Some more details about the pricing and release dates of HTC’s latest horde of smartphones, namely the HTC Touch HD, HTC Touch Viva, and HTC Touch 3G, have been revealed, courtesy of Windows Mobile Italy. In accordance with the original official press release, all three handsets will be launched throughout Europe in Q4 2008 and in Italy, they will be priced and released as follows: HTC Touch HD will go for €849 and will be available on TIM carrier network. The Touch Viva, on the other hand, will be available starting this month at a price of €279 in a single hue of Storm Gray. Finally, the Touch 3G will also start selling this month at a price of €499 with a wider palette of colors including Noble Gold, Spark Blue, Sophisticated Black, and Modern Brown, with Italy getting only the gold and blue versions.

What a day it was today for HTC! We’ve seen the HTC Touch Diamond get a lighter color, we’ve seen the HTC Touch HD and HTC Touch Viva/Opal get released and now we’re going to take a look at the HTC Touch 3G. The handset is quite promising although the Touch HD would by my choice of the day.
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While the Touch Viva turned out to be the low-end stalwart of the three new smartphones announced by HTC, the HTC Touch HD is a farcry from it and in fact has everything needed to pulverize the iPhone 3G (if it hasn’t succumbed already to the recent touchscreen onslaught). And we thought the Touch Diamond was the ultimate cell phone! Anyway, this handsome multimedia monster supports quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz network frequencies along with HSDPA and has a 3.8-inch VGA (yay!) touchscreen, a surefire combination aimed to provide the best mobile internet and multimedia experience. There’s also Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, WiFi, and a microSD slot to expand the 512MB onboard memory, all good to go on Windows Mobile 6.1 with the TouchFLO 3D interface. We know we don’t have to worry about its multimedia capabilities, but as a bonus, HTC has included a 3.5 headphone jack, something which is yet to become a real standard on cell phones. The Taiwanese manufacturer has also endowed the Touch HD with a 5-megapixel camera, a great improvement over the 2 and 3.2 megapixel lens stuck on the previous devices. There’s no word on its pricing, but the HTC Touch HD will hit major European markets in the fourth quarter of 2008. (more…)