Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"In HTC parlance, the "Neon" codename denotes a device of the Touch Dual form factor -- original Touch styling plus a slider keypad, a drill we all know by now. This particular form factor seems to be a pretty popular one, too, considering the sheer number of variants HTC's turned out; at this point, we have one for Europe, one for North America, and one for Japan, and a new FCC filing suggests that there's still at least one more trick in that pony. The so-called NEON400 doesn't give much away from the ID label document that we see here, but test reports indicate that it's sporting CDMA 850 / 1900 -- just right for launching on Sprint, Verizon, Alltel -- you get the idea -- and obviously, we'll see EV-DO in there as well. Against the Touch Diamond, the Dual is starting to look just a little dated, but it gets that all-important keypad that the Diamond lacks -- so even networks that end up launching the Diamond can realistically make room for this one in the lineup when it's announced. By someone other than the FCC, that is."

While not quite Glamour Shots, the FCC does give us a nice informational look at the label for HTC's new NEON 400. The North American market already has a GSM/GPRS/EDGE version of the Touch Dual, but not for the CDMA carriers. Browse the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Exhibit documents and pictures here. You can look, just don't Touch.

"The Samsung SCH-i770 was recently approved by the FCC. Documents seen on the FCC site provide some interesting details about this device. It has dual-band 850/1900 GSM and dual-band 850/1900 CDMA radios. It also has other bands (possibly GSM 900/1800), but it could not be confirmed what the exact additional bands were in the existing documents."

All evidence points to this being an international-capable phone on Verizon styled after the i760. Business users on Verizon needing a new Pocket PC Phone will want to keep an eye on this. If you're curious, you can check out the FCC documents yourself.