The HTC Advantage—or what you've been seeing as the Athena or the Ameo—is finally going to hit US shores. Most of its features will be the same as before: 5-inch VGA, 8GB hard disk, 256MB ROM, 128MB RAM, QWERTY, Tri-Band UMTS/HSDPA, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, miniSD, and a detachable QWERTY keyboard.

Fortunately for us, it's going to be styled as shown above, with a jet grey/charcoal black finish and with a strip of clear plastic that can be used to see Windows Mobile five alerts when closed (a Windows Mobile 6 version/upgrade is coming down the line). Unfortunately for your wallet, you won't be getting a cellphone provider subsidy when you buy this—it's going to be offered direct from Amazon and other retailers this summer. Looks like carriers aren't ready to jump on this type of device just yet.

We've gotten to play with this thing twice, and can easily say it's definitely worth a look if you want the mobility of a smartphone but need a larger keyboard for text entry and a larger screen for better productivity. It's a good contender, but you should see what else HTC has up its sleeves. – Jason Chen

Product Page [HTC]

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