Click to View

By now, HTC's sold well over 2 million units of its Touch Windows Mobile-run smartphone. At CTIA earlier this month, HTC told us the Touch Dual would soon be headed to the U.S. While we don't know exactly when this will happen, the Touch Dual just took an important step in that direction this week.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just approved it for release in this country. All devices that use U.S. airwaves must receive a thumbs up from the FCC before shipping here. HTC's documentation on the FCC Web site refer to Touch Dual as the NEON 300, which may be the name the smartphone is given when it finally ships here.

Unlike the original all-touch-screen Touch models, the Dual Touch sports a 20-key keyboard that slides out from underneath the display. The idea is to make it easier to input text for working on documents as well as sending SMS and e-mail messages.

Of course, being a HTC Touch and all, the Touch Dual will also feature HTC's proprietary TouchFLO interface, which runs on top of Windows Mobile and allows for finger-touch scrolling, panning and photo zooming, for example.

The Touch Dual, a quad-band GSM world phone with support for 3.5G data transfers, won't be available directly from any carriers when it ships. Rather, HTC will sell it unlocked through Best Buy and its own retail site, for an as-of-yet undisclosed price.

That means if your a customer of a GSM carrier like AT&T (the only American operator with support for GSM-style 3G and 3.5G) and T-Mobile, all you'll need to do to use the Touch Dual is pop in your SIM card.

Additional features include a 2 megapixel camera for photos and videos and a second camera for video calling. It's got 128MB of RAM, a microSD slot for storage expansion, and a 400MHz processor.

There's no Wi-Fi, though, which may not be that big of a issue with 3.5G support.

Significantly, the Touch Dual will be one of the first devices run Microsoft's just announced upgrade to Windows Mobile upgrade, version 6.1, which provides new timesaving features, easier phone navigation and management, stronger security safeguards, and support for Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008.

HTC, normally a behind-the-scenes player that builds smartphones from others, has spent the last couple of years slowly stepping out of the shadows. It'll soon launch a marketing and advertising campaign to speed up the brand-recognition process in North American, though.

In addition to print and online, the HTC advertising campaign will include outdoor (subways stations, airports, etc.) and TV (cable, in-flight and movie theater placements) advertising.

Head over to HTC's new YouTube channel to check out its first television ads.