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The HTC Touch Cruise 09 is a Windows smartphone with an advanced GPS system that offers some very different features from other GPS-enabled mobile phones.

HTC today announced its latest personal navigation handset with inbuilt GPS. The new HTC Touch Cruise, an update to 2008’s popular HTC GPS device of the same name, is the first mobile phone to offer HTC Footprints which enables people to permanently chronicle their special moments by capturing a digital postcard on their phone. Once captured, Footprints provides the ability to take notes and an audio clip of that favourite restaurant or special place while identifying its specific geographical location. In addition to identifying each postcard with its specific GPS co-ordinates, Footprints also auto-names each postcard with its general location or area.

The HTC Touch Cruise is also an advanced in-car navigation system. When placed into its accompanying car cradle, the HTC Touch Cruise automatically transforms its user interface into an easy-to-use, one-touch interface that provides seamless turn-by-turn directions. The new HTC Touch Cruise will be available to customers across all major global markets in spring 2009.

HTC Touch Cruise Specifications

• Size: 102 x 53.5 x 14.5mm
• Weight: 103 grams
• Connectivity: WCDMA/HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
• Operating system: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
• Display: 2.8-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with QVGA resolution
• Control panel: HTC TouchFLO 4-Way navigation wheel with Enter and HTC Footprints buttons
• Camera: 3.2 MP, with fixed focus
• Internal memory: 512 MB flash ROM, 256 MB RAM
• Expansion Slot: microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
• Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• GPS: GPS/A-GPS
• Interface: HTC ExtUSBä (mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
• Battery: 1100 mAh
• Talk time: GSM: up to 400 minutes
• Standby time: GSM: up to two weeks
• Chipset: Qualcomm® MSM7225, 528 MHz

[via slashgear]

While the recent Palm announcement has made many mobile users putting Palm Pre on one of their wish list, there is not much details on the Palm Pre for GSM network. One website, palmmwc2009.com, might indicate a possible second major announcement planned for next month at Mobile World Congress. The website is password protected and is currently removed from public access.

According to a check on Pre Community, the domain was registered by Canadian PR agency Mischief Media on 2008-12-30, who has Palm Canada on their client list. Read the detail here.

Sybase today announced that it has acquired paybox Solutions AG, a company provides mobile payment solutions. Sybase will now provide mobile operators, financial institutions and merchants with a full suite of mobile payment solutions enabling their customers to undertake person-to-person remittances, make payments for goods and services, top-up mobile airtime and pay bills from a mobile device, in both developed and emerging markets.

“Mobile payments are an increasingly critical part of mobile computing, a core component of our Unwired Enterprise strategy,” said Marty Beard, president of Sybase 365. “The sheer number of people with access to a mobile phone in both developed and emerging markets around the world, means the mobile device has the potential to become a dominant vehicle for consumers to connect and transact conveniently, anytime, anywhere, fueling the mobile economy. This acquisition extends our offerings and capabilities to enable this mobile economy.”

A privately held company founded in 1999 and headquartered in Raunheim, Germany, paybox will be integrated into Sybase 365, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sybase, Inc.

Last week, Kaspersky Lab experts detected a new malicious program for Symbian that targets customers of an Indonesian mobile phone operator. The Trojan is written in Python, a script language. It sends SMS messages to a short number with instructions to transfer part of the money in the user’s account to another account, which belongs to the cybercriminals.

There are five known variants of Trojan-SMS.Python.Flocker, from .ab to.af. The amounts transferred range from $0.45 to $0.90. “Obviously, the authors of the Trojan want to make money,” said Denis Maslennikov, a senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab. “It seems that the focus on financial fraud in the mobile malware industry will only get more pronounced over time. Until recently, many people thought that malicious programs that send SMS messages without the user’s knowledge were a purely Russian phenomenon. Now we can see that the problem no longer affects only Russian users - it’s becoming an international issue.”