HTC today announced the Touch Diamond, their latest smartphone and an attempt by the company to wrest back the mobile internet crown from Apple’s iPhone. Running Windows Mobile 6.1 on a VGA touchscreen, HTC have developed a new, three-dimensional version of their GUI overlay, called TouchFLO 3D. This offers full homescreen access to all the applications and device status, as well as CoverFlow-style media browsing and rich icon animation.



HTC haven’t skimped on the connectivity, either. The Touch Diamond has 7.2Mbps HSDPA and HSUPA for super-fast uploads and downloads. That will be put to good use in the re-skinned Opera 9 browser, which HTC will be including in the smartphone’s ROM. In a demonstration today, HTC execs showed the browser zooming and reflowing text with a simple tap, as well as manually controlling the zoom level with the touch-sensitive scroll wheel (that doubles as the D-pad). The Touch Diamond also features an accelerometer, such as found in the iPhone, which can recognise which way up the handset is being held and orient the screen accordingly.

The company is calling the smartphone their “Usable Mobile Internet” device. It also has a custom version of YouTube, which execs described as “the best mobile YouTube experience”; Apple aren’t going to like that. Although hardware details are yet to be announced, in the demonstration the phone ran smoothly and with no slow-downs no matter whether playing media, browsing the internet or anything else.

The handset will be launched in Europe and Asia in June, with the rest of the world later on in 2008. No prices have been revealed. Our sister-site PHONE Magazine will be bringing you more coverage from the HTC event - including hands-on video with the Touch Diamond itself - later on today, so keep reading!

Check out the full gallery of live HTC Touch Diamond images

Labels: HTC

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