Hands-on with the HTC Touch Dual slider

Remember the HTC Touch, the touch-screen Windows Mobile phone that debuted on Sprint late last year? Well, meet the Touch Dual, a close cousin to the original Touch that comes with a slide-out, 20-button keypad.

I got a chance to check out the Touch Dual (set to be sold unlocked at your neighborhood Best Buy) here at CTIA, and it's essentially a quad-band GSM/HSDPA version of Sprint's CDMA Touch, except for its slide-out, pseudo-QWERTY (a.k.a. SureType) keypad—good news for anyone put off by the clunky virtual keypad on the original Touch.

Of course, the Dual's SureType keypad—which crams two letters onto each key and relies on predictive text to work its magic—has its own pluses and minuses, but at least we're talking physical keys here.

The Touch Dual also comes with a quad-band GSM radio (good for placing calls on worldwide networks), and it'll work with U.S. HSDPA networks, which means you could snatch up an AT&T SIM card for high-speed data access.

Otherwise, the Dual comes with pretty much the same features on Sprint's Touch, including a two-megapixel camera, the TouchFlo interface (a 3D cube that runs atop Windows Mobile and gives you one-touch access to contacts, messaging, Web browsing, and the like), and Bluetooth—no Wi-Fi or GPS, however.

Slated to ship running the just-released Windows Mobile 6.1, the Touch Dual should arrive in stores sometime this quarter. No word on pricing, although I'm told that $400 is in the right ballpark (pricey, I know, but about par for an unlocked smartphone).