Two new variants on the HTC desire were announced today for october shipping to europe.

The first, the HTC desire HD is beefed up for multimedia, with a 1GHz Qualcomm snapdragon, it has an 8Mp camera and will display 720p HD video. Apparently the phone’s body is machined from a solid lump of aluminium, maybe this is a nod to the reception the iPhone 4’s shiny stainless steel band received (no pun intended).

The HTC Desire Z is basically an HTC Desire with a qwerty keyboard for business types and those who cant bear to not post every minute detail of their day on twitter.

With Nokia’s forthcoming E7, the Motorola Milestone 2 and now the Desire Z ,it seems that HTC and some of other manufactures have decided that there’s demand for qwerty smartphones, which is good, because I want one. Don’t get me wrong, touch screen keyboards are mostly very good, but I’m yet to find one that someone like me with fingers that are thicker than a matchstick can type on for any length of time without getting annoyed.