Last year around this time, ITG released its first xpPhone. That phone ran Windows Embedded Standard 2009, but this time, the company has decided to step it up a bit. The xpPhone 2 will run Windows 7 (at first) and will be upgradable to Windows 8 whenever it's released.
The second iteration of ITG's UMPC/smartphone hybrid has some pretty decent specs, especially in comparison to the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C that I reviewed last week. For starters, the new xpPhone will sport a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, 2GB of RAM, and up to 112GB of SSD storage space. All of those specs are wrapped nicely under a 4.3-inch display in a body that is slimmer than the original.
Like with most awesome pieces of hardware like this, we haven't heard anything about pricing or exact release dates; it'll simply be sometime in January. As for price, I'd say to expect it to be somewhere around the range of the previous device: $750-$850 sounds plausible to me.
The F-07C was a pretty good UMPC, even with its lower specs. I predicted that there might be some awesome devices coming because of Windows 8, and since the new xpPhone has better specs, I think that prediction might just come true.
ITG is also planning on offering Windows 7 on the xpPhone 2; depending on the timing of the phone's release, as well as when Microsoft finishes-up work on Windows 8, perhaps we'll see the xpPhone 2 first arrive running Windows 7, with an upgrade later available. There's no word yet on price, but this one feels like it's not going to be cheap.
