HTC Leo aka Firestone gets some unofficial specs

In January, Boy Genius Report leaked HTC’s full 2009 line up online. Most of the devices we ones we already knew about, but there were a few in particular that caught our eye. One of those was the HTC Firestone.

Well the HTC Firestone seems to also be going by another name these days, (although we didn’t realize they were the same device until now), the HTC Leo. And well the HTC Leo/Firestone’s supposed specs were just leaked a few days ago. Here you are:

• Quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity
• Dual-band HSDPA connectivity (900/2100 MHz)
• 4.3-inch WVGA (480 x 800) capacitive touchscreen display
• Windows Mobile 6.5
• Qualcomm 1GHz MSM 8250 Snapdragon processor
• Wi-Fi
• GPS, A-GPS
• Accelerometer
• Light & proximity sensors
• 3.5mm headset jack
• 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with dual LED flash
• 512MB flash memory, 320MB RAM
• MicroSD card support
• 1230 mAh battery
• 121 x 67 x 11 millimeters

So what is so special about it? Well what’s exciting us would be the huge 4.3inch CAPACITIVE screen, this would be a first in sheer size for an HTC phone, but also the first (that we are aware of) capacitive Windows Mobile device we’ve seen.

Capacitive screens, for those unfamiliar, are the type of screens used by the iPhone, the G1, and a few other popular non-Windows devices. All Windows Mobile devices and a few other non-Windows phones have resistive screens instead. Capacitive screens are generally more responsive and can handle scrolling and swiping much better than resistive screens but the downside is that you can’t use a small item or an item that does not conduct electricity to tap the screen, so this means no stylus, only fingers. Resistive screens have always been used on HTC’s Windows Mobile devices and the reason given by HTC when asked “why [HTC] doesn’t use the superior capactive technology?” is that their largest market (Asia), are big fans of writing notes and using the hand writing recognition (which if you’ll remember from a sentence ago, capacitive screens can’t use since the tip of the stylus doesn’t conduct electricity and is too small for the capacitive screen to recognize).
So looks like Asia’s gonna be maddddddd…

The other nice spec we noticed is the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor and the 320Mbs of RAM, mmmmm.