HTC Introduces New QWERTY Smartphone

No, that's not a BlackBerry, but HTC's latest Windows Mobile smartphone seems to take some design cues from RIM with its full QWERTY keyboard and trackball navigation. The HTC Snap's headlining feature, however, is a new e-mail management feature called "Inner Circle."

Users can bring e-mail from a preselected group to the top of their inbox by pressing a dedicated key on the Snap. I can see the Inner Circle feature being a huge boon to enterprise customers who receive an overwhelming amount of e-mail daily. This feature will help prevent any missed high priority e-mail messages and cut down on time spent searching through a full inbox.

The HTC Snap has 3G connectivity, a 2-megapixel camera with video capture, and a vendor talk time of 8.5 hours. Measuring 4.6 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches, the HTC Snap is similar in size to the BlackBerry Curve 8900 on T-Mobile. An unlocked HSDPA version under the name HTC S522 will be available in the U.S. this summer.