When we got our hands on the original Touch Diamond, HTC’s supposed spoiler for the iPhone 3G, we were seriously underwhelmed. It felt a bit plasticky, its screen wasn’t as big and it had problems with its responsiveness.

Not so the Touch HD, which has landed in the PC Pro offices in the last hour or so. First impressions are, in fact, that this is the iPhone rival that the Diamond should have been.

It’s similar in size to the iPhone, and similar in thickness too, but its screen is the point of difference: not only is it larger, but it’s also much higher resolution – 800 x 480 to be precise. And the difference this makes to browsing the web on the embedded Opera 9.5 browser is noticeable: headlines and even some body text can be read when you’re zoomed right out, making navigation without zooming much less fiddly.

Okay so it still runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional albeit with the addition of HTC’s hit-and-miss TouchFLO 3D interface enhancements, but in terms of pure hardware design, this phone puts everything else bar the iPhone in the shade.

Forget the Omnia, forget the Touch Pro, the HD is simply sumptuous. It’s gorgeously well-made with rubbery soft touch plastics at the rear and feels supremely solid. The fit and finish of this phone is BMW-like in its engineering precision.

And it stacks up well on the vital statistics front, too: HSDPA for fast mobile data, assisted GPS, a five-megapixel camera plus an accelerometer for automatic screen rotation.

The only miss seems to be onboard data storage – it’s limited at 288MB – but with a microSD slot ready for expansion that won’t pose too much of a problem.

Make sure you check back for the full review next week…