At the Mobile World Congress, HTC hogged a lot of limelight despite tough competition from Windows Phone Series 7 thanks to its stunning handsets and it would be sweet news to hear when you can lay hands on them.

Though official release dates are not out yet, Amazon has pulled an ace up its sleeve by announcing April 1^st launch date for the HTC Desire and HTC Legend and April 14^th for the HD Mini. Though rumours were adrift for earlier launch, these dates look great.

The listing of the HD Mini at £369, the beautiful Legend at £399 and the stunning Desire at a premium £528 by Amazon looks bold. More so, because we have Google Nexus One which is very much comparable to HTC Desire, sans the Sense UI – is priced as low as £349. The delta between the pricing leaves way for huge saving.

So, all you gadget fans out there would make well to cross-check the reviews of Desire, Legend and HD Mini before deciding to go sim-free. However, if you happen to lap up generous subsidies, operators with 18 and 24 month contracts may also prove well worth it.

At the Mobile World Congress 2010, HTC showcased the stunning new HTC Desire alongside two other models. Given the similarity in size and specifications to Google’s Nexus One, the HTC desire is surely going to be a huge dent to Google’s aspirations as it debuts into the handset market with Nexus One.

The HTC Desire has a 3.7” WVGA AMOLED screen, 1Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (awesome for quick multi-tasking), a 5 megapixel LED camera and Android 2.1 operating system very similar to Nexus One. Albeit, there are subtle changes viz, the Optical joystick replacing the trackball, dual band HSPDA instead of triband (which makes it tough for WiFi connectivity outside Europe and Asia) and no noise cancellation.

The USP of HTC Desire can be its multi-touch functions (thanks to HTC Sense) and a unique user experience where one can pinch inwards on any home screen and it opens displays accessible with a simple tap. The Sense UI has got widgets on the Home screen and some of them sound damn cool; for example a Calendar widget which shows agenda (and not just the month) and includes tabbed emails.

Browsing the Sense UI and widgets is lightning fast except the weather widget (always sluggish on HTC phones) thanks to the 1 GHz Snapdragon. Twitter and Facebook integrations make the contacts display all the more interesting. The music player has been drastically improved from earlier HTC phones in the Sense UI as you get to simply slide through artists, album and songs. As is the standard for smart phones, the camera is a cool 5 megapixel one with a single LED flash. Oh yeah, Incidentally, the HTC Desire has Flash 10.1 capability while browsing the web which means flash movies being played in a neat fashion.

Will the HTC Desire (with massive potential) be the Nexus One killer? Let’s watch out as HTC spreads its wings further and farther in the mobile phone market with astounding quality.