MSmobiles has posted a great preview of the Qtek 8500 Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone which is a rebranded HTC Star100 model. So far this will also be available as the i-mate Smartflip. While this phone does not include some of the high-end features like WiFi or 3G, it’s form factor and styling is what’s really exciting. Take a look at the pictures and see how nicely designed this phone is. A few cons to this design are that there’s only one connector which is used for charging, syncing, and the wired headset… it also uses MicroSD cards for memory expansion and the slot is burried deep under the battery cover and under the SIM card slot! On the plus side, it’s got an external screen that gives you some basic information along with Media Player track information and controls. One other thing that may help you get over the weird propietary headphone connector is the fact that this does support A2DP, so you’ll be able to use Bluetooth wireless headphones and listen to music that way.
Originally published on Pocketnow on April 8, 2006. More Hardware articles from the Pocketnow archive.