SlashGear

German consumer telecommunication magazine “connect” was privy to a working prototype of the HTC Excalibur.  The magazine has published more information about the device in the latest issue.  Arne of the unwired has the scoop!  The biggest news is O2 Germany will be the first to have the Excalibur under the new name O2 XDA cosmo, despite the previous dress up with T-Mobile themes.

connect reports that the O2 XDA cosmo featuring Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphone will be available during September or October of this year.  European carriers can expect the device a hell of a lot sooner than the carriers stateside – with a time frame pushing out towards the end of this year.

In case you’ve been living under a rock the past weeks, the Excalibur is HTC’s contender to the Motorola Q.  Similar to the Q, there’s a highly usable QWERTY keyboard (the German version will be the QWERTZ keyboard).  The jog/strip/pad does set the Excalibur apart from the Q.  It’s a nifty pad-like scroll tool located on the right hand side of the screen.  Scrolling through websites and documents should be a breeze.  Other features include GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad band and WiFi.  Arne thinks 3G-connectivity will be missing from the device.

I’ll check with Arne tomorrow and see if he got more info from O2; he’s going to give them a buzz then.

Related:  FCC Approves HTC Excalibur