HTC has expanded its product portfolio with a new global positioning system (GPS) smartphone and a mobile computer with built-in SIM card slot.

HTC Malaysia’s country sales manager S.K. Wong said the Touch Cruise smartphone is a communications and navigation device while the Shift mobile computer offers a new dimension of connectivity to power users.

“The main target is the mobile user who doesn’t want to waste time to look for connectivity,” he explained.

The Touch Cruise is the third member of the Touch product family and the first to feature built-in GPS.

It comes with mapping and navigation solutions from the MapKing R12 application, which offers a city map and the option of maps of other major cities in Southeast Asia.

With TouchFlo technology, you can swipe your finger across the 2.8-inch touch-screen to scroll and browse through Web pages, documents, messages and contact lists as well as view and rotate photos and slide shows.

Besides that, the smartphone comes with High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional.

Among other key features are a three-megapixel auto-focus camera, FM radio and Micro Secure Digital memory card slot to expand on the 256 megabytes of read-only memory and 128MB of random access memory.

The device even comes with WorldCard Mobile to manage business cards and a virtual keypad for easier data input.

Meanwhile, the Shift is essentially a fully functional PC with HSDPA connectivity. At 800 grams, it comes with a seven-inch display and 40-gigabyte hard drive.

There is also a full Qwerty keyboard, video graphics array port and finger print sensor that can be used to protect the device, file or folder with a thumbprint.

And with a SIM card slot, the Shift can provide network connections using tri-band universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS)/HSDPA or quad-band global system for mobile communications (GSM)/general packet radio service (GPRS)/enhanced data rates for global evolution (EDGE).

The Shift runs two operating systems: Windows Vista and HTC’s SnapVUE, which provides instant access to e-mail, calendar, SMS messages and contacts without having to fully boot up the device.

“SnapVUE is an always-on operating system,” said HTC Malaysia’s technical engineer Alan Lee.

“With SnapVUE, Vista can be running in the background, or if Vista is switched off SnapVUE can still be running.”

A hotkey allows you to switch between the two operating systems at the touch of a button, if Vista is switched on.

The Touch Cruise comes in black sapphire and will be available early this month at RM2,799 while the Shift will be available next month at RM5,499.