Now that Uncle Walt has gone and opened the floodgates, details are starting to pour in on Sprint's imminent release of the Touch Diamond, a device that should actually manage to get the carrier damn close to the top of the Windows Mobile pile (for a short while, anyway). PC Magazine is now reporting that it'll be available on September 14 for $249.99 on a two-year contract after $100 rebate, a sum that would put it squarely in the "average" category for on-contract smartphone pricing in these parts. Of course, with the Touch Pro allegedly just around the corner, it remains to be seen just how much love this thing is going to get; nothing like a good, old-fashioned QWERTY-versus-touchscreen fight, is there?

It was only a matter of time before the WSJ (Katherine Boehret, in this case) got their hands around Sprint's still-not-official Touch Diamond, and we can't say that the conclusion she drew is at all shocking. As Mossberg and his partners so often do, Katherine mentions Apple's darling just as much as the topic of the review itself, and while she seemed impressed with the hardware, it was the software that suffered the brunt of her attacks. She proclaimed that "despite its handsome TouchFLO 3D software and animated icons, the device failed to disguise the frustrating interface of Windows Mobile often enough for [her] taste." Beyond that, she also found room to gripe about the "cramped" keyboard, which she felt was "next to impossible" to use with just her fingertips. On the plus side, she did give the browser a decent amount of praise, but if you were looking for support from this critic before picking up the forthcoming handset, you'll be sorely disappointed.

[Via phonescoop]

From the looks of it, Sprint has gone and gotten a decent chunk of its playbook leaked all over the interblogs, and it's chock-full of titillating information. Thanks to slippery fingers and loose lips, we already knew that the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro were headed to the carrier, but now we have some solid dates (mid-September for the Diamond, October 19th for the Pro), and pricing ($549.99 and $579.99 unsubsidized, $249.99 and $320 with contract). Of course, this is all according to the above document, which admittedly could be the work of an extremely bored Photoshopper -- but this jibes pretty tightly with a lot of other chatter we've been hearing.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Everything prior had been rumors, hearsay, speculation, and leaked documents -- but now that Sprint has something out in the open, it's going to be a whole hell of a lot more difficult to renege on that September time frame we'd all been pulling for. The carrier and partner Bluefish have thrown up a site taking names and email addresses to be notified when the Touch Diamond is available for purchase; no exact date is given (we wouldn't be surprised if Sprint still hadn't decided on that), but they do mention that it's "coming in September." That gives 'em a full 30 days to make good -- but if it just happened to roll out on September 2 like we'd originally heard, we don't think we'll be seeing too many complaints around here.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

It's still anybody's guess when the Touch Diamond will actually launch on Sprint, though the latest rumors suggest that it has once again been moved up to September 2 after initially being pushed back to October. The fact that promo materials are starting to show up would certainly support that theory, too, now wouldn't it?

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

We've been slipped a handy little document that indicates the dates that Sprint is currently targeting for the release of a few of its fall hotties, and although we already knew some of this stuff, it's always good to have some corroborating evidence in these situations. First up, the Motorola Renegade V950, i365, and Samsung M220 and M320 are all still apparently locked for September 2, as is the Touch Diamond. We've heard a groundswell of concern from tipsters that the Touch Diamond may have been bumped out to October -- it certainly wouldn't surprise us, given our jaded, overwhelmingly pessimistic personalities -- but here's hoping, anyway. It also looks like the just-released Katana Eclipse in silver will be getting pink and black siblings come October 16, along with an "LG LX600 Messaging Handset." We're not sure what the LX600 might be beyond what a confidentiality-bound FCC filing tells us, but the Rumor is getting a little long in the tooth, so it could conceivably be replacement device or a slightly higher-end QWERTY set that would sit somewhere above the Rumor in the lineup.

The bad news is that it looks like Sprint mucked a bit with the Touch Diamond's stellar trademark interface; the good news, though, is that they don't seem to have mucked with it much. A handful of pages from Sprint's upcoming headliner HTC release have leaked onto the web, showing Sprint Music Store integration with TouchFLO 3D, a dedicated Sprint TV tab, and automatic screen orientation, among other gems. Now all you've got to do is release the actual phone and we'll be all set -- right, Sprint? Right?

While multi-touch input might be all the rage in handhelds and laptop trackpads at the moment, alas, it's not on the feature list for HTC's latest Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. However, the capability is indeed present and exploited on video by HTC's own debug application. Even more interesting is the way that the handsets' entire front, capacitive surface (not just the 2.8-inch, 640 x 480 pixel display) can be used for multi-finger input. So like Dell's Latitude XT Tablet which launched multi-touch ready, expect to see future, multi-touch capabilities come to HTC's latest... someday. Click through for the vid.

It won't be the first launch in North America -- those honors go to Telus at this point -- but Sprint won't be far behind. A pretty believable new slide deck suggests that big ol' Number Three will take delivery of its Touch Diamonds in September and start hawking them for the princely sum of $299.99 on contract after rebates, netting customers a 3.2 megapixel cam, 4GB of internal storage, and EV-DO Rev. A, among all the other spoils that only Windows Mobile 6.1 can offer. Is the back end of it red? Can't really tell from this angle, but if the goal is to offer up a high-end business tool, we've gotta believe black will be available either way.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

While Sprint and Verizon consider final monikers for the HTC Touch Diamond, some North Americans are already enjoying the thing up in the Great North. The ecstatic folks over at Mobile Syrup were able to snap up Telus' version of the WinMo 6.1-packin' handset, and of course, they put together a video review for us Americans to drool over. The 7:15 clip includes a few comparison angles with other mobiles and a full walk-through of the user interface. Reviewers found the web browsing on Opera Mobile to be a real treat, and of course, they couldn't deny the awesomeness of the 640 x 480 resolution display. You can check the review in full just after the jump, but if you're easily made envious, we'd suggest you not.

We won't even front with you -- we have some serious doubts about this one, but with all those other red handsets that have emerged on Sprint over the years, we suppose that image above has a sliver of credence. We've no details whatever outside of two more shots of the red HTC Touch Diamond (or Victor, to be proper) in the read link, but these could very well be someone's best shot at using Photoshop to gain 15 minutes of internet fame. What say you, dear readers? Real or fake?

[Via Brighthand]

Okay, so officially, there's no such thing as a Touch Diamond that can hang on 850 or 1900MHz HSDPA networks -- key word there being "officially." The FCC knows better than that, and at least one eBayer looking for a little extra spending cash seems to as well. A fellow with a so-so 92.9 percent feedback rating claims to have the most elusive of Touch Diamond models in his possession, but wants to sell it and wait for the Touch Pro instead (can't say we blame him). Of course, from his perspective, it also helps that this thing is worth many times what it'll be worth in a few weeks, months, or years -- whenever it is that someone gets around to releasing this puppy in a slightly more official capacity. As always, caveat emptor in these sorts of situations.

[Thanks, Moe]

Folks never satisfied with ROMs as they are (we see those hands) can celebrate jovially, as version 1.93 for HTC's Touch Diamond has officially emerged. Said ROM was already available on the intarwebz, but this time it's ready for downloading at the handset maker's actual website for UK / Europe-based users. Reported improvements include "camera navigation, text alert speed, tab-switching speed and a new city selector in the weather tab to make it easier and quicker to choose your location." Give it a go and let us know how it turns out, would you?

[Via coolsmartphone]

There's no doubt that both of HTC's forthcoming handsets (yeah, the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro) are coming to Sprint and Verizon. What we're still curious about, however, are the respective launch dates and the eventual names. phoneArena has it that the Touch Diamond will go by HTC Victor on Sprint and HTC Diamond on Verizon, with the former packing a slightly speedier CPU, an aluminum frame, accelerometer, 4GB of internal memory and EV-DO Rev. A support. As for Verizon's, expect it to boast half the RAM (128MB), a wimpier CPU, microSD expansion slot and a stainless steel frame. Moving on, we're told that the Touch Pro will be rechristined HTC Herman for Sprint and HTC Raphael (nice to re-meet you!) for The Network. Finally, we're clued in on a September 2nd release date for Sprint's Victor, while the Herman is expected a month later. As for Verizon? It'll probably be 30 or so days behind in both instances thanks to a presumed exclusivity agreement with its nemesis. Get all that?