HTC’s going big in 2009 with a refresh of the Touch Pro with its sliding QWERTY. The refresh of the keyboard smartphone will sport similar styling as the Touch HD Mini that we had reported about. There will be several variants–a CDMA version for Verizon Wireless and/or Sprint, a GSM version, and one that will work on T-Mobile USA’s AWS 3G spectrum. That’s right–a Windows Mobile phone that is T-Mobile 3G compliant in the US!

The CDMA version is codenamed the Rhodium, the GSM version (AT&T compatible) is called the Barium, and the T-Mobile GSM version will be called the Tungsten.

These devices lose the funky directional pad/scroll area found on the current generation Touch Pro and Touch Diamond. Instead, they will have smaller buttons at the bottom, similar to the design on the Touch HD. Although specs aren’t released yet on PPC Geeks, the device may potentially have a WVGA screen in a more compact form factor, as opposed to the larger Touch HD.