HTC Touch-Flo

With the fever pitch building around the iPhone’s release in a few weeks, other manufacturers are trotting out interesting takes on the touch GUI. The LG Prada has already hit the streets and is most commonly pointed out as ripping off the iPhone, I think its closer to the Dulce and Gabana Razr. Last week videos of HTC’s touchable user interface started showing up on the net.

Instead of re-imagining how a phone should be, HTC basically combined some already available touch shortcuts and tied them to a slicker and easier to comprehend UI layout.

Since the first Palm devices started hitting the main stream you’ve been able to assign short cuts to simple motions of the stylus across the touch screen. For instance, dragging the stylus from the bottom of the screen to the top could open your calendar.

HTC has taken things further. Instead of a stylus the focus is on the finger, a hallmark of the iPhone philosophy. But that’s where the similarity seems to end. Dragging your finger from the bottom of the screen to the top appears to turn a cube below the screen and a separate set of functions is displayed.

I think it’s a good way to organize the many hats that smart phones wear. More interestingly this new GUI runs on top of a regular installation of Windows Mobile. HTC should just start distributing this as a skin for use on any Windows smart phone with a touch screen. It might bring a segment of the market that generally would avoid windows.