Sendo smartphone launches in November

The phone with the longest development period in history appears finally to be heading for the stores. Sendo has announced that its smartphone, the Sendo X, will be available in the UK by the end of 2003.

The product was first sighted way back in 2001 when the company was grooming the handset as the first to use Microsoft’s smartphone operating system (as found now on the Orange SPV). Things didn't go the way the two parties had planned and days in court are looming.

Sendo may have had the last laugh though as the X now features the rival Symbian operating system. Its big trump card is that it packs a lot of features into a small and light (120 grams) device.

Overall the spec looks pretty good. We reckon it will be up against the Siemens SX1, Nokia 6600 and our favourite the Motorola MPx200.

Other key features

Sendo Now! Screen – which can be customised to give users instant access to favourite web pages, applications etc. It is a TFT screen with a resolution of 176x220 and up to 65,536 colours.

Video – Includes RealOne player. Users can either view downloaded clips or take their own using an integrated camcorder

Camera – VGA standard. The real news is that it features an integrated flash (only LG’s 7100 handset has this feature so far) and a 4x digital zoom.

Audio – RealOne player for spinning MP3s. Apparently includes a quality speaker too.

Internet – Compatibility with HTML 4.2, Frames, WAP 2.0, XHTML MP and Security (SSL and WTLS) formats. Also up to six POP3 e-mail accounts.

Other stuff – Infrared, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, Java, triple band, 64MB of flash, memory (32MB free for users), voice control, Word, Excel etc compatibility.

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