LG Fathom Slated For Verizon

Verizon Wireless and LG announced Tuesday the release of their newest Windows Mobile 6 joint venture, the LG Fathom. The device will be one of the first to carry Microsoft's new mobile Office suite.

The Fathom will likely be targeted primarily to business customers because of its access to Office, Exchange, and Sharepoint features as the primary selling points. It will be one of a few Windows Mobile 6.5 phones to come out, as the lame duck mobile OS prepares to be replaced by Windows Phone 7, a brand new platform that will not be backwards compatible with Windows Mobile firmware.

The Fathom features a 3.2 inch WGA touchscreen, full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, 3.2 megapixel camera, a micro SDcard slot for up to 16GB of storage, an unspecified GPS unit, and Windows Mobile 6.5.3. It has a video player that supports several formats, along with a one-touch speakerphone system.

Late last year, Microsoft opted to move away from Windows Mobile to the Windows Phone 7 Series. At the Mobile World Congress in February, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described the new OS as a way for the software company to "take greater accountability for the end user experience."

LG and other manufacturers will introduce phones running the Windows Phone 7 Series operating system by year's end, with Verizon as the carrier, Microsoft said in February. Two Microsoft Kin phones that were released earlier this month already carry a variant of the Windows 7 Series operating system.

The slate blue Fathom is a travel-friendly "world phone," packing both CDMA/EVDO and GSM/UMTS chipsets and supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It will be available online on Thursday and available in stores for $150 after a $100 mail-in-rebate and a two-year contract.