With the iPhone capturing headlines left, right and centre, rivals are undoubtedly having to step up their game in order to compete.  Were I someone from HTC, Sony Ericsson or Nokia I’d be looking to leak out my most impressive upcoming models to perhaps encourage potential Apple buyers to save their money until my product hit the shelves; now I’m not saying that details of their new Omni smartphone were leaked by HTC themselves, but any way you look at it it’s handy to have it all emerge at this moment…

Being fair, however, it’s a bloody impressive device.  Unlike the iPhone (in fact more like the Nokia Communicator) it’s a landscape clamshell with full QWERTY keyboard and 4-inch WVGA 800 x 480 display. 

Inside the slick, minimalist casing is a GSM/GPRS/UMTS/HSDPA cellphone with WiFi in b and g flavours, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS and assisted-GPS, running Windows Mobile 6 on a 400MHz Samsung SC244X processor.  There’s also a sub-display for caller-ID and status on the outside.

Physically connectivity gets a boost, with both TV and VGA out, offering potential for the Omni to be both a portable office and media player, though you’ll be looking to store most things on microSD since internal memory is limited to 256MB ROM and 128MB RAM.

Dimensions run to 130 x 81 x 16 mm, and it’s apparently set to be the successor to the successful but ageing HTC Universal when it launches in October.

Unwired View [via SlashGear]