HTC Touch Diamond - a jewel in the grass?

OK. Lets take stock. Iphone sales are roaring, and with a 3G version in the pipeline, the Apple hype machine is about to switch into overdrive for the second time in twelve months. These are not happy times for the handful of other firms that make their millions by making phones. Noone likes a brand new market entrant doing that well. But HTC thinks it has an answer. It's customers and shareholders sincerely hope so. It's called the Touch Diamond. Put simply it's the 3G version of the popular (3 million sold) Touch Smartphone. Unlike Apple's 3G iPhone, the Touch Diamond is here next month. Rather than be an iPhone lookalike it seems to be trying to offer most of the same features but with a different ergonomic ethic. For example using the iPhone is largely a two-handed affair; the Diamond is designed so that you can fiddle with the touch screen with your holding hand - things like that are important to phone users. It offers the usual email, music, texting, and photos smorgasbord and has a 3.2Mpix camera. The only downside is 4Gb memory compared to 8Gb or 16Gb on the iPhone. At the end of the day this is going to be seen by most as HTC/Microsoft against Apple iPhone. Perhaps showing that when it comes to the phone wars operating systems are becoming increasingly significant. Microsoft's Windows Mobile (on all HTC devices) is loved and hated in equal measure, whereas it his hard to find many neutrals that don't love the ease of use of the iPhone.