HTC Pyramid, Ignite and Prime rumours fuelled by leaked Chinese pics

HTC's upcoming Pyramid, Ignite and Prime smart phones have apparently been revealed in leaked images. The pictures have appeared before HTC's latest crop of official Android handsets, including the Wildfire S, Desire S, ChaCha and Salsa, has even gone on sale.

The pictures all from the same source: Chinese website XDA.cn, which has some professional-looking renders of all three devices. That said, we'll reserve judgement on whether the professionals who rendered them actually work for HTC -- meaning these are genuine devices -- or are just designers having a crafty laugh at the blogosphere's expense.

We wrote about the Pyramid in February, when it was tipped to be a dual-core Android smart phone with a possible May release date. XDA reckons the device will have a 4.3-inch screen, a 1.2GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera and a whopping 768MB of RAM. Oh, and it will also run the Android 3.0 Honeycomb software, although that's designed for tablets, so this lead sounds fishy.

We haven't heard of the Prime before. XDA suggests suggests it will be a Windows Phone 7 device with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, a 3.7-inch display, 512MB of RAM, and a 5-megapixel camera.

Finally, the Ignite has a standard touchscreen form factor, with a 3.7-inch display, 512MB of RAM, and a 5-megapixel camera, like the Prime. XDA says it's due for release in the middle of 2011, but the claim of an 800MHz processor and resistive touchscreen has been pooh-poohed by Pocketnow, on the grounds that these specs wouldn't conform to Microsoft's WP7 requirements for handset partners.

Next week sees the CTIA mobile-industry show in Orlando, so we wouldn't be surprised if some or all of these handsets are unveiled by HTC at that event. It remains to be seen if they'll be available globally, or just in the US.