Vodafone said the VPA III, which features 802.11b, quad-band GSM/GPRS and Bluetooth in a sliding PDA form factor concealing a Qwerty thumb pad, will debut in Germany this autumn.
The device is the latest incarnation of HTC’s Blue Angel design to be picked up by a major mobile operator. Vodafone’s VPA III joins T-Mobile’s MDA III, Orange’s SPV M2000 and O2’s XDA IIi and XDA IIs.
All will run Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition with the majority relying on a 400MHz Intel XScale CPU for power. The O2 XDA IIs will, however, feature a 520MHz version when it launches next year, as well as a 1.3 megapixel camera instead of the 0.3 megapixel version of its siblings.
All are expected to feature BlackBerry wireless email connectivity through HTC’s licensing deal with Research In Motion. However, hints from O2, which launched its own versions of Blue Angel last week, suggest this could be delayed until early next year.
