HTC announced the Touch Diamond this morning, their latest Windows Mobile handheld with a flashy touch-screen interface and super-high-end specs.
The Touch Diamond, which looks like a black slab with a big touch screen, has a VGA (640x480) 2.8" screen, 3.2-megapixel camera, 4 GB of memory, Wi-Fi, GPS and a Qualcomm 528 Mhz processor. According to HTC, the device also has a new version of HTC's TouchFLO interface, which puts a finger-friendly skin on Windows Mobile. A newly customized Web browser will let users navigate by swiping with their fingers, and a built-in accelerometer rotates the screen when you rotate the device. HTC has also developed a special YouTube application for the gadget, the company said in a press release.
"The HTC Touch Diamond will make browsing the Web and using Web-enabled applications just as practical and easy to use as making calls," HTC CEO Peter Chou said in a press release.
Questions about this one abound. Has HTC gotten its fingers deep enough into the Windows Mobile interface so TouchFLO no longer feels like a superficial skin? Is this browser not Windows Mobile's standard Pocket Internet Explorer? And how will the Touch Diamond compete against Sony Ericsson's XPERIA X1, which seems to come from very similar thinking?
The bad news for US readers is that the Touch Diamond's cellular radio is so European that it won't work at all in North America - according to the spec sheet, it's a doorstop here with only 900/2100 Mhz UMTS supported and no 2G GSM. That last bit shocked us - no 2G means the device will have some coverage problems - but that's what the spec sheet says.
HTC says they'll come out with an American version in the second half of this year.
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