Seems HTC has been caught sprucing up a newbie on the sly. But as is the case with every secret, someone let the cat out of the bag, and this time around, Engadget caught wind of a few interesting nitty-gritties of the plans.

First of all, you can breathe easy: it runs on Windows 7. An expected move, we surmise. The leaked photos demonstrate a candybar slate model with a 3.7-inch LCD touchscreen- SLCD (Super LCD display technology) to be precise, and a touch-sensitive button triplet. The 8-megapixel camera with flash is built to grab quite a few eyeballs. And what we could not guess from the picture, but got a word about, is the 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

HTC is surely going great guns, which is why their CEO, Peter Chou, does not hesitate before proudly stating:

“HTC is experiencing high-demand for many of our phones, specifically our phones with 3.7 inch displays. The new SLCD display technology enables us to ramp up our production capabilities quickly to meet the high-demand. The SLCD displays provide consumers with a comparable visual experience to HTC’s current 3.7 inch displays with some additional benefits including battery performance.”

Engadget stumbled upon some more information, going by which the new gadget might be baptized as “Spark” and talks are on to strike a deal with Verizon Wireless and Sprint. However, mystery still surrounds regarding any involvement of HTC Sense UI in this one. Despite the news that Sense UI is ready for the Windows phone 7 platform, any mention has been somehow kept out of the scene.