One incarnation of the HTC Raphael will be called the T-Mobile MDA Vario IV.

In terms of looks, this is first full quality of the Raphael (in any guise) that we have seen.

As I say, this is in fact the rebranded T-Mobile version of the Rapahel and going on how this compares with the MDA Compact IV (HTC Diamond), we can expect the actual Raphael to be very similar in appearance to the HTC Diamond.

The unofficial release date is Q2 2008 (within one month then) and the specs as you'd imagine the same as the HTC Diamond, but with a slide-out full qwerty keyboard and an extra 48 grams.

This version probably will not reach the US shores, but do expect the HTC Raphael coming from Sprint. 

Do you have a link?

No Start menu hardware key, no menu softkeys, no okay button on the keyboard?  What a horrible design?! 

So this means you'll have to take one hand off the keyboard and touch the screen every time you want to do something.  Does anyone remember how annoying it was to use the Hitachi G1000?

 This page has the most info that I can find, but nothing regarding the points that you have raised. Plus another (if smaller) picture.

 

 Altough, in my first image, if you take a closer look at the function of the Sym key (left of the spacebar), that could almost signify a rotation of the softkeys???

And the function of the left arrow, could be a menu / start menu???

Chuong Nguyen from Pocketnow.com observed the following about this device :

"There is a "Ctrl" key on the keyboard's lower left corner.
Here's to hoping for simplified keyboard commands! Get your Ctrl C, Ctrl V groove on!"

Maybe we can re-assign the SMS key and Email keys on the keyboard to be the Start menu and OK/back keys so that we can like open programs.

The Ctrl key is nice.  Maybe there's a "Custom Keyboard Shortcuts" control panel that we can assign each letter to something.  That'll still be more steps to navigate the device than just having dedicated hardware Start, OK, Left softkey, Right softkey buttons. 

Or maybe usability is out of style now?  

You saw how the Sony Xperia X1 doesn't have arrow keys or softkeys on the keyboard, right? 

I was always under the impression that Windows devices all had the Windows Start Button. It's one of their defining characteristics. Surely a Windows key is more important than 2 email/txt buttons. Or maybe this design feature is isolated to the T-Mobile rebranded version.