cellular-wireless Pocket PC, the MDA IV—the follow-up to the MDA III and the latest model in what is likely the most popular Pocket PC Phone line ever.

The new handset opens like a mini-laptop with its QWERTY thumb keyboard, but when you flip, twist, and turn its screen—as with Sony's now-defunct (outside of Japan) Clie handhelds—it enters traditional, for a Pocket PC, tablet mode.

Whereas the MDA III handles four GSM/GPRS bands, the (GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz) MDA IV loses one in favor of UMTS support, a WCDMA 3G technology that delivers performance three faster than EDGE—the data-exchange follow up standard to GPRS—a first for a Windows Mobile device.

T-Mobile's new Pocket PC Phone is also the first with a VGA (480 x 640 pixel) resolution display. Other known features include a 520 MHz Intel XScale processor and, uniquely, two cameras—one for still images and the other for video. It is also integrates Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, a trend among high-end smartphones.

We'll report more information about the MDA IV as it becomes available. There's plenty of time, as the handset won't ship until this summer.

As for regional availability, we can't say for sure whether the smartphone will ship beyond Europe. Traditionally, T-Mobile looks elsewhere for its handset designs, so it is conceivable that a North American carrier will offer a version of the device under a different name.