With the 3GSM World Congress 2007 having just ended, we wanted to provide a brief recap of the new technologies and products we saw there.This is Part I of our wrap-up article over 3GSM World Congress 2007, in which we will cover HTC, Panasonic, Seagate, Samsung, Motorola, and i-mate. The next part will cover Nokia, PolymerVision, NVIDIA, Sony Ericsson, RIM, and Toshiba.

HTC

HTC is without doubt one of the largest providers of Windows Mobile portable devices. The company made large strides in growth throughout 2006, and currently manufactures 90% of all Windows Mobile devices sold. As such, the growth of Windows Mobile is nearly directly proportional to the growth of HTC, and since Windows Mobile has grown significantly, so has HTC. Considering how large the com pany is, it is no surprise HTC had a large exhibit at 3GSM this year.

HTC Dash

The HTC dash was being proudly displayed by HTC at its booth. The Windows Mobile device supports speech recognition, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE. It has already been released in North America and is being distributed by T-Mobile under the name of the “T-Mobile Dash”.

HTC Advantage

Although originally known as the HTC Athena, at 3GSM this year HTC officially renamed the Athena to the HTC Advantage. In the past, multiple names have been used to refer to the device. It is also known as the HTC X7500, T-Mobile Ameo, HTC Athena, and finally the Dopod U1000.

The Advantage is planned to be released worldwide by HTC, and although it is very similar to a UMPC, the model we tested was loaded with Windows Mobile 5.0 making it more similar to a Pocket PC. Although Windows Mobile 6.0 has already been released, we are not entirely sure whether HTC will upgrade the operating system to Windows Mobile 6.0 before the product's official launch.

The 5-inch touchscreen has a 640x480 resolution. The fully detachable QWERTY keyboard included with the device can be neatly tucked into the screen when not in use. The keyboard is able to stay in place because it is magnetically attached to the device, and can also be used as a protection cover when not in use. The Advantage comes with Tri-band 3G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE connectivity, and a USB port. Internal memory amounts to a total of 128 MB of RAM, 256 MB of ROM, and an 8 GB hard disk. There is also a built-in 3.0 megapixel camera along with integrated GPS, which uses TomTom NAVIGATOR 6 software.

HTC P3300

The main function of the HTC P3300 is to serve as a personal navigation assistant. It comes built in with standalone GPS and the TomTom NAVIGATOR 6 application. In addition, it has a built-in FM radio, Bluetooth 2.0, and Wi-Fi. For the operating system, the PDA phone uses Windows Mobile 5.0.

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HTC P4350

The P4350 is a Quad-band GPRS/EDGE PDA phone with Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. The phone is equipped with a touch screen along with a sliding QWERTY keyboard, a trend that has become very popular among manufacturers.