I have it on good authority that the XDA II and XPhone are expected in Australia by distributors by Friday, November 28, 2003. In fact, such good authority that I know the "buy" price of these phones, and I can assure you that you'll be very lucky to see an O2 XDA II / iMate Phone Edition below $1460, and equally so with the O2 XPhone / QTek 8080 / Orange SPV e200 / iMate Smartphone II (highly unlikely to go lower than $750). There are some pretty tight margins on these things, and it looks like relatively low stock quantities have been ordered to start with. Of course, this is through just one distributor and it could be that others are ordering considerably more. Nonetheless, a high initial demand would help this prices drop considerably in a short period of time.

I've hopefully managed to secure my XDA II and XPhone, and I'm rubbing my hands eagerly. You could pre-order now at stores like Organiser World or estore.com.au, or you could wait until Telstra's official release.

If they arrive on Friday, and we assume a week to be allocated to stores/preordering/etc, I would be looking for a release between the 8th and 12th of December. I'm only speaking from past experiences with other products, so it could be early or later - but nonetheless it's more information again.

In other - more disturbing - news, the XDA II / iMate Phone Edition has some limitations which may hurt it a little during the initial release. There's a limitation in the number of processes that can be run in Windows CE, and developers are now supposed to write their applications (such as the camera, caller ID, and Bluetooth) as services. I imagine this will happen, and reasonably quickly, but it's very pertinent and timely information. I don't think it should stop you from buying an XDA II - after you read my review of course - but it's definitely something to bear in mind while using it. For the full story, read Arne Hess' PPCW.Net article. It has some tips on how to avoid the problems associated with this limitation too, so well worth a read.

Since I initially wrote this, Arne has posted another article detailing another problem - charging the XDA II with a USB sync charge cable. Naturally this is of concern to me (I do use a USB sync charge cable, both for the purpose of synchronising my notebook and for charging it in my car), and I'll be testing it as soon as I get my XDA II! Worst case of course, we can hope that this and the other problem will be fixed very shortly.

Update : PocketPCThoughts, in their coverage of this problem, mention that Spb Software House - makers of the excellent GPRS Monitor software - have already come up with a developer-based solution which will assist in relieving this problem.