HTC makes the HD mini official

Only when you’re talking about a phone designed in the same vein as the massive (though drop-dead gorgeous) HTC HD2 with its 4.3 inch display would you ever call a phone with a 3.2″ display “mini” . That’s exactly what HTC’s doing this morning in Barcelona, with the announcement of the Windows Mobile 6.5.3-powered HD mini.

Given the announcement of Windows Phone 7 series, yesterday, it may be a bit hard to get the ol’ salivary glands tickin’ over a WinMo 6 phone. With that said, remember: we’ve still got at least 7 or 8 months before the first WP7 handsets hit the market, and that’s a really, really long time in the Smartphone world.

Hitting Europe and Asia (No word yet about the US) sometime in April, the HD mini doesn’t seem quite as powerful as the device from which it gets its name – in other words, size isn’t the only thing they toned down here. The 1Ghz CPU of the HD2 has been replaced with a 600Mhz model, and the 3.2″ screen is 320×480 rather than 480×800. It’s got a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, though without the flash found on the HD2.

Lowered specs aside, I still expect this to be a damn decent handset. We’ll be spending a bit of time with it (and all the other HTC handsets announced today) later for a hands-on, so check back for our impressions.