AT&T Pantech Matrix PRO in the House! Unboxing Video

Be sure to watch the video in HD - hit the up arrow in the bottom right corner of the video

Remember the Pantech Duo? It was the first Windows Mobile device to have dual sliding keypads. Though it was a good basic messaging phone, we cursed it for having poor build quality, being way too thick, and for lacking essentials like WiFi, GPS, the latest version of Bluetooth, plus some other things.

The new version of the Duo, which AT&T is calling the Matrix PRO (the original Matrix is a non-smartphone version that has a similar design), will hopefully make up for its predecessor's shortfalls.

The device, which will be sold for $179.99 with a new two year contract on February 24, is running on Windows Mobile 6.1 standard, with a 528MHz CPU and 256MB ROM/128MB RAM. It's a UMTS plus HSDPA device (the Duo didn't have HSDPA) with aGPS and still no WiFi. The screen is 2.4" with QVGA resolution, and the camera on back shoots at 2.0MP. See PDAdb.net for a spec-to-spec comparison chart with the Pantech Duo.

One final note - the new Matrix PRO is a hair thicker than the Pantech Duo. How thick is thick? The PRO is almost 3mm thicker than the AT&T Tilt/HTC TyTN II, which is one of the thickest WinMo devices that I can think. This noticeable thickness overshadows the device's clean design, which is unfortunate.

More on the Matrix PRO coming up!