MWC 2008: Various brands overview

Hands-on with Gigabyte MS804 and MW998

At the WMC in Barcelona Gigabyte conjured up MS804 and MW998. The two unexpected newcomers replaced without notice the Gigabyte GSmart MW700 and MS800, which were officially supposed to feature in Barcelona. Anyway, the new devices are hi-end PocketPC's running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional. The unique thing about both devices is the user-configurable CPU mode with Powersaving, Standard and Performance the available otions. The latter probably manages idle programs or those running in the background, as well as the data cash.

Gigabyte MS804

The first debut is Gigabyte MS804, a tri-band GSM/EDGE phone with UMTS/HSDPA support. Unique to PocketPC, it is notable for the slider form factor revealing a standard phone keypad. MS804 sports an ample 2.6" 256K-color TFT touchscreen of QVGA resolution. It runs on the potent Marvel PXA270 520MHz processor, utilizing 256MB of ROM and 64MB RAM. Gigabyte MS804 has a 2 megapixel autofocus camera and a secondary video-call unit. An MP3 player and stereo FM radio with RDS are also in the package. Gigabyte MS804 measures 18.2mm in thickness.

Gigabyte MW998

The other newcomer is Gigabyte MW998, a quad-band GSM/GPRS PocketPC, which has HSDPA sacrificed in favor of a 2.6" 256K-color touchscreen display of VGA resolution. The other specs are pretty much on par with MS804. We have the same processor, RAM and ROM capacity. It also brings an MP3 player and a two megapixel snapper, but lacks FM radio. Gigabyte MW998 keeps up with the MS804 dimensions, at 18.5mm thick.