T-Mobile had a consumer-hit on their hands with the consumer-friendly T-Mobile Shadow smartphone. Taking HTC’s wares and re-branding it as the T-Mobile Shadow was a good idea and it looks like T-Mobile is making good on their promise to continue on with the Shadow lineup of consumer-friendly smartphones.
The T-Mobile Shadow II (2) has been floating around of late, with various spy pics and details leaking out on to the various interwebs. It was only a matter of time before definitive pricing and availability information was released.
The T-Mobile Shadow II will apparently launch on T-Mobile (naturally) on October 15 with a $149.99 price tag (after rebate and new contract, of course). The release date falls nicely in line with our Q4 2008 launch expectations.
The T-Mobile Shadow successor is set to hit the scene with Windows Mobile 6.1 in tow, and should make quick work of web surfing or VoIP calling with integrated WiFi. The inclusion of WiFi also means the T-Mobile Shadow II will be getting down with the carrier’s T-Mobile HotSpot @Home UMA service for those times when you just don’t want to use wireless minutes to make a call from your home.
The T-Mobile Shadow II is, just like its predecessor, based on hardware from HTC. This time around, T-Mobile has taken the HTC Cleopatra and re-branded the handset as the T-Mobile Shadow II.
What’s not clear is whether or not the T-Mobile Shadow II will support T-Mobile’s nascent 3G network on the 1700Mhz AWS band. T-Mobile, for some reason, isn’t all that forthcoming about which of their new handsets will be compatible with the up-and-coming 1700Mhz 3G network. The carrier has previously failed to mention 3G compatibility on upcoming handsets like the Sony Ericsson TM506 Bella, only to turn around later and admit that the handset was 1700Mhz 3G-compatible all along. So, the T-Mobile Shadow II will likely be a 3G T-Mobile handset, but we’ll stop short of declaring it so.
[Via: TmoNews]