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More Carrier Love for HTC's Touch Smartphone

Already available from Sprint and Alltel, HTC has apparently found a third home for its trendy (2-million units shipped and counting) Touch smartphone in the U.S. It will soon be picked up by Verizon Wireless, the country's second largest mobile operator behind AT&T Wireless, according to new pictures and diagrams circulating on the Web.

Rather than calling this smartphone the Touch, Verizon is supposedly going to market the Touch as the XV6900. And rather than coming dark grey like the Sprint and Alltel editions, it seems the Verizon verison will be white.

In addition to Windows Mobile 6, a 2 megapixel camera and similar, if not exactly the same, specifications as the other carriers' Touch models, it looks like the Verizon model will add a GPS receiver (to support location-based services) as well.

No word on whether Verizon's Touch model is closer in size to the slimmer version Alltel carries or the chubbier edition Sprint offers. The addition of GPS makes the latter the likelier candidate, we think.

As with the iPhone, the chief means of interaction between a Touch and a user is through the smartphone's touch screen and the user's fingers.

The key ingredient in all HTC's Touch smartphones is the ODM's proprietary TouchFLO technology, which essentially grafts an advanced touch interface onto theWindows Mobile graphical user interface.

TouchFLO is capable of recognizing and responding to the sweep of a finger across a screen.

The technology is even supposed to be intelligent enough to distinguish between finger and stylus input and then respond accordingly. Sweep your fingers across the display to launch an animated, three-dimensional interface comprising three screens: Contacts, Media and Applications.

The interface can be spun by swiping a finger right or left across the display, providing what appears to be easier access to these features for consumers than a normal Windows Mobile interface for most.

Although Apple sold twice as many iPhones, hitting the 4 million mark last year, HTC's moving of a couple of million Touch smartphones in basically same timeframe is an impressive achievement.

More Carrier Love for HTC's Touch Smartphone