An official release for HTC Touch Slide might be closer than anyone expects. The handset has all chances of being announced today, making the first step towards a world release for this smartphone.

HTC Touch Slide has been already released in Japan, at NTT DoCoMo, under the name of FOMA HT1100 and has also been spotted as HTC Nike. All these names for one device that HTC will finally announce and open the path towards a wider launch.

The smartphone follows the design lines of the original HTC Touch handset, but additionally has a numeric pad which is supposed to make dialing easier. The new device might be just the thing for those people that could not get used to having a touchscreen enabled mobile phone and find the classic real buttons more comfortable to use. It's a combination seldom seen, as smartphones usually choose a QWERTY keypad instead of the numeric one.

HTC Touch Slide will come with the dimensions of 107 x 55 x 16.5 mm and 120 grams, pretty compact if considering that it's a slider phone and that it packs great performances. The phone runs Qualcomm 400Mhz processor and has ROM/RAM 256/128 of internal memory. It is also 3G enabled, which means that it will be capable of bringing HSDPA connectivity of up to 3.6 Mbps data transfer speeds. Moreover, it also has Wi-Fi, another feature which will prove useful under many circumstances.

The vertical slider phone comes equipped with a 2.6 inch touchscreen, two performances that are rarely combined. HTC Touch Slide turns on Windows Mobile 6 and uses the TouchFLO interface that the producer is so proud of.

HTC will make an official announcement of a new smartphone release later today, with high chances for the HTC Touch Slide to be the one to deserve all the attention.