HTC unveils its Diamond

HTC has unveiled its new smartphone - the HTC Touch Diamond - which is clearly aimed at the same market as the Apple iPhone.

The undeniably striking phone has a 2.8-inch touch screen and brushed steel casing that's only 11.3mm thick. However it runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional albeit sporting a new touch-based interface christened TouchFLO 3D which does away with a physical keyboard.

The HTC Touch Diamond has high-speed HSDPA 3G connectivity, GPS and a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera - all features that outshine the current iPhone specs. But a relatively miserly 4GB of internal storage means the handset won't be an iPod substitute for most people. The Diamond also has 802.11g WiFi making it one of the most networkable phones around.

But its the high resolution (640 x 480 pixel) TouchFLO 3D front-end that will attract the most attention. The interface supports simple gestures such as finger swiping and uses 3D acceleration to add unfeasible amounts of eye candy to simple tasks. For instance the email application actually extracts your messages from a virtual envelope while text messages 'fly and twist' onto the screen. We suspect that most of this will become rather tedious in time but it will no doubt have plenty of showroom appeal to prospective buyers.

The HTC Touch Diamond is due to go on sale in the UK in June 2008. There are no price details yet but it won't be cheap.

See more at the HTC Touch Diamond website.