Late last year, the T-Mobile G1 was introduced as the first QWERTY smartphone powered by Android. The smartphone, manufactured by HTC, impressed in many areas such as navigation, camera performance and Web browsing. However, the HTC Touch Pro still had the messaging solutions required to attract the lucrative business users.
 In Q2 2009, the Touch Pro will be replaced by the HTC Touch Pro 2 (specs), featuring a new Straight Talk function. This technology delivers an integrated e-mail, voice and speakerphone experience. Users can transition seamlessly from e-mail to single or multi-party conference calls. Additionally, Straight Talk aims to provide a high-fidelity voice and sound experience enhanced by dual speakers as well as dual mics with advanced noise reduction.
The WinMo phone will also get a 3.6-inch WVGA display (480 x 800 pixels), 512MB ROM (which can hold Windows Mobile 6.5 when that time arrives), 288MB RAM (for streaming YouTube videos), and a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto focus. Perhaps more important, TouchFLO 3D has been more deeply integrated into a customized version of Windows Mobile 6.1 to deliver more consistency throughout Windows Mobile applications and menus. As part of this improved Windows Mobile integration, the touch focus areas have been enlarged to be more finger-touch friendly.
 The HTC Touch Pro 2 and Windows Mobile is getting quite a few new competitors this spring though. The Palm Pre QWERTY smartphone could make the choice for Sprint customers obvious, while Nokia just released the Nokia E75 and Nokia E55 QWERTY smartphones. In addition, there's the Nokia N97 announced last year, which is scheduled to be released in the same time frame as the HTC Touch Pro 2.
The E75, however, is expected to ship in March at an estimated retail price of 375 EUR. An American version will be available, offering support for AT&T's HSPA network. The Nokia E55 will offer the same support, though its release date has not been specified beyond Q2 2009.
Last year, Nokia shipped more than 10 million E series smartphones, mainly thanks to the popular Nokia E71. In many ways, the Nokia E55 (specs) is the E71's little brother, featuring a SureType-style keypad and measuring only 116.5 by 48 by 9.9mm. That's just absurdly thin for a QWERTY smartphone.
 The Nokia E75 (specs) is likely the QWERTY smartphone that'll push the E series sales numbers further though. Along with the E55, the E75 will get an enhanced e-mail UI which includes folder and HTML e-mail support, expandable views and sorting capability by date, sender and size. Additionally, both smartphones offer improved calendar capability, as well as contacts and task management.
The E75 is inspired by the Nokia 9300, which offered both QWERTY and numeric keypads. According to Nokia, users used the numeric keypad a great deal. What has really changed though is the aforementioned messaging suite, which now comes with direct access to Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes out-of-box. For business users, that saves up to a third of the operating costs as compared to Nokia business phones in the past. We have no idea how many times we've been complaining about the lack of this stuff in our Nokia reviews back in the day, but the Finnish manufacturer could certainly attract even more corporate messaging users with the Nokia E75.
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