HP's new iPaq set to be unveiled in late May

Hewlett-Packard is expected to unveil its  new iPaq h2200 PDA (personal digital assistant) on May 30, according to information given by High Tech Computer (HTC), the Taiwanese company that is making the device for HP.

The information was included in a letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that the government unit published on its Web site. Like all devices that use radio, the Bluetooth-enabled iPaq h2200 required clearance from the FCC before it can go on sale and it was as part of this approval process that details of the PDA were added to a publicly accessible FCC database in early April.

HTC recently decided that this gave away too much pre-launch information about the device, and wrote a letter to the FCC aimed at removing the information from the public domain until the product launch. In doing so, the company appears to have inadvertently let slip the probable announcement date for the device.

"Because these two products are confidential to market until May 30, please set aside the FCC grant ... as quickly as possible," HTC manager Dalton Chuang wrote in an undated letter that replaced the product approval details on the FCC Web site late last week. "After finishing [the] above, please also un-set aside (sic) these two grant (sic) so that the information is back on the FCC's Web site on May 30."

The device is based on either a 200MHz or 400MHz Xscale processor from Intel and will be available with at least 64MB of SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) and 32MB of ROM, according to a draft version of the user manual that was published in early April on the FCC web site.

HP could not immediately be reached for comment.