HTC Launches Device to Rival Apple's iPhone

Days after Apple announced the release date of the Apple iPhone, HTC Corp., a Taiwan based device manufacturer known for their Microsoft Windows Mobile based devices, beat Apple to the punch and announced the global launch of the HTC Touch. The small and stylish mobile phone uses a new intuitive touch navigation to rival that of iPhone's multi-touch technology.

HTC's CEO and president, Peter Chou, said that while mobile phone makers have done a great job of cramming ever-more exciting features into ever smaller phones, the way one accesses the features has not kept pace. The HTC Touch hopes to end that problem.

The HTC Touch will be the first phone to use a new touch screen technology developed by HTC, the TouchFLO. TouchFLO offers users a unique way of controlling touch screen-based devices by responding to the sweep of a finger across the screen, and can distinguish between finger and stylus input. You can also use your fingers to read documents and messages, as well as browse web pages and your contacts list.

Running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, the HTC Touch features a new homescreen not commonly found in other Windows Mobile devices. The new homescreen has one-touch access to emails, text messages, calendars, appointments, contacts, and weather conditions for cities around the world. Since the device will be running Windows Mobile, it comes bundled with Outlook Mobile, Office Mobile, Internet Explorer, Windows Messenger, Window Live, Windows Media Player, and can run thousands of other third party applications that are compatible with Windows Mobile. On the other hand, the iPhone still has to allow developers access to its operating system to make third party applications compatible with OS X. The HTC Touch has a 2.8 inch color display, much smaller than the iPhone's 3.5 inch screen. Like the iPhone, the HTC Touch will also have a 2 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Edge. The iPhone functions on a quad band GSM network and has 4 to 8 GB of internal memory, but the HTC touch can only function on triband GSM networks, has 64mb of RAM and comes with only a 1 GB microSD card.

The HTC Touch will be available in the UK starting June 5 from HTC and Orange, T-Mobile will soon follow. It will be available to Europe and Asia soon but the North America and Latin versions will only be released on the second half of this year. SOURCES:

HTC Press Room, URL: (http://www.htc.com/press_room/03-press-070605.htm)