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BenQ preps Symbian phone

Nothing official

BenQ, the company which used to be Acer's contract manufacturing arm, is prepping a Symbian OS phone for Q3, 2003 -"or later", says Digitimes. The newswire notes that BenQ is the first Taiwanese phone maker to commit to Symbian.

Which is nice, if true. It probably is, but Symbian itself will tell us only that the report is "speculation". Ah, so we have a leak then? Possibly not: Irwin Chen, BenQ's head of wireless ops, is quoted - OK, paraphrased - in the Digitimes piece.

But certainly, nothing official has been announced, which may explain the lack of BenQ Symbian detail in the article. There's no UI and no hardware spec, although these days it is reasonably safe to infer that the former is based on Nokia Series 60.

BenQ's Chen has nice things to say about Symbian, telling Digitimes that the platform delivers more application support than Microsoft (Smartphone 2002). But the company, Taiwan's biggest mobile phone maker may also join rivals HTC, Compal and Asustek in developing an MS Stinger handset. But not yet. It is not likely to make a decision before 2004, Chen says.

This should give it enough to time to side-step the teething troubles experienced with the Orange SPV. Made by HTC this is the world's first Windows Smartphone 2002-powered device. ®

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