HTC unveiled its new flagship phone, the HTC Touch Diamond, featuring the Taiwanese manufacturer’s new captivating 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. HTC has recently improved its original TouchFLO interface (Compare HTC’s Touch phones), and with the introduction of the new 3D touch interface, the company aims to provide animated access to people, messaging, e-mail, photos, music, weather and more. In addition, HTC is introducing a new touch-sensitive control for interacting with the Touch Diamond.

HTC Touch Diamond showing weather forecast This is a Windows Mobile 6.1 device, as you would expect from HTC. However, HTC have worked hard to improve the interface and have created TouchFLO 3D, an enhancement of the original TouchFLO system that allows for gesture control, 3D task switching (like Windows Vista) and a number of other functional and cosmetic improvements. The quality of the end-user’s experience is pretty similar to that of the very polished interface on the iPhone. You can see HTC’s demonstration video here.

It isn’t a very large device, at 102 x 51 x 11.5mm and 110 grams, the Touch Diamond is not much larger than a standard "candy bar" phone. That is considerably more compact than the iPhone, but the downside is that the Touch Diamond’s display is just a 2.8" panel rather than the very large 3.5" display on the Apple. We’re not saying that the Touch Diamond has a small screen though - it’s the same size as the Nokia N95 8GB, it’s just that iPhone has a REALLY large screen. As with the iPhone, the Touch Diamond flips automatically between landscape (wide) and portrait (tall) orientations as you rotate the screen.

Another significant feature is that the HTC Touch Diamond includes A-GPS (Assisted GPS), so it can be used with your favourite SatNav application (for example, TomTom or Google Maps). The iPhone doesn’t have GPS at all, although the N95 8GB does. One huge advantage over the Apple iPhone is the inclusion of 3.5G data, which means that the HTC Touch Diamond can download at speeds of up to 7.2 MBps where coverage allows. HTC also say that the device supports HSUPA, giving the Touch Diamond high-speed uploads too. Peculiarly, there are two versions of the Touch Diamond supporting different network frequencies, a GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 plus WCDMA 900 / 2100 version for Europe and Asia, and a GSM 850 / 1800 / 1900 plus WCDMA 850 / 1900 variant for North America. We know that HTC are capable of creating a single device that supports all these frequencies, so we don’t know why they haven’t done so with the Touch Diamond. WiFi is supported too, as is EDGE and GPRS data.

[Source]

HTC unveiled its new flagship phone, the HTC Touch Diamond, featuring the Taiwanese manufacturer’s new captivating 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. HTC has recently improved its original TouchFLO interface (Compare HTC’s Touch phones), and with the introduction of the new 3D touch interface, the company aims to provide animated access to people, messaging, e-mail, photos, music, weather and more. In addition, HTC is introducing a new touch-sensitive control for interacting with the Touch Diamond.

HTC Touch Diamond showing weather forecast This is a Windows Mobile 6.1 device, as you would expect from HTC. However, HTC have worked hard to improve the interface and have created TouchFLO 3D, an enhancement of the original TouchFLO system that allows for gesture control, 3D task switching (like Windows Vista) and a number of other functional and cosmetic improvements. The quality of the end-user’s experience is pretty similar to that of the very polished interface on the iPhone. You can see HTC’s demonstration video here.

It isn’t a very large device, at 102 x 51 x 11.5mm and 110 grams, the Touch Diamond is not much larger than a standard "candy bar" phone. That is considerably more compact than the iPhone, but the downside is that the Touch Diamond’s display is just a 2.8" panel rather than the very large 3.5" display on the Apple. We’re not saying that the Touch Diamond has a small screen though - it’s the same size as the Nokia N95 8GB, it’s just that iPhone has a REALLY large screen. As with the iPhone, the Touch Diamond flips automatically between landscape (wide) and portrait (tall) orientations as you rotate the screen.

Another significant feature is that the HTC Touch Diamond includes A-GPS (Assisted GPS), so it can be used with your favourite SatNav application (for example, TomTom or Google Maps). The iPhone doesn’t have GPS at all, although the N95 8GB does. One huge advantage over the Apple iPhone is the inclusion of 3.5G data, which means that the HTC Touch Diamond can download at speeds of up to 7.2 MBps where coverage allows. HTC also say that the device supports HSUPA, giving the Touch Diamond high-speed uploads too. Peculiarly, there are two versions of the Touch Diamond supporting different network frequencies, a GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 plus WCDMA 900 / 2100 version for Europe and Asia, and a GSM 850 / 1800 / 1900 plus WCDMA 850 / 1900 variant for North America. We know that HTC are capable of creating a single device that supports all these frequencies, so we don’t know why they haven’t done so with the Touch Diamond. WiFi is supported too, as is EDGE and GPRS data.

[Source]