The T-Mobile Dash 3G was officially announced and as expected is headed for a July release. It's a first for T-Mobile - their first Windows Mobile-powered 3G-capable phone. T-Mobile's 3G network is still expanding and is expected to cover 200 million people in the US by the end of the year.

T-Mobile is expecting about 40 percent of the people looking for new phones to go for smartphones and the T-Mobile Dash 3G is targeted at those people. The phone is an update of the old Dash and it's designed remains pretty similar - full QWERTY Windows Mobile-powered phone, manufactured by HTC.

T-Mobile Dash 3G • keypads of Dash 3G (left) and HTC Snap (right) side-by-side

In fact, the Dash 3G is T-Mobile's version of the HTC Snap (also known as Maple or S522). It offers 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, GPS, plus Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, a 2 megapixel camera and a microSD card slot for cards up to 16GB. The display has QVGA resolution and can display up to 65K colors.

The Dash 3G runs on a 528MHz CPU with 192MB of RAM, the OS is Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard. At this point, there is no information whether it will be upgradable to WinMo 6.5 or not. Anyway, Office Mobile and seamless synchronization with Outlook is as always one of WinMo's biggest strengths. T-Mobile hope this and the GPS will attract customers by helping them "stay connected, organized and traveling in the right direction".

The phones are not exactly the same however - the keys of the Dash 3G's keyboard have been rearranged, some were replaced and on of the signature features of the HTC Snap - the "inner circle" button - is missing.

The T-Mobile Dash 3G will be available in black with red accents starting July at T-Mobile retail stores as well as the online store and select authorized dealers.