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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which must approve all electronic equipment for release in the U.S., has given its okay to High Tech Computer's (HTC) ultra-slim Windows Mobile handset, the Star Trek. The smartphone first went on sale in the original design manufacturer's (ODM) home country of Taiwan as the Dopod S300 in May. It is supposed to be the thinnest clamshell Window smartphone yet, at only 0.6 inches thick when closed..

The FCC Web site doesn't reveal much about the U.S. version of the Star Trek due to confidentiality requests on the part of HTC. The company asked that photos and the user manual not be shown until August 25th, and other materials (e.g. diagrams, part list, theory of operation, and tune-up procedure) be held indefinitely.

It is already known, however, that Cingular is the likeliest carrier for the Star Trek in this country. The Star Trek is available in the UK and Germany as the Qtek 8500 and the i-mate Smartflip in the Middle East.


                 Qteck 8500/aka HTC Star Trek

Called the STAR100 for the U.S. market (see top diagram from FCC site), the blog msmobiles points out that the Star Trek will be sold here in versions with and without a camera. This will certainly make it more appealing to security conscious organizations who don't allow devices that can take pictures on premises.

The quad-band GSM/EDGE Start Trek, designed to compete with the likes of Motorola's RAZR, also sports a 200 MHz TI OMAP 850 processor, Bluetooth 1.2, microSD slot, 1.3 megapixel camera, 64 MB of flash memory, a 2.2-inch 240 x 320 (QVGA) pixel resolution display, and an external color display.

HTC is the company behind more Windows Mobile smartphones than an other, 85 percent of them, as an ODM, which means the company normally sells its devices to operators and manufacturers who offer them under their own brands. When it does deviate from this norm, HTC has traditionally slatted its in-house Qtek brand on the smartphones.

That changes this month when the company drops the Qtek moniker and releases two new phone models, the TyTN and the MTeoR, under the HTC brand in Europe shortly. It'll continue to build and support smartphones for carrier and OEM partners, of course.

TyTN is a Pocket PC Phone and MTeoR a Windows Smartphone.

HTC also recently launched its first product, the Z, for carrier-giant, NTT DoCoMo in Japan. Like the TyTN, the Z is based on a smartphone code-named Hermes, which features a slider QWERTY thumb-keyboard.

The Z is a change of pace for NTT DoCoMo, as most of its smartphones are built on the Symbian platform and Linux. HTC is in the process of building a branch office in Japan as well.