HP rw4500 Smartphone: The Unreleased Windows Mobile iPAQ

In December 2005, a handful of grainy phone-camera photos landed on the Mobility Today forums and, briefly, on some of the biggest gadget blogs of the era. They showed an HP-branded, keypad-driven smartphone stamped with a model number nobody at HP had ever mentioned: rw4500. It ran Windows Mobile 5.0, carried a candybar body, and — oddly for an HP device — had a T-Mobile logo printed on the back. It was covered as a leak, treated with real skepticism by the people writing about it, and then it simply vanished. HP never announced a retail product called the rw4500, and no verified unit ever reached a store shelf. What follows is a look at what was actually documented about it at the time, built from the surviving Mobility Today article and the contemporary tech press that covered the same leak.

What Was the HP rw4500?

The HP rw4500 is the model number that appeared on a set of leaked photographs of an unreleased Windows Mobile smartphone in December 2005. It is not a documented HP retail product — there is no official HP spec sheet, press release, or product page for a device by this name. Everything known about it comes from a small set of forum-sourced photos and the period tech coverage built around them. That distinction matters: this piece is describing a leak and the reporting around it, not a confirmed commercial HP product.

The December 2005 Leak

The photos originated with a contributor using the handle rock99rock, who sent them to Mobility Today. The first images that came in were blurry enough that the site's editor was initially doubtful they were genuine. A further batch of clearer photos followed shortly after, and those were judged credible enough to publish. The accompanying text described a device running Windows Mobile 5.0 with a 320x240 screen, Bluetooth 1.2, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and Wi-Fi. The same tipster and the same set of images were picked up independently by Engadget within the same news cycle, which is a useful confirmation that this wasn't an isolated or fabricated claim contained to one site.

The Original Mobility Today Article

The original piece, titled \"rw4500 Smartphone by HP?\", was published on Mobility Today on Saturday, December 10, 2005, under a byline credited to David Ciccone. At the time, the site was still closely tied to its earlier identity as a dedicated iPAQ community and forum, and the article ran through that same vBulletin-based publishing system, alongside forum-style reader comments attached directly beneath the post. The Wayback Machine preserved this page in close to its original form across roughly a dozen crawls between December 2005 and late 2008, including the full body text, six linked full-size photos plus a small header thumbnail, and six reader comments. By the time later Wayback snapshots were captured — starting around 2013 — the page had shrunk to a fraction of its original size, consistent with the site's later platform migrations rather than any specific edit to this article. The core reporting, however, is fully recoverable from the earlier archived copies, and nothing in this piece goes beyond what those copies actually show.

The HTC Feeler Connection

Contemporary coverage, including Engadget's write-up of the same leak, identified the hardware as a rebadged version of an HTC device known internally as the Feeler, also referenced under the designation SP3i. HTC did not sell phones under its own brand in most Western markets at this point — it built hardware that carriers and OEMs then sold under their own names, a practice that produced a long list of differently branded phones sharing closely related internal hardware. An HP-branded smartphone built on HTC engineering would have fit that pattern, though no HP-HTC agreement specific to the rw4500 was ever officially confirmed by either company.

Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition

Windows Mobile 5.0 shipped in two broad flavors: Pocket PC Edition, built around a touchscreen and a stylus, and Smartphone Edition, built around a numeric keypad and menu-driven navigation with no touchscreen. Based on the candybar form factor and keypad-first design visible in the leaked photos, the rw4500 falls into the Smartphone Edition category rather than the Pocket PC line HP's existing iPAQ handhelds used — meaning it would have competed in a different product category than HP's established line, closer to a phone-first device than a PDA-first one.

The QVGA Display

The reported display was a 320x240 QVGA screen. Engadget's coverage specifically compared this to the display on the existing T-Mobile SDA, describing that device's screen as 220x176 — a lower, non-QVGA resolution. If accurate, that made the rw4500's screen a genuine step up in sharpness over the SDA hardware it was otherwise being compared to, rather than an identical carryover component.

The 1.3-Megapixel Camera

Both the Mobility Today text and Engadget's coverage cite a 1.3-megapixel camera. Engadget again drew a direct comparison to the T-Mobile SDA, describing that device's camera as VGA resolution — roughly 0.3 megapixels. Taken together, the contemporary reporting consistently frames the rw4500 as carrying a meaningfully better camera than the SDA hardware it resembled in other respects.

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and the miniSD Slot

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 1.2 are both confirmed in the original Mobility Today body text and echoed in the wider coverage from the same week. A miniSD slot is mentioned as well, though that specific detail — that the slot sat underneath the battery rather than on an exposed edge — comes from a reader comment left on the original article rather than from the article's own reporting. It's a plausible detail consistent with several HTC designs of the period, but it should be read as a secondhand forum claim rather than confirmed original sourcing.

GSM, GPRS, and EDGE: What's Unconfirmed

Neither the original Mobility Today article nor the contemporary press coverage found for this piece explicitly states which GSM bands, or which of GPRS or EDGE, the rw4500 supported. Virtually every Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition device built on comparable HTC hardware during this period — including the T-Mobile SDA family it was repeatedly compared to — used GSM with GPRS and EDGE data. It is a reasonable inference that the rw4500 used similar cellular hardware, but it is an inference, not something stated outright in the surviving sources, and this piece is not presenting it as a confirmed spec.

The Candybar Design

The leaked photos show a straight candybar body with a numeric keypad below the screen, consistent with the Smartphone Edition form factor rather than a touchscreen slab. Contemporary write-ups noted iPAQ and HP branding on the device's front face, alongside a small set of dedicated buttons that Engadget flagged as an addition compared to the T-Mobile SDA hardware — described as music-related controls, though their exact function wasn't independently confirmed beyond that mention.

Similarities to HTC's Tornado-Era Hardware

At least one contemporary outlet raised the possibility that the rw4500 was related to HTC's Tornado platform, a Smartphone Edition design that had not yet reached market at the time of the December 2005 leak. This was offered as informed speculation based on the general shape and feature set visible in the photos, not a confirmed shared platform — HTC produced multiple related Smartphone Edition designs across this period for different carriers and OEMs, and visual similarity between them was common even where the underlying hardware differed. Nothing in the surviving sources nails down an exact shared board or chipset between the rw4500 and any specific named HTC model.

The Cingular 2125 and T-Mobile SDA Family

The most concrete comparison offered by contemporary press was to the existing T-Mobile SDA, already sold in Europe on HTC hardware before the rw4500 leak surfaced. Around the same period, HTC-built Smartphone Edition hardware from this same general family also reached the US market under other carrier branding, including the Cingular 2125. It would be an overreach to call the rw4500 identical hardware to either the SDA or the Cingular 2125 — the specific comparisons made at the time (higher display and camera resolution on the rw4500) point to a related but distinct variant, not a straight rebadge of an already-shipping phone. The safest framing is that the rw4500 sat within the same broad HTC Smartphone Edition lineage as the SDA and Cingular 2125, without being confirmed as electronically identical to either.

The T-Mobile Logo on the Back

One detail drew particular attention in the reader comments on the original Mobility Today post: a T-Mobile logo visible on the back of the leaked unit, sitting oddly alongside HP and iPAQ branding on the front. A separate contemporary write-up flagged the same detail as an unusual pairing for a device carrying HP's name. The most likely reading, based on how carrier-branded engineering samples typically worked during this period, is that the photographed unit was an early sample built for or with a specific carrier in mind, rather than a finished retail design HP had settled on. That's a reasonable inference from the available evidence, not a confirmed fact about HP's plans.

What Readers Said in 2005

The original article drew six reader comments, worth summarizing because they capture how uncertain even contemporary observers were about this device. One commenter pointed to the T-Mobile logo as evidence the phone couldn't be meant only for markets outside the US. Another, posting under a handle suggesting professional familiarity with HP and Microsoft's healthcare-focused work, claimed to have handled an engineering sample and said that, per a conversation with HP and Microsoft contacts roughly a month earlier, the plan was for an Asia-only release — while allowing plans could still change. A third noted the design looked like typical HTC Smartphone Edition hardware and called out the under-battery miniSD placement specifically. Others speculated it was a straightforward rebrand of existing hardware, or debated whether it was distinctly HTC-built at all versus comparable to other Smartphone Edition devices that year, including the Motorola Q. None of these comments carry independent verification — they're included as a record of contemporary reaction, not confirmed reporting.

Spec Summary: Verified vs. Unconfirmed

Why It Apparently Never Became a Commercial Product

No official HP statement, press release, or later spec sheet for a product called the rw4500 turned up anywhere in the sources reviewed for this piece. The device appears to have stalled somewhere between an engineering sample and a shipping product, which is not an unusual fate for leaked hardware from this era — plenty of photographed prototypes from the mid-2000s smartphone market never reached a retail shelf under the name they leaked with. The only contemporary explanation on record is the unverified forum claim that HP and Microsoft contacts described the plan as an Asia-only release. That claim was never confirmed by HP and was attributed to an anonymous commenter rather than an on-record source — this piece treats it only as the sole contemporary explanation anyone offered, not as established fact.

HP's Other rw-Series Devices

HP did go on to sell other devices carrying the "rw" prefix. The rw6800 series, including the rw6818 and rw6828 variants, launched in 2006 for markets including Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia, running Windows Mobile as a touchscreen Pocket PC device rather than a Smartphone Edition candybar. That's a genuinely different product line and form factor from the device pictured in the December 2005 leak, and it shouldn't be read as evidence that the rw4500 itself eventually reached market under a different guise — the naming overlap appears to be coincidental within HP's broader iPAQ model-numbering scheme rather than a continuation of this specific device.

Why This Obscure Leak Still Matters

The rw4500 never became a product anyone could buy, which makes it an easy device to overlook entirely. What makes it worth documenting is what it captures about a specific moment in mobile tech history: a period when a large share of the Windows Mobile smartphone market, across many different brand names, traced back to a comparatively small number of HTC hardware platforms, and when tech blogs and enthusiast forums like Mobility Today were the primary channel through which leaked engineering samples reached public view. The rw4500 survives today only as a handful of archived photo links, a short piece of period reporting, and a thread of reader speculation — a small but genuine artifact of how mobile hardware leaked and got covered in 2005.

FAQ

What was the HP rw4500?

A leaked, apparently unreleased HP-branded Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphone photographed in December 2005. It was never an official HP retail product — everything known about it comes from leaked photos and contemporary tech press coverage, not an HP announcement.

When was the HP rw4500 leaked?

The photos and initial coverage appeared on December 10, 2005, on Mobility Today, with follow-up coverage from other tech outlets within the same news cycle.

Was the HP rw4500 ever officially released?

No evidence of an official HP release was found anywhere in the sources reviewed for this piece. No HP spec sheet, press release, or retail listing for a product by this name appears to exist.

What operating system did the HP rw4500 run?

Windows Mobile 5.0, in the Smartphone Edition variant — a keypad-driven, non-touchscreen version of Windows Mobile, distinct from the touchscreen Pocket PC Edition HP's other iPAQ devices used.

What was the HTC connection?

Contemporary press identified the hardware as based on an HTC design known as the Feeler, also referenced as the SP3i — consistent with HTC's broader role as the manufacturer behind many carrier- and OEM-branded Windows Mobile phones of that era. No specific HP-HTC agreement for this device was ever officially confirmed.

Did the HP rw4500 have Wi-Fi?

Yes — Wi-Fi is listed directly in the original Mobility Today reporting from December 2005, alongside Bluetooth 1.2.

What camera did the HP rw4500 have?

A 1.3-megapixel camera, according to contemporary coverage — reported as a step up from the VGA-resolution camera on the T-Mobile SDA it was frequently compared to.

Is there official confirmation of GSM, GPRS, or EDGE support?

No. Cellular band and data-standard details were not explicitly stated in the sources reviewed for this piece. It's a reasonable inference based on comparable era hardware, not a confirmed spec.

Why did a T-Mobile logo appear on an HP phone?

It's not officially explained. The most likely reading is that the photographed unit was an early carrier-tied engineering sample rather than a finished retail design, but that's an inference from the available evidence, not a confirmed fact.

The rw4500 is a reminder that not every device with a model number and a set of leaked photos makes it to market — and that some of the most interesting artifacts from the Windows Mobile era exist only as a few archived images and a short piece of period reporting from a site that was, at the time, still finding its footing between an iPAQ fan forum and a full mobility news outlet.