[PaulOBrien]

There's been a lot of chat about the C550 on various sites over the past few weeks... so let's cut to the chase and talk about what we know.

The C550 is based on the HTC Hurricane reference design, that will also manifest itself as other variants on other networks (such as T-Mobile).

Reliable sources confirm the specs as follows:

- Tri Band / Class 10 GPRS (no EDGE)
- 262,000 colour 320x240 display (software actually only supports 65k colours)
- 64/32 memory configuration (as C500)
- 1.3MP camera with Flash
- Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
- Dedicated media buttons
- 107g

The other specs are the usual, 1050mah battery, miniUSB connection, Bluetooth (1.2) and same processor as the C500.

A few other tidbits of information are starting to come thru, such as an anticipated launch date of June (yes, that's like THIS MONTH)!

Now here's a weird one, one person, whom I trust, mentioned in passing that it included 802.11b WiFi. That's got to be a mistake right? I guess we'll find out soon enough...

P

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[kyrkesmith]

Looks not bad. Might get one when I find some money. Still, I quite like the joystick on the C500, and I'm not sure about those four extra massive buttons; I prefer my iPaq for music. If it was Windows Mobile 5.0, I'd buy it.

[harrelson]

nice, but unfortunately im still waiting for the samsung i-300

[PaulOBrien]

i300 does looks sweet!

P

[Jon_]

its got wifi???

[RazorD]

My contract runs out in late August, do you think we'll have a WM5 phone out by then?

[amo]

Orange Retail stores won't get it until July at earliest. Dunno about T-Mobile obviously.

Note: any Orange staff - read the June Promo guide for confirmation of this.

Hope this will stop any "thought it was supposed to be out this month, Orange are pants" type posts that inevitably surface at device launch times of the calendar...

[PaulOBrien]

WiFi is EXTREMELY unlikely... I think it's possible my contact confused the details with a future HTC Smartphone...

P

[dc_demand]

I feel the same way: I would've loved this phone if it had windows mobile 5. (even though it's even thicker than my current phone!).
The higher quality camera would be nice to have though, but i've read that the 1.3mpx camera isn't that much improvement over the vga one...
Besides, I already have a phone with music buttons and wmp10. So it wouldn't be that much of an 'upgrade'.

So for now i'll stick with my SDA Music!

Ro

[PaulOBrien]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Bigger screen res is nice, but WM5 and a decent 1.3MP camera would really sell it for me, as would a bump up in the amount of RAM, and WiFi.

Smacks of 'stop gap' to me...

P

[Samsonite]

definitely an bridge - slight evolution before the big 3g/WM5 device.. within 12 months?

[RazorD]

Well, i wont be moving on until someone releases WM5...

Microsoft tend to push these things out as fast as they can, at least in the PC market I wish it was the same for phones

[energ]

It looks clean and very slick! I should have waited for this phone. But then again it probably won't come cheaply (i'm still a student). I doubt about WiFi too. The main keypad could have been better imo. So who is getting it?

[Zone-MR]

The photo clearly shows the phone is running WM2003... so unless they made a last minute choice to switch ROMs, we're out of luck.

[drblow]

Will all of my apps & games just work OK on this larger screen res?

[ma1234]

Much the same as most on here, don't see the point in it personally, not enough of an upgrade to warrant the change yet...

[Pondrew]

Unnecessary for those with the C500 but not for those who didn't get one. For me, this would be a welcome return to the cutting edge of Smartphones.

I love my MDA III but there's always times when I need a smaller phone and my E200 isn't impressive enough anymore. There's too much about the C500 I don't like so this could be for me...

...or I could just wait a while longer!

[sponge]

ma1234, on Jun 5 2005, 00:13, said:

Much the same as most on here, don't see the point in it personally, not enough of an upgrade to warrant the change yet...
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't usually need much of an excuse to buy a new gadget, but I am of the same opinion and will probably give this one a miss...

[PaulOBrien]

A LOT of games / apps DON'T work on QVGA from my initial testing (using the emulator I might add), so we're in for some interesting times I think

P

[drblow]

Oh dear! Any chance of a quick list of things that DO work so far? If it meant having to wait for developers to bring out qvga apps, that would strongly affect my decision to buy one.

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