Early last month we heard that Cingular Wireless could soon start offering the Cingular 3125, a compact flip phone also known as original equipment manufacturer High Tech Computer's (HTC) Star Trek. The Windows Smartphone is already available in other parts of the world as the i-mate Smartflip, Qtek 8500, and Dopod s300.

Now comes word that the 3125 may finally be very close to release. The folks at MSMobiles.com indicated today that the smartphone it is replacing, the Cingular 2125 (another HTC-built handset), is out of stock permanently. And Mobile Gadget News says the projected ship date could be as soon as September 12th, which would make by the end of the month availability almost certain.

It appears Cingular originally aimed to releasee the 3125 by the middle of last month, but delayed it because of network compatibility issues when field testing didn't go exactly as planned.

The FCC only approved the Star Trek for U.S. release in July. It is supposed to be the thinnest clamshell Window smartphone yet, at only 0.6 inches thick when closed.

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.

It is already shipping in Europe and Asia under the brands mentioned earlier in this article.

Cingular also has plans to replace Pocket PC Phone it launched at the same time the 2125. This model, the 8125, is supposed to be replaced by the Cingular 8525. As with the both Windows Smartphones, these two are also built by HTC.

The 8525 is based on the Taiwanese OEM's Hermes design. This means it should look a lot like lot like its predecessor but with some important differences.

There's a 400 MHz processor that doubles the speed of the CPU in the 8125. And unlike the 8125, the 8525 will be able to take advantage of Cingular's high-speed HSDPA network, exchanging data at speeds of between 400 and 700 kilobits per second Kbps.