With the iPhone still setting the standard for touchscreen phones, challengers to the throne all seem to be trying to out-elegance one another — witness the new Samsung Armani, for instance. Now along comes the HTC Touch Diamond, "a new benchmark for phone sophistication," the company crows.

Central to the phone is the company's TouchFlo 3D interface, which HTC says provides "animated access" to people (by calling, we presume), messaging, e-mail, photos, and more. There's also a touch pad alongside the screen. Under the hood is the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system.

Credit: HTC

It would be a rare phone these days that doesn't double as a music player and a camera. To that end, HTC says the Touch Diamond offers 4GB of internal storage, plus 192MB of RAM. The company is also touting a YouTube application developed in-house to allow viewing of video content on the phone's 2.8-inch, 640x480 pixel display.

For accessing the Internet, the quad-band smartphone offers HSDPA/WCDMA speeds of up to 384 kilobits per second upstream and 7.2Mbps down. It's also equipped with Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g).

Credit: HTC

Traveling abroad? Check the local weather before you get on the plane. Similar to the iPhone, the Touch Diamond also lets you navigate Web sites by zooming and panning with one hand.

The first consumers to get their hands on the HTC Touch Diamond will be in Europe, where the phone goes on sale in June. The company plans to make it available in Asia and the Middle East later that same month, and in North America and Latin America in the second half of the year. It's not known when th phone will be available in Australia.

Talk time for the phone via GSM is up to four hours, HTC says.

Credit: HTC

The HTC Diamond measures is just 11.33 millimeters thick. The height and width: 102 millimeters by 51 millimeters. It weighs 110 grams.

Credit: HTC

Here it is looking at you. The back of the phone features some spiffy beveling, along with the lens for the 3.2-megapixel camera.

Credit: HTC