HTC Smart is the world's first 'budget smartphone' (running Brew!)

When I saw the above device, the HTC Smart, I did a double-take.

BREW?

I’d heard the rumblings of HTC’s latest foray into a new market segment (“the budget smartphone’) with Brew, but I’d never thought it would look as good as it does.

So. Meet the HTC Smart. This is the first in a new category of (quoting from today’s release) ‘easy-to-use, connected smartphones that are accessible by people all over the world.’

Accessible can be read in two ways: User interface (it looks pretty nice) and Price. There’s no word on actual cost but HTC are using the word ‘affordable’ often to describe the Smart. And that’s quite exciting. I’m not a massive fan of the Brew platform myself, particularly given most of the devices I’ve seen using it have had pretty shocking interfaces. But I am a big fan of bringing mobile to the masses. To do that you need devices to be affordable.

And easy. I haven’t managed to play with one yet but I’m hopeful that the HTC Sense user-interface (which is now setting HTC apart nicely from other manufacturers) will be implemented nicely in this device. With Sense, of course, you’ve got all the social networking goodness that will hopefully be right up the alley of the target audience.

The Smart has 256MB of RAM and ROM, a decent screen (2.8” touch-sensitive), HSDPA support and a 3.0 megapixel camera. In fact, here’s the full spec list:

I could imagine mobile operators in the right markets shifting quite a lot of these.