New HTC handset is out of touch

HIGH TECH COMPUTER CORPORATION has stepped away from their plethora of touch-screen handsets with the announcement of the S740.

It’s a new device that falls into their smartphone range and looks like the illegitimate love child of the HTC Touch Diamond and the Touch Pro.

It arrives with the same backing plate as the Diamond, with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard not too dissimilar to the latest Pro seen here. This all comes off looking like the result of a one-night stand that went horribly wrong.

Although it’s not strictly in the HTC current touch-screen lineage, it still has the air of the recent models with the piano black finish and access to every messaging protocol known to man.

It lacks any touch screen experience on the small 2.4-inch QVGA display, so the regular UI has taken the back burner with the poor man’s Windows 6.1 standard solely being used.

There’s a beefy dual-core Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz chipset, launched way back in Feb last year, powering the device.

How this Quad band EDGE/Dual band HSDPA phone will fit into the mindset of carriers and users will be of interest. The Pro which launches at the same time, and for the same market, will clearly overshadow it.

We expect they’ll be angling this as a direct replacement to the S710. This was the previous leading keyboard-based handset from their smartphone range, launched early in 2007. If the powers of spin are anything to go by, they’ll try and distance themselves from the Pro here.

No prices have yet been verified, but we’re guessing that HTC will be positioning this at a much lower price point than the Touch Pro in an effort to pull in the crowds. µ