HTC today announced the Touch Pro smartphone, which the blogosphere had until now been referring to by its codename, "Raphael."  Touch Pro is essentially the QWERTY-equipped brother to the Touch Diamond, which was unveiled last month in London.  Touch Pro will run the same TouchFLO 3D user interface (atop Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional) as Touch Diamond, and also features the same basic styling, touchscreen, and custom YouTube app as Diamond.  The main difference between the two handsets will be the additions of a side-sliding five row QWERTY thumbboard and video-out jack on Touch Pro, which HTC says makes the phone more business friendly.  The keyboard adds a bit of bulk to Touch Pro, as it measures up at 102 x 51 x 18.05mm compared to Touch Diamond's 102 x 51 x 11.35mm. 

Touch Pro will be 50% heavier than Touch Diamond (165g vs 110g with battery), but that extra weight gets you a batter with nearly twice the capacity (1300 mAh vs 900 mAh).  Touch Pro also features double the internal ROM and increased RAM, but loses Touch Diamond's built-in 4GB of flash memory for user storage.  Beyond that the phones are basically the same, with each featuring a 2.8" VGA touchscreen, HSPA and WiFi connectivity, dual cameras (3.2MP for pictures and VGA for video calling), and GPS.

Personally I'm pretty excited about this one, as TouchFLO 3D looks great and the one thing I really miss on my iPhone is a hard keyboard.  I'm not letting myself get too excited, though, as Touch Pro won't be coming to the US for awhile: the HTC press release reads, "The HTC Touch Pro™ will be available to customers across all major European, Asian and the Middle East markets in late summer. The North American and Latin American versions of Touch Pro will be available later in 2008."

Then again, that gives them plenty of time to bring the Android-powered "Dream" to market, right?

Learn all about Touch Pro on the HTC product page.