T-Mobile’s exclusive Ameo device

Is it a smartphone? Is it a laptop? T-Mobile’s exclusive Ameo device blurs the form factor design lines

T-Mobile has just announced it will launch the Ameo smartphone device in March on its Web’nWalk price plan. Manufactured by HTC, the Ameo looks more like a mini-laptop than a mobile phone, sporting a massive five-inch VGA resolution touchscreen and a detachable QWERTY keyboard.

T-Mobile hasn’t confirmed its feature set, but if the rumours are true the Ameo’s specifications make it one of the most powerful smartphones on the planet. Read them and weep: it’s HSDPA enabled, has built-in Wi-Fi, quad-band capabilities, Bluetooth, a Windows Mobile OS, three-megapixel camera and a VGA front loaded lens for video calling/conference plus an embedded GPS receiver for sat nav shenanigans.

T-Mobile has yet to announce pricing but as ever Mobile Choice will keep you posted.

T-Mobile with a hard disk

German wireless phone company T-Mobile unveiled Wednesday its first phone equipped with a hard disk, saying the pocket-sized device with a 13-centimetre screen would go on sale just before the Cebit computer show in March.

T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, said the device, known as the Ameo, used Microsoft's operating system Windows Mobile 5.0. T-Mobile would have 12 weeks of exclusive rights in Germany to sell the Ameo, which was manufactured by HTC.

The Ameo is a development from existing PDA (personal digital assistant) computers, but looks like a miniature laptop computer with its detachable 13-centimetre-wide keyboard and upright display.

Backofen said the Ameo's special feature was its 8-gigabyte hard drive. He added that he could not say when the Ameo would be offered by T-Mobile USA or the group's mobile-phone subsidiaries elsewhere in Europe.

Major communications groups are readying a slew of new products in Germany to coincide with Cebit, which takes place March 15-21 in Hanover.

T-Mobile on a new thechnology.

LONDONDERRY - T-Mobile USA representatives will take a ride with the town's cell tower consultant to see how effective its cell phone coverage is in an alternate site to the one it has proposed. Consultant Ivan Pagacik will travel with T-Mobile to the Parrish Hills area, one of the highest points in Londonderry, to see if the cell phone coverage there is equal to the coverage expected from Kelley Road, the site at which T-Mobile has proposed locating a 170-foot cell tower.T-Mobile is seeking a variance from the Londonderry Zoning Board of Adjustment to build the wireless structure on Kelley Road, an area zoned for agricultural/residential uses. They also want the board to allow the tower to be 235 feet from an abutting property, where the town requires a 340-foot setback; and allow the 170-foot structure when a maximum height of 35 feet is permissible.T-Mobile has a 2.5-mile area near the town municipal center, on Mammoth Road, where it cannot serve its residential customers and the 11,000 vehicles that travel in the area each day.Kelley Road, just off Litchfield Road, is a short distance from Mammoth Road. The monopole tower would stand in a 50-by-50-foot compound surrounded by an 8-foot chain-link fence.The proposal has met strong resistance from Kelley Road residents, who say the tower would adversely affect their property values and the neighborhood aesthetics.Resident Ryder Daniels, 22 Kelley Road, said in an interview after the Jan. 17 Zoning Board meeting, "It's clear that there are alternate sites for the cell tower than a residential neighborhood within 300 feet of people's homes."The public hearings will continue Feb. 21 at Town Hall in the Moose Hill Conference Room.