Alltel Wants To 'Touch' Mobile Pros With SmartphoneAlltel Wants To 'Touch' Mobile Pros With Smartphone

Mobile professionals with Alltel service have an attractive new smartphone option, as the wireless carrier is now offering the HTC Touch Pro.

The Touch Pro is a powered by Windows Mobile Professional 6.1, and its strong features have already made Sprint and AT&T pick it up. The handset is capable of receiving push corporate e-mail, calendaring, and other data. The smartphone also has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard for composing e-mails, texts, and editing certain Microsoft Office documents.

Windows Mobile is well known for its somewhat cumbersome interface, so HTC has layered its TouchFlo 3-D user interface on top. This makes navigating with swipes and gestures, as well as adding animated transitions, easier.

The 2.8-inch touch screen is capable of displaying a high resolution, and it can show up to 65,000 colors. The handset is capable of using Alltel's EV-DO Rev. A network for mobile data, and it also has a 3.2-inch megapixel camera with autofocus and video-recording capabilities.

Additionally, HTC's handset is a robust multimedia player, and customers can use the microSD slot to expand the memory. It also has Bluetooth version 2.0 that can be used for stereo Bluetooth.

Alltel customers can pick up the Touch Pro online for $278.99 after a mail-in rebate and a new two-year service agreement.

Verizon Wireless is expected to soon finalize the acquisition of Alltel, but the two use the same network technology, so Alltel customers who purchase the HTC Touch Pro should be able to continue using the handset once the merger's complete.

For HTC, Alltel's offering the handset is another positive note for the up-and-coming smartphone manufacturer. The company has had a series of popular Windows Mobile handsets, and it was hand-picked by Google to deliver the first Android-power handset, the G1.