The creation of the Star Trek Communicator Phone was announced by Sona Mobile back in August 2005. It was due to go on sale by October 1st but the company's web site still has it labelled as coming soon.

Rather than being an actual manufacturer of handsets, Sona is in fact a mobile software specialist which offers software to run on top of the Beast's Windows Mobile platform. It's believed that this is the first time Viacom/Paramount have agreed to licence a version of the Communicator.

Features of the handset will include the ability to play a multi-player game for Trekkies called Fleet Wars. There's also an e-book called StarTrek Vanguard: Harbinger. A key benefit of this particular handset will be its ability to support downloading of video - including Trekkie clips, naturally.

The company doesn't actually say whether it intends to produce a cdmaOne version of the Communicator for the Americas as well as a GSM handset. Significantly it has offices in Canada and the UK as well as the USA.

Officially the handset is held up by overwhelming demand for the product. The INQ suspects, however, that Sona is having difficulty finding a manufacturer for the product. Furthermore, Nokia might want to have words for calling a handset the 'Communicator'.µ

L'INQ
Sona Mobile