HTC Touch Diamond, the new and fashionable Pocket PC unveiled by HTC on the 6th of May in London, will be available in Australia starting mid-August. The handset is offered only by Telstra, the largest Australian mobile carrier, and will be available through all its shops and dealers across the Southern Hemisphere country.

In Europe, the Touch Diamond has a retail price of about 500 Euros (less than 800 USD). In Australia, though, the new HTC Pocket PC will be a bit more expensive, coming for a recommended retail price of 999 Australian dollars (AUD), which means about 950 USD or 610 Euros. Anyway, the handset will also be available with a Telstra contract agreement of at least two years (including a "Phone Plan" of 80 AUD per month). The price of Touch Diamond with a contract agreement was not yet announced by Telstra, but it will surely be far lower than the retail one.

HTC Touch Diamond comes in a stylish case that has a diamond-like pattern on the back and measures only 102 x 51 x 11.5 millimeters. The handset operates on Windows Mobile 6.1 and its highlights are: an intuitive TouchFlo 3D user interface, a 2.8 inch TFT touchscreen VGA display (480 x 640 pixels), GPS, A-GPS, GSM and HSDPA connectivity, Wi-Fi, a satisfying internal memory of 4GB, full HTML browser, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, Music and Video players and a 3.15 Megapixel camera with auto focus.

"Telstra is the market leader in mobiles and we are committed to giving our customers the greatest choice of world leading devices on our flagship Next G network, including the new Touch Diamond from HTC," said Ross Fielding, Executive Director, Telstra Product Management, in a press release issued recently.

Ms. Glenice Maclellan, Executive Director, Telstra Consumer Marketing and Channels, added: "With the new HTC Touch Diamond, our customers will enjoy access to Telstra's wide range of rich content, such as Mobile FOXTEL from Telstra and BigPond TV at broadband speeds, in more places across Australia that only Telstra's Next G network can deliver."

Besides the Touch Diamond, Telstra will also offer another high-end touchscreen handset - Apple's new iPhone 3G, but its launch date and pricing are not known for the moment.