Please welcome another member in the Touch family, the Touch Cruise. Oh yes, it is the Iolite which made an appearance earlier this month. HTC says the new Touch Cruise upgrades their 2008’s GPS offering which also goes by the same name.

What’s so special about this phone? Well, the footprint button or rather the HTC Footprints application. The application as they say captures “digital postcards.” With the Footprints app, a user can add notes as well as audio clip to the captured moment. It also does geo-tagging but a bit differently. First it geotags the picture with the GPS co-ordinates, autonames each picture with the location and then shows you how to reach there in case you want to relive that moment again.

Moving onto the hardware specs, it has a 2.8-inch screen, HSPA, Wi-Fi, 3.2MP cam and microSD slot.

Full 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 ExtUSB? (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

Product Page

A new phone seems to pop up from HTC’s stable. Dubbed as Iolite, the phone will sit in between Touch 3G and Touch Diamond. It will pack quad-band GSM radio along with UMTS, GPS, Wi-Fi, 512MB RAM/288MB ROM and a memory expansion slot. This will have Windows Mobile 6.1 running with the slick 3D TouchFLO UI on top. Iolite is expected to make its debut at Mobile World Congress in mid February.

Specifications:

Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
HTC TouchFLO 3D menu interface
HTC Foot Prints button
Qualcomm MSM7225, 528 MHz processor
Memory: ROM: 512 MB / RAM: 288 MB
2.8-inch touch screen with a screen resolution of 240 x 320 pixels
3.2 megapixel camera
MicroSD memory card slot
3G HSDPA / HSUPA with download speeds up to 7.2 Mbps
Quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
Built-in GPS receiver including A-GPS
Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b / g
USB 2.0
1100 mAh Lithium-ion battery
Talk Time up to 400 minutes
Standby time to 330 hours
Dimensions: 102 mm x 53.5 mm x 14.5 mm
Weight: 103 grams

[Jouwmobiel via Engadgetmobile]