infoSync World : XDA II officially announced

Slated for arrival later this year, the XDA II remains similar to the original XDA in size, but has lost its antenna and offers more power under the hood with a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor and 64 MB of RAM. Also, the XDA II boasts newfound support for tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz and Bluetooth, as well as more recent innovations including MMS and the latest version of the Phone Edition of Microsoft's Pocket PC platform - to be known as Windows Mobile 2003.

Also new is an integrated, VGA resolution (0.3 megapixel) digital camera as well as a 16-bit transflective colour display - although this is of similar size to that of the original XDA. Despite the improvements to specifications, O2 also claimed that the company had achieved increased standby and talk times, and has also thrown in SDIO support for the SD/MMC Card expansion slot.

(mmO2 - 18.7 million cell phone customers in the UK, Germany, Ireland - $399 Euros)