HP ships iPAQ 900 smartphone with Win Mobile 6.1

Besides its high-profile PC announcements, HP today quietly began shipping its top-end iPAQ smartphone with a last-minute upgrade. The iPAQ 900 now ships with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional instead of the older 6.0 code and receives the improved home screen along with better mail support. Office Mobile is also packed in with the Professional edition to help read and edit documents on the road.

The phone otherwise remains HP's most feature-laden iPAQ with worldwide 3G over HSDPA, native GPS for navigation, Wi-Fi, and a 3-megapixel camera paired up with software to upload photos directly to Snapfish's image pages. The QWERTY keyboard device makes up for its lack of a touchscreen in part through both voice dialing and still-rare voice command recognition.

HP has opted out of providing exact release dates and prices for the phone, which will be available worldwide but should have staggered release dates. In the US, the phone is most likely to become an option through AT&T in the near future but hasn't been discussed separately by the American carrier.