T-Mobile has confirmed it will ship HTC's Athena UMPC-like PDA phone in the UK and Germany as the Ameo. Meanwhile, HTC is working on a version with a 7in display, it has been claimed.

Ameo/Athena has a 5in touch-sensitive display, T-Mobile said. The device also has an 8GB hard drive, HSDPA 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a three megapixel camera, QWERTY keyboard, and and 624MHz XScale processor. Unlike true UMPCs, Ameo runs Windows Mobile rather than Windows XP.

Both T-Mobile Germany and T-Mobile UK announced yesterday they would offer the device, but only the German wing was willing to put a price on it: €500 when you take out a two-year airtime contract. The Ameo will ship in Germany in March, T-Mobile said, almost certainly following a launch at the CeBIT show in Hannover.

Separately, Asian sources claimed HTC will also offer Athena, as the HTC X7500. Yesterday, we reported that Dopod, an HTC subsidiary which targets Chinese markets, will offer the machine as the U1000. Dopod indicated it will launch the machine next week.

HTC is also said to be working on a version of Athena with a 7in screen. The device may be set to launch in Q2.