I have now actually had my hands on the Diamond and while the device is pretty slick on the surface the interface is slow (very slow) and laggy, especially given that it has decent processor in it. The onscreen keyboard is also indeed too small for fingers, which means it is pretty much stylus only and that means 2 hands all the time - an functional issue as far as I'm concerned.

I have used WinMo previously and personally am looking specifically for a new WinMo device due to a couple of applications I use that are pretty much limited to WinMo or WinMo. As a general OS, while it is far from perfect, WinMO does the job (Ok as a phone and very well as a PDA replacement) so I can live with it as the base OS; the HTC Touchflop interface, however, was enough to make me look elsewhere for a new device. I am a Telus (Canadian CDMA carrier) subscriber and am looking for a unit that is also WiFi capable, so my options are somewhat limited in terms of the Smartphones available to me. I have decided to go with a P4000 (not sure, but I think it is basically the HTC TyTn - touchscreen + keyboard); a new WinMo 6.1 download has been made available for it to upgrade from the WinMo 5.0 that ships on the unit and that tipped the scales. I am hoping that a year from now (my plan gets me a new unit every 12 months) HTC will have fixed the TouchFlo issues and the Diamond Pro (a Diamond with QWERT) or even the HTC Touch Dual (has a slider phone keypad) will be available to me.

In the mean time, be careful of the slick interface on the Daimond, at present it is NOT ready for prime time, in my opinion.

Cheers,
Leigh McBain

According to the specs on the Telus web site the screen is a 65K color "touchscreen".

Just FYI - I have been doing some checking and am considering the P4000 as well as the new Diamond; I was looking at Blackberries and even the upcoming Samsung Instinct, but there are some issues with a couple of applications I am looking to make use of, that require Touchscreen capabilities (even a WM non-touch device like the Moto Q won't work). In my research it appears that with the availability of WM 6.1 for the P4000 and the presence of the keyboard not just the touchscreen, the P4000 has some draw. The Diamond is easily the "sexiest" of the 2 devices, but the capabilities appear similar once WM 6.1 is loaded on the P4000. The Diamond has a higher speed processor (600 MHz), but the P4000 uses a duo core design that has a dedicated secondary processor (128 MHz or something like that) for the phone features and then the primary processor at 400 MHz. As a result the P400 may not be as overpowered by the Diamond as it seems initially.

Any input from anyone who has actually done the P4000 upgrade would be appreciated.