A group of tinkers have been hard at work getting the Panels interface from the Sony Xperia working on the HTC Touch HD. Progress is being made at a decent rate, as evidenced by a few YouTube videos that have been released.

Why do such a thing? Well, as one of the guys says, “I like the look of this front end alot better than the TF3D.” So, rather than complain about the user interface, they adapt their own. Good on them.

After right around 2 weeks of offering pre-orders for the unlocked WinMo 6.1 powered HTC Touch Diamond, Best Buy has started taking immediate orders from all the folks out there dying to get in on the TouchFlo 3D action who just can’t bring themselves to hop on Sprint. At a whopping $700 bucks before the extra $50 or so you’ll eat in taxes and shipping, the novelty of living the sans-contract life doesn’t come cheap.

I think it’s pretty safe to say we won’t be seeing this one in their airport vending machines.

We’ve gotten official word from HTC concerning the Touch Diamond and the Touch Pro release dates and prices for the Sprint network. We already kind of figured the launch date for the Diamond to be September 14th, although HTC just says it’ll be “available in September” while we now know that the Touch Pro (seen above) will be available on October 19th.

The Touch Diamond, as you’ll recall, will cost $249 after a $100 mail-in rebate. The Touch Pro will cost $299, also after a $100 mail-in rebate. Both will require a two-year contract with Sprint.

While early rumors seemed to indicate that the HTC Touch Diamond would be coming to Sprint on September 2nd, it seems that the actual date will be September 14th instead, according to PC Magazine. The device will cost $249 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate. I’ve been using the European version of the Touch Diamond as my main phone for a while now and it works pretty well, although I’d be really hard-pressed to shell out $250 for it – seems like $150 would be more doable.

Cool. Looks like the HTC Touch Diamond (and presumably the HTC Touch Diamond Pro) can actually do multi-touch. Apparently it’s just around the navigation buttons that the multi-touch works – not the entire screen, which seems odd. The feature is revealed when using HTC’s Nav Debug Tool but so far doesn’t have any practical use beyond simple testing. However, HTC updates its ROMs on a fairly regular basis so maybe we’ll someday see this feature come to light for normal people like you and me.

From MobileTopSoft:

Here is how it works:
* The area around the navi-wheel is actually a capacitive touch-area with multi-touch
* it may allow using finger pinching gesture and finger spreading gesture (zooming for example) and also implement 2 finger moving for panning gesture for example too.
* Not all capacitive touch-areas are multi-touch at the same time!
* You can try it for yourself at XDA-Developers NavDbgTool.exe, you must have registered account there in order to download

[via Gizmodo]

Cool. Looks like the HTC Touch Diamond (and presumably the HTC Touch Diamond Pro) can actually do multi-touch. Not only multi-touch on the screen itself, but all the way down around the navi-wheel and buttons. [Update – Apparently it’s just around the navigation buttons that the multi-touch works.] The feature is revealed when using HTC’s Nav Debug Tool but so far doesn’t have any practical use beyond simple testing. However, HTC updates its ROMs on a fairly regular basis so maybe we’ll someday see this feature come to light for normal people like you and me.

From MobileTopSoft:

Here is how it works:
* The area around the navi-wheel is actually a capacitive touch-area with multi-touch
* it may allow using finger pinching gesture and finger spreading gesture (zooming for example) and also implement 2 finger moving for panning gesture for example too.
* Not all capacitive touch-areas are multi-touch at the same time!
* You can try it for yourself at XDA-Developers NavDbgTool.exe, you must have registered account there in order to download

[via Gizmodo]

Even though Apple sold a million iPhone 3Gs in just 3 days, HTC says its still gonna celebrate. Launched in June, the Touch Diamond is HTC’s latest touch-based smartphone, and an HTC representative told PC World that the Touch Diamond is HTC’s fastest selling handset ever. So far the Windows Mobile-based 3G handset is available from over 50 operators in 30 countries but has not yet launched in the U.S. or Japan.

Along with celebrating its one millionth, HTC said it hopes to double its pleasure by the end of the year, shipping 2 million Touch Diamonds in the next five months.

Straight from a blog in a far away land, it appears that HTC has released the “Victor” (looks like in Taiwan only) which appears to be the HTC Touch Diamond, except with a flat back instead of diamond-bumpy, jagged-edge back found on the company’s current model.

To that, I say “Hoo-ray!” I’m using the Touch Diamond right now and the back doesn’t cause me any undue concern except that, as BGR’s Josh Karp points out, it “causes some problems when you attempt to lay the device firmly on a flat surface.”

Speaking of problems – funny story. I was sitting next to Josh Karp at dinner one night during the conference where HTC announced the Touch Diamond and failed to notice that I had held my menu directly over a lit candle while conversing with someone at the table. It caught on fire and the waitress had to throw it on the floor and stomp it out with her shoes. And that, my friends, is why you can’t take CrunchGear anywhere.

According to a photo on the SprintUsers.com forum — a photo which apparently came from HowardForums (I couldn’t find it there) — several new handsets will be available on the Sprint network over the coming months. The HTC MP6950, also known as the HTC Touch Diamond, being one that’s apparently hitting September 2nd.

If the reportedly leaked photo is legit, we’ll also see the Treo 800W soon, a red BlackBerry Curve, the Katana Eclipse by Sanyo, and a few others. The photo looks a little “cheap” to me, but if it’s an internal Sprint document, maybe they’re not all about dressing these things up.

via BGR

Just got the HTC Touch Diamond smartphone today and I can tell you that it’s a pretty nice little gizmo. I’ll be taking it for a spin over the next few weeks, so if you have any questions about it or if you’d like me to try out any particular features, leave a message in the comments section and I’ll do my best to address your requests.

[UPDATE: Full review after the jump]

Overview

Make no mistake, HTC has a nice phone on its hands with the HTC Touch Diamond. The Windows Mobile 6.1-based device excels largely thanks to its ability to hide Windows Mobile from the user. The TouchFLO 3D interface is a breath of fresh air, offering animated menus generated by the phone’s built-in graphics processor. Unless you really dig into some of the menus, there’s a good chance that you’ll forget you’re using WinMo at all. Plus, if you’re lucky, you’ll rarely need to use the stylus. This is a finger-friendly phone for sure.  

Features

From HTC’s product page:

• 2.8-inch touch screen, with four times the pixels of most phones.
• Vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface, responding perfectly to your finger gestures when scrolling through contacts, browsing the web, and launching media… all vividly displayed as photos and artwork powered by the 3D graphics processor.
• HTC Weather – providing a constant view of weather at home and abroad.
• Surf and download at broadband speed with HSDPA internet connectivity.
• 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera for quality stills and video.
• 4GB of internal storage to preserve more photos, music, files and exchanged data than ever before.
• Integrated GPS for use with maps software for a full turn-by-turn satellite navigation experience

Pros

As with most HTC devices, the small attention to detail is what sets the Touch Diamond apart. It’s the little things, like turning the phone face down to silence the ringer or pulling out the stylus while on a call to bring up the Notes application. The home screen, contacts, e-mail, web, music, weather, and programs menus all are rendered beautifully, too. As far as user interfaces go, the Touch Diamond is a pleasure to navigate. The 640×480 screen is gorgeous, too. There’s a lot to be said about doubling the resolution of most standard WinMo devices. It works.

The magnetic stylus is a nice touch, too, as it performs more than just tapping functions. Pull it out while on a call and the Notes application opens up. Or pull it out when the phone’s keypad is locked and, boom, you’re unlocked and back in business.

Finally, I’ve been impressed with HTC’s commitment to improving the device. It’s gone through numerous ROM updates — the latest one added high speed data and seemed to perk up the menu navigation considerably.

The video, music, and YouTube players all work really well, too. You could take this device on the airplane and leave your iPod at home. It works well for entertainment purposes. Using the included headphones, too, provide reception for the built-in FM radio, which is a nice touch if you still listen to old-school radio.

Neutral

For a device that packs so much under the hood, the Touch Diamond is small – really small. Almost too small? The screen, as I said, is gorgeous. I just sometimes wish there was more of it to see. At 2.8 inches, it’s pretty small. The device is wonderfully pocketable, though, so it’s likely a worthwhile tradeoff.

HTC’s also done a great job on the customized Opera browser. It displays full, regular HTML web pages – you see a full view at first and then can zoom in on certain parts of the page. It works well and it’s pretty intuitive. The problem is that pages that you want to be rendered as mobile versions show up as the full desktop versions, which render pretty slowly. Gmail and Google Reader were the two that I wished I could just view the quick and dirty mobile version. In a pinch, the phone has Internet Explorer buried within the applications menu so I could fire that up if needed.

Battery life was average. You’ll probably need to charge this thing every day. It’s not terrible but it’s not great. This was the one area where I was like “I have absolutely no idea how I feel about this.” It’s right in the middle. Again, tiny device = tradeoffs.

Finally, there’s the whole no-keypad thing. The on-screen keyboard is well thought out and useable but it’s still not tactile. Haptic feedback would have been nice. People with average to above-average fingers, like me, won’t giggle with delight while entering stuff. Let’s just say that I look forward to the HTC Touch Pro, which has an actual keyboard. People who don’t mind on-screen keyboards, though, will find the Touch Diamond’s to be relatively responsive and easy to use.

Cons

My biggest gripes were so-so reception and poor screen visibility in direct sunlight. I tested the phone with a T-Mobile SIM in the Boston area and experienced a fair amount of drop outs during calls. There weren’t a lot of completely dropped calls, but I found myself saying, “What? Say that again. I missed that last part?” a lot. The phone’s manual makes it clear that the antenna is located near the top of the device and that you shouldn’t cover that area with your hand, but the phone is so small that it’s difficult to avoid cupping the entire device.

Also, using the phone outdoors requires the screen’s brightness to be jacked up pretty high, which can suck the battery pretty quickly. If you’re a true geek, though, you rarely go outside so maybe you won’t have to worry about that too much.

One final con – not really the device’s fault – is that you can’t get a subsidized one in the US yet. It’ll apparently be coming to various carriers this fall, though.

Conclusion

The HTC Touch Diamond is a great leap forward for Windows Mobile phones. If you’re not averse to touchscreen-only devices, you’ll find that the phone’s interface, feature-set, and very-pocketable form factor are hard to beat. Those pining for a real keyboard, though, might want to wait for the Touch Pro.

HTC CEO Peter Chou spoke at a symposium in Tokyo yesterday where he raised the projected shipment of Touch Diamond devices from two million to three million citing that it would only take seven months to sell three million units. The original Touch took roughly 11 months to sell three million handsets and Chou believes the Touch Diamond will be more popular thus the increase.

Just got word from Matt of Tracy and Matt’s Blog that he’s been able to grab a shot of one of the upcoming accessories for the HTC Touch Diamond.

From Matt’s post…

“I must say that this looks super sexy with its glossy black finish. You’ll also notice the decent looking set of headphones in that photo above which, in my mind, implies that the dock/cradle will allow you to sync, charge and use headphones while the device Diamond is plugged in! Now that would be cool!”

That would be pretty cool. The Touch Diamond will be hitting Europe in a couple of weeks, so we’ll undoubtedly see more and more accessories soon. This one will supposedly cost about $50 US — not too bad. The UK product page says…

“Sync, charge up and listen to the music! Charge or synchronise your HTC Touch Diamond simply by placing the handset in the cradle.

Plug the desktop cradle into a home stereo system via the cradle’s 3.5mm line out connection to enjoy high quality music playback.

Sleek and simple, like the HTC Touch Diamond, this cradle is the perfect accessory.”

So there you have it. Charging, synching, and audio out. Pretty standard.

Here’s some more video of the Touch Diamond’s interface. The various devices I’ve seen have at times been a little laggy with the photos and the tilt sensor — stuff like that. It may have to do with the fact that they’re connected to the Wi-Fi network here along with 150 other people. Hopefully the production versions will be a bit snappier. The device demo’d in the main presentation hummed along pretty well except for hanging up on a particular article of a graphics-intensive car web site.

Higher resolution video available here.

Here are some photos of the Touch Diamond. It’s a lot smaller than I thought. Enjoy.

The sound got all jacked up — my battery was dying. Forgiveness, please. Try to just listen with your eyes. I have a briefing in a couple hours so I’ll get better footage.

Doug Aamoth here in London at the HTC announcement. Hit the jump for more.

VIDEOS TOO!

12:00 – Peter Chow takes the stage. Introduces a guy from Orange and a guy from Microsoft. Talks about the HTC Touch and the TouchFLO interface.

12:04 – User experience is important. The next big thing in phones will be no longer just about “touch” — it’ll be about “usable mobile internet.”

12:05 – Super excited to announce what we’ve been working on. Introduces Touch Diamond.

Demo Video

12:08 – Introduces “TouchFLO 3D” animated touchscreen interface.

12:09 – HSDPA, HSUPA

12:11 – Horace Luke, Chief Innovation Officer takes the stage. Thanks team.

12:12 – “We challenged everything.” Speed, form factor, user experience.

12:14 – “One of the world’s most advanced phones in a small form factor.”

12:25 – Luke shows off the phone’s UI and web browser.

User Interface Video

Web Browser Demo Video (sound’s all jacked up — sorry)

12:26 – Shows off Youtube interface. Looks very similar to iPhone/iPod touch.

12:27 – The HTC Touch Diamond will be available through all of HTC’s channel partners. In the UK; through all five network operators. Europe/Asia – available in June. Everywhere else; “later this year.”

12:33 – One of the head guys from Orange takes the stage to talk about Orange-specific apps for the Diamond. Orange Photos, Orange Music Store (direct downloads), ringtones/games/downloads, and mobile TV. 

12:40 – Peter Chow takes the stage again and introduces Andy Lee of Microsoft. Lee talks about HTC and Windows Mobile. Says HTC is a great innovator. Also says Windows Mobile has a lot of momentum around the world. Last year sold more than 11 million devices. “Congratulations to HTC and the whole team. This is one of the most innovative — if not THE most innovative devices of 2008.”

12:45 – The presentation is wrapping up. I’ll have some more videos and hands-on stuff as the day progresses. As always, thanks for reading CrunchGear.

More info:

- Browser in the demo is Opera. IE6 for mobile isn’t ready yet but when it’s rolled out, it may or may not be pushed out to HTC Touch Diamond users.

- 20 key or full QWERTY versions of the keyboard. Can be used horizontally or vertically.

- Headphone jack is mini-USB. No plans for “big” 3.5mm or 2.5mm jack.

- Battery life is “better than most of our other devices.” WinMo 6.1 is between 8% and 21% better for battery life.

- Prices in 2-3 weeks, to be set by carriers.

Here’s the full press release:

A NEW AGE FOR MOBILE PHONES BEGINS;

HTC Unveils ‘Touch Diamond’

Debut brings breakthroughs in size, style connectivity and overall user experience, leaves compromise at the door.

LONDON — May 6, 2008 — Born from a unique heritage of innovation and a deep desire to blend design with simplicity, HTC Corp., a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today unveiled its new flagship phone, the HTC Touch Diamondä. Delivering unmistakable style and meticulous craftsmanship the HTC Touch Diamond is defined by its compact size, game-changing Internet and its new captivating 3D touch interface called TouchFLOä 3D. The result is an uncompromising mobile phone that sets a new benchmark for phone sophistication and shapes consumer expectations for how a phone can be used.

“Today we mark a new era in mobile phone evolution, an era where beauty and size integrate with uncompromising innovation at broadband speeds,” said Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corp. “The HTC Touch Diamond will make browsing the Web and using Web-enabled applications just as practical and easy to use as making calls.”

A New Dimension To Touch

HTC has taken a great leap forward in touch screen innovation with the introduction of its new 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. TouchFLO 3D provides animated access to people, messaging, email, photos, music, weather and more. In addition, HTC is introducing a new innovative touch-sensitive control for interacting with Touch Diamond.

Making The Mobile Internet Fun

With the introduction of the Touch Diamond, HTC delivers an entirely new mobile Internet experience that utilizes broadband-like speeds with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA wireless connectivity. Committed to improving Web browsing, HTC provides a new customized mobile Web browser that enables easy viewing and effortless navigation of Websites in the way they were designed. As part of this browsing experience users can zoom and pan Websites with one-hand and automatically view optimized content that has been specially created to fit the display. Turning the device sideways automatically rotates the web page view from a portrait to landscape view.

In addition to Web browsing, the Touch Diamond includes a customized new, HTC-developed, YouTube application for watching a variety of user generated video content as well as utilizing Google Maps for mobile for mapping and traffic data.

Unmatched Style and Size

The Touch Diamond is crafted with precision to fit comfortably in a user’s hand without compromising on features or functionality. Blending contrasting design elements of metal and unique geometric facets, the Touch Diamond complements a user’s personal style.

Bursting with Innovation

The Touch Diamond delivers an unrivalled combination of features and functionality that set a new standard for integrating mobile phone innovation into a small package. The 2.8 inch display provides near-print quality viewing that enables beautiful Web browsing and viewing of photographs. The built-in camera includes an optical auto-focus lens that ensures the photos you take will be clear and consistent. Advanced wireless and auto sensor screen pivoting are just a few of the features that make the Touch Diamond experience a stand out.

Availability

The HTC Touch Diamond™ will be available to customers across all major European carriers in June. It will be available later this quarter in Asia and the Middle East. The North American and Latin American versions of the Touch Diamond will be available in the second half of 2008.

“Our long-standing relationship with HTC meant they shared their phone concept and worked with us from the earliest stage. This early collaboration is important to us because at Orange, we know that the right multimedia experience is about more than just the phone,” said Olaf Swantee, EVP of Orange’s global mobile operations. “Our approach is to select and test the best phones and integrate our applications, combining them with access to the Orange World portal, the best tariffs, integrated billing, a user-friendly interface and excellent customer support. With the Touch Diamond from Orange we have created a unique phone which has taken advantage of our latest service innovation to build upon the consistently rich experience customers expect from Orange.”

HTC Touch Diamond Key Specifications

• Size: 102 x 51 x 11.33mm
• Weight: 110 g
• Connectivity: WCDMA / HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA
• Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Display: 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• Camera: 3.2MP, with video calling
• Internal memory: 4 GB Internal Storage, 256 MB flash, 192 MB RAM,
• Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR
• Wireless: WiFi 802.11b/g
• GPS: GPS/AGPS

• Interface: HTC ExtUSBä (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
• Battery: 900 mAh
• Talk time: GSM: up to 4 hours
• Standby time: GSM: up to 300 hours/100 hours with push email
• Chipset: Qualcomm^Ò MSM 7201Aä 528MHz