Touchscreen stylus, Windows Mobile 7 coming to HTC HD2 mobile phone

A touchscreen stylus and Windows Mobile 7 for HTC HD2 are on the cards. Recently, Mobile Tech World got an image of the HTC HD2 touchscreen stylus (pen) which was apparently sent from Russia. Windows Mobile 7, the latest mobile operating system from Microsoft, is expected to be out in 2010.

HTC HD2 photo

The HTC HD2, one of the latest Windows Mobile 6.5 phones from Taiwan’s HTC, sports a 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen. Though touchscreens don’t need a stylus (digital pen), it provides more accuracy, especially when tapping small keys. A stylus helps if you sketch on the touchscreen drawing applications, as well as for making digital signatures. On the flip side, functions like pinch, zoom and multitouch cannot be used as easily with a stylus. The HTC HD2 is already considered a brilliant phone by reviewers, and an upgrade to Windows Mobile 7 should make it even more capable.

So far, we have not heard about any phones other than the HTC HD2 as a candidate for Windows Mobile 7.

The addition of a digital magnetic stylus means HTC will also have to replace the back panel of the HTC HD2, to accommodate it. So, expect a mild redesign on the HTC HD2 in 2010.

HTC, which makes the HD2, holds a patent for making a magnetic stylus for its capacitive touchscreen. Capacitive touchscreens on existing mobile phones are used mostly with finger-taps, with the tips transmitting an electrical current which the touchscreen can react to. Due to this, an ordinary digital pen will not work on the capacitive touchscreen. HTC patent says that its digital pen (stylus) will have a tiny magnet placed inside the tip of the stylus, which will replicate the electrical reaction caused by the tap of the finger. The first digital stylus incorporating this technology is expected to make its debut on the HTC HD2 capacitive touchscreen. The new HTC HD2 will also come with extended battery life. Read related story: Resistive, not capacitive, touchscreen could be Nokia N900s Achilles’ heel

HTC HD2 uses the HTC Sense version of Windows Mobile 6.5. The HTC Sense is a 3D-looking mobile operating system customised for HTC, and eliminates many of the complaints associated with vanilla WinMo 6.5. HTC also has a version of HTC Sense built around the Android platform. If reports are to be believed, HTC is not satisfied with this, but wants to bring WinMo 7 to the next edition of HTC HD2. We shall wait for that.

HTC HD2, which launched in the UK on the O2 network, came to T-Mobile customers last week. The HTC HD2 touchscreen mobile phone has a 5-Megapixel camera with double-LED flash and auto-focus. The processor is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon with sufficient power. This 3G phone also has Wi-Fi and GPS location-based services.

We expect Microsoft to be working closely with HTC on the Windows Mobile 7 version of the HD2. Microsoft is the slowpoke in the mobile operating systems market now, with Apple and Android surging ahead. The current Windows Mobile 6.5 is considered so much a backward mobile operating system that mobile phone companies had to hide it under custom user interfaces like the HTC Sense. Hopefully, Windows Mobile 7 will be able to catch up to the other two OSs in 2010.