During CeBIT 2006 in Hannover Germany, T-Mobile Germany first time publicly showed their latest Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition, the T-Mobile MDA Vario II.
As expected, the Vario II is based on the HTC Hermes and features quad-bang GSM, GPRS and EDGE as well as WCDMA/UMTS.
Addiitonaly it's sporting W-LAN b/g as well as Bluetooth 1.2. As the forerunner, the MDA Vario, the MDA Vario II will has a QWERTZ slide-out keyboard (for the German market). Enhanced is the camera which is a 2.1 megapixel one on the backside and a CIF on the frontside for UMTS video calls. The MDA Vario II will be powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 with (at least) AKU 2 supporting Bluetooth Stereo and Microsoft Push E-Mail via Exchange 2003 SP2.
Also it's confirmed now, that the wheel on the left side is a real scroll wheel with action functionality:

And yes, the MDA Vario II is also running with 300 MHz only which makes me wonder, that a HSDPA device can work with 300 MHz only:

Also the current demo device is already using AKU 2.0.

The planned release date in German is anytime in June, a planned release outside Germany wasn't announced yet. Also T-Mobile haven't announced any prices yet.
According to a T-Mobile spokesman, the MDA Vaio II aka HTC Hermes will has a launch-exclusivity for Germany.

Cheers ~ Arne

[Share with a Friend] [Add to Digg.com]

First of all: Props to T-Mobile for adding "OK" and "Start menu" buttons :-)

But: Am i the only one to think that this device is the by far ugliest design to come from HTC until today?

And why oh why are they wasting so much space on the slider without using it for the keyboard. Earlier devices like the Wizard and especially the Apache made much better use of the available space.

My wish: Just try to imitate the Nokia 9300 keyboard as far as possible. Leave out the four navigation buttons in favor of a joystick or leave them out completely and let people use the d-pad even in landscape mode. That is practical, I do it myself and it is quite comfortable. Thus you would have room to add: a "STRG" key so you can use keyboard shortcuts for cutting and pasting text, and keys for special characters like ä, ü and ö. Secondly: Put the two softkeys in landscape mode to the top of the device, underneath or besides the screen. Actually there already are two keys in an almost perfect position for this: the "video call" key on the right and the "Internet Explorer" key on the left. This would free up space for a complete number row, which would also make it unnecessary to double use letter keys for special characters usually asociated to the number keys like "!", "%", "(", ")" and so on. The result: much faster typing speeds.

It is soo obvious that I cant believe HTC didnt think about this. Maybe I should patent my idea?

I think they should include a tap and hold key [like in most notebook's keyboards] not all items can be used with the center d-pad button [sometimes it acts as enter only even when you press and hold].