HTC Diamond

At least through Sprint, that is. Today, the wireless carrier, trying to be more Ferris Bueller and less Cameron Frye, announced that it would be carrying both the HTC Diamond and the HTC Touch Pro, which feature that company’s TouchFlo 3D interface, one of the more innovative touchscreen interfaces from a consumer electronics company not named after fruit.

Varying little from the unlocked Diamond we reviewed in June, Sprint’s version of the touchscreen smartphone (which will retail for $249.99 with a 2-year contract and $100 rebate) features a 2.8 inch high-resolution VGA display, an Opera-powered browser, Wi-Fi, a customized YouTube application, a 3.2MP camera, and access to Sprint TV. From the early press images, Sprint has modified the UI a little bit, as the icons that run along the bottom of the screen are different from the unlocked version.

The Touch Pro is similar to the Diamond, but has a slide-out five-row QWERTY keyboard, and will be available on Oct. 19 for $299.99 (with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate). According to Sprint’s press release, the Touch Pro also features a microSD card slot (1 GB card included) and a business card scanner application.

Both phones, which run Windows Mobile 6.1, will also feature applications for e-mail, threaded messaging, photos, contacts, weather, and music, according to the press release. Neatest of all is the built-in accelerometer, which senses when the phone is being moved in space, and adjusts the screen to compensate. Let’s hope Sprint kept the really cool game that was on the unlocked version.

We’ll have hands-on with both the Diamond and the Touch Pro later today. Stay tuned.

We had a few minutes to sit down and play around with the new HTC Diamond and found it to be a pretty decent phone. (Our apologies if we’re picking up the English penchant for understatement.)

Picking it up, it’s quite light and slim, a bit smaller and lighter than the iPhone. While the entire front isn’t a touchscreen, it has a glossy finish that picks up fingerprints quite well. Below the touchscreen are four push buttons that surround a nav-pad that, too, is touch-activated. The screen itself was fairly easy to use, although we noticed a little bit of lag when scrolling through the various menu items at the bottom of the page. HTC reps didn’t have these problems, so we’ll chalk it up to inexperience.

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On the day of the big Diamond reveal, LAPTOP had a chance to sit down with Horace Luke, the chief innovation officer at HTC and the man who headed up the design of the company’s new touchscreen phone.

The biggest point Luke wanted to convey was that, unlike other phones such as the iPhone and the BlackBerry, the Diamond was meant to be used with just one hand. “The world only knows a certain size of object when walking, such as a deck of cards, a pack of cigarettes, or a wallet,” he said. “Any larger, and this wouldn’t be a one-handed device. It should be able to fit in your pocket as you walk down the street, and you shouldn’t feel embarrassed by it. Just like your watch or your shoes, a phone should reflect who you are.”

Asked about the Diamond’s lack of a full-screen touchscreen, Luke noted that it helps, especially while browsing the Web, as users will be less likely to make a navigation error. “You can zoom in and out of a Web site without falsely clicking on a link,” he said, using the small circular touch area below the screen. “I think it’s a nice balance between reading your content and not messing with it.”

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