Note: This review is based on material provided by the manufacturer and information from other sources. We will review the device more fully in a future issue.

With much fanfare, HTC announced the introduction of the Touch Diamond on May 6th in London. The influence of the iPhone is evident in the sleek design of the device, the lack of protruding buttons on its face, and the new TouchFLO 3D interface. But the Touch Diamond is a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional device with all the applications and expandability associated with that platform. There are a number of other features that make this an outstanding smartphone—and a few things we would have done differently.

Clean, attractive, and powerful

As mentioned, the Touch Diamond is a sleek device with a clean design. Like the iPhone, there's no number or QWERTY keypad cluttering up the face of the device. In addition, the D-pad is recessed and the other buttons are touch-sensitive icons flanking the D-pad and are flush with the surface.

The Diamond is a small device, measuring 4 x 2 x 0.45 inches and weighing 3.9 ounces. It's powered by a 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM 7201 processor, which should give it snappy performance. HTC is making a point of promoting the Diamond's 2.8-inch color VGA touch screen, which auto-rotates between portrait and landscape view when you rotate the device in your hand. The auto-rotate feature is cool, and the VGA display should provide a good Web browsing and photo/video viewing experience.

TouchFLO 3D and enhanced Web browser

The Touch Diamond has the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional software built-in and ready to use. This includes the OS, Office Mobile, Outlook Mobile, Media Player and Internet Explorer Mobile, and more. For a more complete description of this software, see the At a Glance section on page 78. For a description of features new to WM 6.1, check out the June ‘08 issue (smartphonemag.com/cms/_archives/Jun08/WM6.1ANewUpdate).

The Touch Diamond comes with additional programs from HTC, and the most important of these is TouchFLO 3D, a custom user interface that "provides animated access to people, messaging, e-mail, photos, music, weather, and more." The "animated" capability is best seen in the photo application, where individual photos a displayed in a Rolodex-type stack. Drag your finger across the photos and the photos flip forward. You'll also see folders flip open to access documents and notes. The TouchFLO 3D interface includes screens for photos, music, weather, e-mail, and a home screen. Each TouchFLO screen has large buttons along the bottom, allowing you to use finger taps to switch screens. We'll provide more detail on this when it becomes available.

The TouchFLO 3D interface makes accessing features easier and more fun.

The Touch Diamond also includes larger soft keyboards, including a numeric "Phone Keypad" with T9 text predictive capability and a "Compact QWERTY" with the 26 letters of the alphabet assigned to 14 large keys. The Compact QWERTY also uses a predictive engine to figure out which of the two possible letters you mean when you hit a key. It also has a "Full QWERTY" keyboard. These larger keyboards occupy about 60% of the display and are suitable for finger tapping.