High Tech Computer (HTC) announced the HTC Touch Diamond today. The Touch Diamond utilizes 3G (third generation) mobile technology. The device runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and has a touch screen that can be used one-handed. Apple hasn’t said when it will launch a 3G phone, but the company is expected to do so later this year.

Starting this June, the Touch Diamond will be available in Europe. The Asian and Middle Eastern markets will follow, with sales hitting North and South America in the second half of 2008.

“Today we mark a new era in mobile-phone evolution, an era where beauty and size integrate with uncompromising innovation at broadband speeds,” said Peter Chou, HTC president and CEO. “The HTC Touch Diamond will make browsing the Web and using Web-enabled applications just as practical and easy to use as making calls.”

Qualcomm chips allow the Touch Diamond to use High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) on Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) networks that allow data speeds up to 7.2 Mbits per second.

The Touch Diamond has a 2.8 inch touch-screen that has a resolution of 640 pixels by 480 pixels. TouchFlo software can make images look 3D and turning the handset sidewise rotates the view accordingly.

The Touch Diamond has a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus that allows video calling. The battery life lasts up to four hours of talk time and the handset has 4G bytes of flash memory for storing music and video.

This isn’t the first time HTC beat Apple to the punch. Last year HTC launched its first Touch handset nearly a month ahead of Apple’s iPhone launch.

Touch Diamond

High Tech Computer (HTC) is developing a mobile phone that will use the open-source Android software created by Google for its operating system. The phone will be called Dream and have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keypad. The handset is over 5 inches long and 3 inches wide and has a keypad that swivels out from underneath the screen.

HTC is not the only company that is developing a mobile phone around the Android operating system. Samsung has joined the hunt to create a device that utilizes Android.

HTC was the first company to announce it was building a phone around Android. Other members of the Open Handset Alliance, a group dedicated to promoting Android, are also believed to be developing handsets designed around the operating system. Over 30 companies have joined the Open handset Alliance. Samsung and Motorola are two manufactures who belong to the alliance and may be developing Android phones of their own.

HTC’s Smart handset family of products, which is billed as a rival to Apple’s iPhone, sold 2 million units last year. The company sold nearly 12 million handsets overall last year, roughly a 12% increase over 2006 sales. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced last week that his company sold more than 4 million iPhones since its launch.

The HTC Touch uses Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 software and is similar to the iPhone. The handset has a touch screen interface that takes up most of the device’s front. The Touch was launched in June of 2007, just weeks before the iPhone was initially launched in the United States. After the American debut, the iPhone was launched in various European and Asian countries.

“The first quarter looks good, it will be a lot better than our first quarter last year,” said Peter Chou, president and CEO of HTC, at a year-end party Friday evening.

“We’ve seen no impact from global economic turmoil. We feel pretty good about this quarter,” said Chou.

For a brief bit this morning, Cingular had the HTC Star Trek up on their site as the 3125. The phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera, 200MHz TI OMAP processor, and runs Windows Mobile 5.0. It’s a clamshell form factor phone, with RAZR-ish design cues. Unfortunately this means no QWERTY keyboard for you to type on, but that comes with the territory.

The price was $149.99 with two-year contract while it was still up.

Product Page [Cingular via Engadget Mobile]