The Touch HD2’s most obvious iPhone-beating feature is its screen. Measuring 4.3in diagonally, it dominates the device, and unlike so many other Windows Mobile devices this one abandons the stylus – which frees HTC to use a capacitive screen rather than resistive. And the consequence of this is a far more responsive operating system to the touch: no irritating presses to get results, it just works.

Web browsing is a particular pleasure, with even complex pages like the BBC’s home screen appearing on-screen after a few seconds’ delay. You then double click on the area you’re interested in and it zooms up close. So far, it’s the closest you’ll get to a desktop-like browsing experience on a mobile.

The drawback is size, with the HTC Touch HD2 measuring 67mm across and 121mm high – it’s around the same footprint as a large box of matches. What makes this more than bearable is its 11mm thickness, 1.6mm slimmer than the iPhone and enough to make the HD2 barely noticeable in a pocket.

It feels great to the touch as well. The rubberised finish, metallic rear and huge screen give it the look and feel of an expensive piece of kit, and even the relatively heavy weight of 157g somehow adds to this sense of quality rather than just feeling like a burden.

There are four physical buttons on the front, all of which are logical: you can jump to HTC’s home screen by pressing the Home icon, or to the hexagonal list of apps which forms the main screen of Windows Mobile 6.5.

But we’re almost more impressed by what’s on the back: a 5-megapixel camera complete with LED flash and auto focus. All it lacks compared to “proper” compact cameras is an optical zoom (but how long before even that appears?). The photos will never win you awards, but they’re perfectly good for snaps and capture good amounts of detail.

With HTC’s excellent Sense software built on top of Windows Phone, you’ll rarely need to call upon the still-disappointing interface offered by Microsoft’s smartphone software: the Home screen defaults to a weather summary, complete with raindrops if that matches your weather (which it picks up courtesy of the GPS radio built into the device).

Swish your finger and you’ll jump to the next screen, whether that’s the web browser, including support for YouTube videos, or a set of your favourite apps. Though this does highlight a weakness that HTC can’t overcome: compared to the immense number of applications available for the iPhone, all of which meet Apple’s stringent quality control, the offering from Windows Marketplace is wafer-thin.

Then again, as Microsoft would argue, you get seamless synchronisation with Windows XP, Vista and 7, plus you benefit from all the mobile versions of Microsoft Office.

We haven’t had the opportunity to test the HD2’s battery life as fully as we’d like yet, but indications are that it will last for only a day or two of moderate use – and bearing in mind how often you’ll want to jump on the internet, take photos and generally show off, we suspect most will want to use the HD2 more than moderately. At least it charges via MicroUSB rather than a proprietary connector.

The final two comparisons versus the iPhone are price and storage. For storage, the HD2 loses out. It only comes with 512MB of ROM and 448MB of RAM, compared to the 8GB or 16GB of storage you get with an iPhone; you can expand the HD2’s storage via the microSD slot.

On price, it’s safe to say there’s far more choice when choosing the HD2, where the free market – the fact the HD2 is available from any mobile operator, not Apple’s chosen few – means you can get the HD2 for “free” from £26 per month. Note, though, that you’ll want to opt for a contract with Mobile Internet thrown in.

It’s too early for us to give our definitive verdict – we want to test the Touch HD2 far more thoroughly – but from this excellent start we’re convinced the HD2 will push the iPhone even more closely than the already impressive HDC Touch HD.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a very similar handset to the X1, boasting a sliding hardware Qwerty keyboard, and an ingenious mechanism that kicks the screen up at an angle so it’s more comfortable to view while typing. It does so with a satisfying snap, too.

There are differences, however. The phone is much slimmer than the X1, looks less angular and feels much lighter in the hand too. It’s much more of a convincing phone than the X1 was.

As it’s a Windows Phone handset, it’s hardly surprising to find that the X2 boasts a resistive rather than a capacitive touchscreen. That’s disappointing, but there are some factors that may compensate. The resolution of the 3.2in screen is extremely high – 800 x 480 – promising comfortable web browsing with the onboard Internet Explorer browser.

The keyboard feels a lot less fiddly than last time too. Each key seems broader, and the click feels more distinct too. And to aid navigation, the X2 also comes equipped with a small thumb-sized touchpad below the screen.

The X2, as with most Windows Phones we’ve seen so far, has replaced the standard Microsoft home screen with its own, which combines weather, clock message notifications and calendar information.

Underneath this, Sony Ericsson is persisting with its 3D panel interface, and its selection of mismatched alternative interfaces. We found this confusing last year and slow too. It seemed a little nippier in the X2 but it remains to be seen if it works any better.

One standout feature is the 8.1-megapixel camera – one of the highest resolutions we’ve seen on a smartphone to date – and this boasts autofocus, LED flash, touch focus and image stabilisation.

Video shooting, meanwhile, runs to 800 x 480 footage at 25fps. Again those are impressive numbers, as you might expect from a firm famed for its consumer camera phones.

Needless to say the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 also boasts a full armoury of smartphone weaponry too. Data connectivity includes HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1. There’s also GPS, naturally, for use with the preloaded Google Maps, and a 3.5mm headphone socket.

The Xperia X2 is set to launch exclusively with Vodafone before the end of the year. And as soon as we get our hands on a sample we’ll post a full review.

But at the same time, I do wonder how on earth it manages to score so many own goals. The Windows Mobile Marketplace is just the latest example.

This is Microsoft’s answer to the iPhone App Store and the Android Marketplace, and it forms the cornerstone of Microsoft’s strategy for its consumer smartphone OS – the newly-launched Windows Phone (aka Windows Mobile 6.5), (click to read the full review).

Or rather, it should.

With thousands of applications already existing for Windows Mobile via the traditional download and install route, you’d think Microsoft would (for once) have been able to hit the ground running. Yet at the launch of Windows Phone this morning, the total number of apps in the Marketplace was well short of 100. Shocking.

I asked Microsoft representative Kevin Keith why this was, and after promising that there would be more coming soon, he admitted that it was, rather than developers’ reluctance, “more about us opening things up later than we had hoped.”

Further questioning revealed that, despite all the hype, the registration process for developers only began in July. Given that we’ve been talking about the launch of 6.5 for a year now, it seems incredible that the process has started so late.

Even more astonishing than this, however, was to discover that Microsoft only began the process of approving applications for the Marketplace in September, a mere month before the official worldwide launch.

It’s hardly surprising that apps are so thin on the ground.

The good news is that, over the past 24 hours we’ve seen 20 more apps added, bringing the total to 60.

At that rate it will only take another 11 years and six months before Windows Phone apps match the number of iPhone apps today.