IFA 2006: O2 Shows Off ‘Exclusive’ HTC Excalibur

Could it be on for an exclusive deal on HTC's latest and greatest?

Here’s a bit of an exclusive in all senses of the word: O2 unveiled a dummy of the HTC Excalibur and boasted it will be the only network to release it.


Newly christened the ‘O2 Xda cosmo’, the handset was just a scale model but the network gave away a host of information which was hitherto unknown.

It turns out the cosmo/Excalibur will sport a 1.3MP camera, what is clearly a 320 x 240 screen, support for Push email, WiFi, Bluetooth and a microSD slot. Naturally enough Windows Mobile 5.0 is the operating system, there’s MP3 playback and it is quad band, though the on-stand bods couldn’t tell me whether it will be capable of HSDPA.

A generous 192MB of onboard flash memory was the other juicy morsel to slide out and we can expect it before the end of the year apparently. The measurements we had heard about (13.5 x 11.5 x 2mm) seem more or less correct (without the aid of a tape measure to be absolutely certain) but being a mock up I obviously couldn’t judge weight.

As far as that ‘exclusive’ tag goes take it with a pinch of salt. For a start we’re in Germany so the same rules may not apply in other countries and continents. Secondly, I saw a number of HTC handsets listed as ‘exclusives’ when the only thing exclusive about them was the rebranded O2 name.
