Briefest of Hands-on with the Touch HD

Well, folks, the Touch HD blew through our office last night, so we were able to have a hands-on with it for the briefest of moments. It was fleeting, really, and as you can see from the video, we're a little shook up from the experience.

The screen was big and bright (at 800x480, it should bd) and most of all responsive. TouchFlo 3D was big and bold and worked as well as it does on the Fuze and the Sprint Touch Diamond -- which is to say pretty darn well. Our only gripes were with the full QWERTY Keyboard (it's not quite there yet) and the fact that the soft-buttons are so close to the main touch 'button zones' on the bottom that we occasionally hit one instead of t'other.

While we're no market segment experts, it certainly seems to us that the Touch HD would have had a sportin' chance here in the US. Maybe HTC blinked when they thought about average consumers comparing it too directly to the iPhone, given that at the end of the day it's still jarring to switch between TouchFlo 3D and the standard WM interface. Maybe AT&T put the kaibosh on it. Maybe, at the end of the day, they figured they wouldn't sell enough of them to justify the development costs, but we know our team would have been good for a few purchases.

Alas, it's not to be. As you know, HTC confirmed via Twitter that they have no plans to bring the Touch HD to these shores:

sad news, US. we looked into it- by the time we could bring Touch HD to the states, it would be old news. we do have other cool stuff coming

We're going to focus on the “cool stuff” -- because we try not to think about what might have been.