HTC “snaps” at BlackBerry user base with new smartphone

The BlackBerry has a new competitor for the attentions of the globetrotting executive. At the biggest American mobile show in Las Vegas, HTC unveiled the Snap, or S522, as it will be called in the US.

The Snap is a Windows Mobile 6.1 device that looks a lot like a BlackBerry. It's a slim, black 4.59-inch x 2.42-inch x 0.47-inch slab with no touch screen, but a pearl-like track ball right below the 2.4-inch, 320x240 screen. The Snap has 3G, Wi-Fi and an unusually high-capacity 1500 mAh battery for long battery life, and there's a 2-megapixel camera on the back.

On the hardware front, a 528mHz Qualcomm CPU powers the phone. It also packs in 256MB of ROM and 128MB of RAM, and is equipped with Bluetooth and GPS.

The phone is optimised for e-mail and messaging. In fact, HTC thinks e-mail is so important it has created a new feature called Inner Circle that prioritizes e-mails based on user preferences. By pressing the dedicated Inner Circle button, the HTC Snap will bring e-mails from a pre-selected group of people to the top of the in-box so that one can read and reply to them immediately.

The HTC Snap offers Microsoft Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server as well as support for POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts. The smartphone's full QWERTY keyboard also features "extra-large domed keys" to provide for a better typing experience.

The HTC Snap is expected to be available in select channels during the second quarter of 2009 and will be rolled out worldwide during the second half of the year.