HTC's Star Trek can now be safely categorized in the "classic" file, but it'd be a big mistake to put this interesting footnote in HTC's history out to pasture just yet. The handset, after all, ranks among the smallest Windows Mobile phones ever made, among the only clamshells, and arguably, among the most attractive (alright, maybe that's a bit of a stretch). But with that stale Windows Mobile 5 build on there hastening its death, what's an owner to do? Turn to the wizards at xda-developers, of course, who've come out swinging with a number of different Windows Mobile 6-based ROMs for a variety of Star Trek flavors, including the Cingular 3125 likely owned by many American customers, and it's all available for download. Always fun to see new life breathed into perfectly decent hardware, ain't it?

[Via pocketnow.com]

So one of the major selling points of HTC's Star Trek is its slim, sleek profile, right? Cingular may not have gotten the memo, having apparently decided to bundle theirs (the 3125, as you may recall) with a larger battery, necessitating a bulged-out hindquarters. Granted, we're guessing the benefit to standby and talk times justify the growth for some folks -- but we think we'd rather have seen this as an option, leaving the stock product true to form. Either way, get all your humptastic, Cingular-branded 3125 shots after the break.

So after a bit of a wait Cingular went ahead and launched the 3125 today in line with that September launch grid we peeped last week. This re-branded HTC Star Trek will set you back $149 after online discounts assuming you go for the ol' 2-year contract, that is. And yeah, we'll run down the specs on this WinMo flip one last time for ya: Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone, 1.3 megapixel cam, Bluetooth, Direct Push mail, quad-band GSM with GPRS/EDGE, 128MB ROM / 64MB RAM and a 2.2-inch TFT display all powered by a 200 MHz TI proc. So giddy up dog, just don't tell 'em Engadget sent ya.

We can only imagine hearts across the UK are breaking this evening on news that HTC's clamshell Smartphone, the Star Trek, won't be finding its way to Orange's British network as the F600 after all. You might recall that MoDaCo had scooped a handful of HTC launches on Orange several weeks ago, and they've since learned that the F600 is destined for Orange in the Netherlands, but as of right now, no UK launch appears to be planned. Of course, resourceful Brits should have no trouble whatsoever getting hold of one of the Star Trek's other brand variants, but there's always something about a canceled HTC launch that leaves us with a sick feeling in our stomachs nonetheless.

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

Cingular rebate forms circulating over the past couple days are indicating the presence of three devices -- HP's hw6920 / hw6925 and HTC's Star Trek, offered here as the 3125 -- and while too much time has passed for us to get too worked up at the thought of putting our hands on any of these, they're worth noting nonetheless. Now, the popular rumor says that since these puppies have shown up with rebates, they're in the pipeline for delivery next week. While we're hoping that's true, we're not betting on it. Cingular has a reputation for placing rebates on phones ages before their retail availability -- heck, it's not even unheard of for rebates to expire before the phone even drops. So if next week comes and goes and one, two, or all three of these handsets are nowhere to be found, just remember: a pessimist is never disappointed.

Quick survey: who just sort of assumed that the Star Trek had been FCC approved for some time now? Yeah, us too. Turns out HTC's flipalicious WM5 Smartphone ("STAR100," as it's labeled here) passed muster not long ago, paving the way for Cingular to make good on its launch plans. So, if you picked up an imported unit in the past few months and you've been, uh, patiently awaiting FCC word to turn 'er on, consider this your seal of approval.

[Via phoneArena]

Talk about sensory overload -- MoDaCo got its hands on a bunch of semi-official Orange debuts for a number of devices over the weekend, and we have to admit, we're insanely jealous. Perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, Samsung's "Blackjack" WM5 Smartphone comes fresh on the heels of the i320, offering basically the same functionality plus 3G data and a forward-facing camera for video calling (feeling the heat, Moto?). Also shown were the HTC Breeze and Oxygen, known on Orange as the C700 and C100 respectively; no real surprises here, though we can now confirm that the Oxygen won't be sporting DTV like we had previously heard might be the case. In case that all doesn't have ya impressed, the Hermes (M3100) and Star Trek (F600) showed up for the party, too. Don't know about you, but we're feeling a bit overwhelmed here; excuse us while we lie down for just a few minutes.

Looks like Cingular customers aren't the only ones expected to get an HTC windfall this summer; according to The Unwired, come July and August it appears that the Hermes and Star Trek will be launched on German Vodafone as the Vodafone VPA Compact III and Qtek 8500, respectively. Apparently the VPA Compact III will set you back as much as €900 ($1,150 US) without contract, or €409 ($522 US) with a two-year, whereas the 8500 will go for €600 ($766 US) and €170 ($217 US) the same ways -- something tells us they want their customers to snag these subsidized.

HTC's Qtek brand may be looking to close up shop but they're going out with a bang, dropping their version of the Star Trek / Smartflip. TrustedReviews has posted a fairly thorough, honest opinion of the WM5 clamshell, and the reviewer has thrown a good bit of fair criticism at the phone. The shared 64MB of RAM and 64MB of ROM leave less than half for the user to play with, battery life when busting out the tunes works out to about four hours, the headset connector is of a proprietary design, and the phone is arguably not quite as stylish as the RAZR it looks to emulate. The author concludes that while the 8500 is the only real game in town if you demand a WM5 flip, there's no compelling reason to get it over, say, a Faraday.

We always like to put a big, shiny asterisk when we say "now available" in reference to an unsubsidized Windows Mobile device since actually tracking one down could be an exercise in futility for the next few weeks, but for what it's worth, i-mate has announced the release of its rendition of HTC's svelte WM5 clamshell. Cleverly called the Smartflip, availability is said to be for the Middle East only at the moment, but we all know they'll find their way across the globe post haste. With dual displays, RAZR-esque keypad, 64MB of RAM and ROM, and quad-band EDGE, the Smartflip is about as hot a WM5 Smartphone as you can get your paws on for now -- at least until the Breeze drops. [Warning: PDF link]

[Via Smartphone Thoughts]

HTC, making sure that the enjoyment of our fresh Star Trek is kept to an absolute minimum, looks to be preparing a spectrum of lustworthy new devices. This information is entirely unconfirmed, and we don't know much about what we're about to tell you -- some of these code names are as new to us as they are to you -- but we can tell you it comes from a reliable source.

First up, the Muse has been mercifully renamed the "Melody," and the Triolgy has become "Monet." The Hermes, which is just starting to drop across Europe, has been upped to 400MHz for full-scale production; you might recall we recently reported that O2 was bringing a 400MHz Hermes to the table, and it now appears this will be standard fare for launches going forward. Trinity (pictured) specs are coming into focus, and we should expect this beast to throw down HSDPA, WiFi, and integrated GPS. There have been some rumblings of an "Artemis" recently, and that device still appears to be on the map, bringing integrated GPS and a trackball (wha?) but topping out with EDGE data. The "Herald" sounds positively gorgeous, similar in concept and functionality to the Hermes but measuring just 17mm thick. The Foreseer and Monet will be joined by the "Oxygen" in HTC's mobile TV lineup, though we don't know which standard it'll be packing. Looking to steal some of the Q's thunder, the "Excalibur" will be getting its QWERTY on and running Smartphone. Finally, look for "Vera" as a possible successor to the Star Trek, packing HSDPA and a front-facing camera for video calling.

That's a lot of unconfirmed data to digest, we know, and we're still trying to make sense of it all ourselves. No word on release windows for most of these -- if we could divine you a Vera tomorrow, we would -- but as always, we'll be burning the midnight oil in our quest for deets.

Contradicting an earlier report that the Qtek 8500 / HTC Star Trek smartphone would available in the UK sometime this month, The Register is now citing an official announcement from HTC that claims the Windows Mobile-powered clamshell won't hit stores until "late June." Furthermore, Reg Hardware is reporting that the Star Trek will henceforth be known as the STRTrk, probably to avoid trademark issues with Spock and friends, due to the fact that the internal codename has seen widespread adoption. (Not sure that this will do any good, as now we'll have to include a "the phone formerly known as the HTC Star Trek" every time we mention one of the rebadges). Whatever you want to call it, the music-centric device will supposedly come in black, silver, or pink, and go on sale during the third week of June, at least according to distributor 20:20 Logistics, for around $500 before carrier subsidies.

Good times can be had over at our sister site, Engadget Chinese, which has managed some alone time with two recent releases, the LG KG800 Chocolate and Dopod S300 HTC Star Trek. Both phones are plenty sexy in their own way, with the KG800's obvious aesthetics leading the charge, but the S300's ability to pack in all that Windows Mobile goodness in such a small package earning it plenty of kudos as well. Decisions, decisions.

Read: LG KG800
Read: Dopod S300

It's only rather recently that smartphone manufacturer High Tech Computer Corp. became more than just another obscure OEM making reference devices, and BusinessWeek has an inside look at the factors that propelled HTC from unknown to Microsoft's go-to-guy. HTC was founded in 1997 by a group of refugee engineers from Digital Equipment Corp's Taiwanese subsidiary, and they immediately began to focus their efforts on handheld devices -- more specifically those that run one of the flavors of portable Windows. This early dedication to Microsoft operating systems (HTC was responsible for designing the first iPaqs), along with CEO Peter Chou's renowned attention to detail (he sent the Star Trek back three times before he was satisfied with its features) and the creative rein given to employees (whose titles include "Wizard" of this or "Magician" of that) made the company one of Redmond's favorite hardware partners. And even if HTC isn't yet a household name, investors have most definitely taken notice of its performance: the company's consistent double-digit growth (last year's $356 million in profits were triple the previous year's) have caused its stock to skyrocket more than 1000% since 2003.

[Thanks, Dave Z.]

Well, well, well, it looks like HTC took the opportunity to detail their 2006 US launch plans at CTIA while dropping that DVB-H capable Foreseer we peeped earlier. According to Phone Scoop who had the opportunity to sit down with an "HTC exec," we’ll see the quad-band GSM/EDGE HTC Star Trek WinMo 5.0 Smartphone arrive on these golden shores in mid-2006 while the HTC Hermes (pictured) should arrive sometime in Q4, most likely with Cingular. The US flavor of the 3G Hermes will go WCDMA 850/1900/2100 with all that high-speed HSDPA we’ve got the rangin' fiend for. Good to know.