New HTC Touch Cruise Offers HTC Footprints Geo Tagging Functionality

HTC have taken the wraps off a new, updated version of the GPS touting HTC Touch Cruise smartphone which now comes complete with HTC’s Footprint geo-tagging functionality billed as enabling ‘people to permanently chronicle their special moments by capturing a digital postcard on their phone’.

According to Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC Corporation, ‘Just as we have seen GPS technology transform how people navigate to new places, we are now seeing location-based applications like HTC Footprints changing how we interact and carry our memories’.

HTC’s Footprint application allows users to capture digital postcards which can be composed of pictures, notes and audio clips which will be specifically geo-tagged to the users current location allowing users to, for example, note a particularly impressive/unimpressive restaurant, where their partner lives with each ‘footprint’ being either titled by the user or automatically according to the location where it was composed.

This GPS geo-tagging functionality comes on top of the HTC Touch Cruise’s touchscreen based in-car navigation capabilities when docked in its car cradle.

Apart from the above, the new iteration of the Touch Cruise remains unchanged in offering the following specifications – apart from the new dedicated Footprint :

• Qualcomm MSM7225, 528 MHz chipset
• WCDMA/HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps Connectivity
• 2.8-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with QVGA resolution display
• 512 MB flash ROM, 256 MB RAM internal memory
• microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible) expansion slots
• Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS
• HTC TouchFLO, 4-Way navigation wheel with Enter and HTC Footprints buttons
• 3.2 MP, with fixed focus camera
• GPS/A-GPS
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR
• Up to 400 minutes talktime (GSM)
• Up to two weeks standby (GSM)
• 102 x 53.5 x 14.5mm
• 103 grams

The new version of the HTC Touch Cruise with HTC Footprints will purportedly be released to the north American market as an unlocked version offering 850/1900 MHz HSDPA 7.2Mbps connectivity some time in the second quarter of the year and will retain for between $500 and $600.