HTC Touch

While the mobile world is (somewhat understandably so) in the midst of an iPhone madness at the moment, it is interesting to examine some other contenders... One other device which could potentially give the iPhone a run for its money (and was released very recently) is the HTC Touch. While the HTC appears to be a standard PDA in specifications, and is Windows Mobile-based (at least as far as the core of the operating system is concerned) the real innovation of the device is the novel 3D user interface it suggests.

Regarding this, this is what http://www.zdnet.co.uk had to say in its review of the device: "So what of HTC's add-on user interface, TouchFLO? You get a nice customised Home screen, with a big digital clock, and icons leading to Weather and Lancher applets. The bottom half of the screen lists your upcoming appointments. You sweep your finger up the screen to open what HTC calls the Touch Cube, the first side of which shows a 3x3 grid of your main contacts, with icons beneath for initiating a call, viewing your call history, opening Contacts and deleting a favourite contact. Slide your finger from right to left and the second Touch Cube screen shows large icons for opening email, SMS/EMS, Internet Explorer, Tasks, Comm Manager and Calendar applications. Another right-to-left gesture brings up even bigger icons for accessing your music, photos and videos. You rotate the cube the other way with a left-to right sweep of the finger, while a top-to-bottom sweep takes you back to where you were when you launched the Touch Cube."

You can test yourself the way the interface of the HTC Touch works via interactive Flash vids on http://www.htctouch.com/.