HTC Touch Diamond users face 24-month contract

We got our first hands on touch and feel with the new Touch Diamond today, and it's an impressive smartphone. You get 3G, GPS, camera, WiFi, 4GB storage, all in an 11.5mm high chassis. The phone itself is only 110grams, a huge difference to some of the very chunky smartphones on the market.

Crucially, the phone offers 7.2Mbps HSDPA on Telstra's wide-ranging Next-G network, something you won't get on the soon to be released iPhone 3G (unless Telstra decides to offer that too).

Other key features include:
- TouchFLO 3D interface, which includes swanky menus incorporating rolodex menus of your contacts, and animated weather forecasts
- 4GB memory built-in
- 2.8in VGA screen
- GPS
- 3.2Mp camera
- Windows Mobile Professional 6.1

So slim: the Touch Diamond is a mere 11.5mm high

While we're impressed with the spec, and the phone certainly looks slick in demos by HTC, we're still unsure about HTC's TouchFLO. It's certainly a friendlier interface than Windows Mobile, but in our very brief hands on play today, we found menu navigation slightly cumbersome. Maybe it was our clumsy fingers (we tried to avoid using the stylus), but we found ourselves having some difficulties.

The HTC Touch Diamond, covered in fingerprints

The other catch is the contract. Like the iPhone, it looks as though Touch Diamond users will be stuck on lengthy 24 month contracts ($80 per month including voice and data), or pay $999 outright when the phone arrives in late July or early August.