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Billed as "a rival to the iPhone" by many, HTC's touch phone is another Windows Mobile

The really exciting feature of the new HTC smart phone has nothing to do with the Apple iPhone. It's not even the gesture based user interface; it's the appearance of the faster 11g flavour of WiFi which is pretty unusual in a smartphone.

If the inventors of Picsel's phone UI aren't hopping mad, they ought to be. They invented the gesture-driven phone three years ago, but only when a cheap imitation emerges from Apple, and then Microsoft, does the world sit up and take notice.

The story first appeared on CoolSmartPhone, ahead of the embargo; it was supposed to be a phone called the "Elf" - and within hours, the embargo was re-imposed. Too late! - Pocket Lint was off and running with the Fellowship of the Ring Tone. But now, it's official. Everything that PL said. Except the Elf bit...

The "rival to iPhone" angle seems to have spun out of the IDG group (PC World, TechWorld, and lotsofotherWorld titles) with a story by Dan Nystedt, of the IDG News Service. Nystedt, almost certainly the victim of an over-enthusiastic headline writer, went no further than highlighting the language of the press release, which described Microsoft's new "gesture based" user interface. He then went on to remark: "Apple has also highlighted touch screen features as a key reason to try out its iPhone, including scrolling through songs and movies on the 3.5-inch wide display."

Following this lead, the Washington Post described the launch as "HTC Introduces Touchy-Feely Cell Phone," and then sank into the iPhone hype-alike: "With its innovative touch-screen technology, the HTC Touch is poised to join the ranks of would-be iPhone killers."

The Post then unveiled a world exclusive: "The U.S. version of the Touch will support GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks on three GSM bands (900, 1800, and 1900 MHz), but that means you can't use it as a phone in Europe or the rest of the world, or on high-speed HSDPA networks" - a statement which will astonish those millions of 900 and 1800 MHz users in Europe and the rest of the world.

It went on to explain that "HSDPA is the much-faster successor to EDGE on GSM-based networks" - which will astonish all those who regard HSDPA as part of UMTS 3G technology, based on CDMA. The rest of us will have to wait to be astonished - presumably, by the survival of the iPhone itself.

Another "it's an iPhone!" response came from Mobile Tech Review who said: "They've created a new Today Screen that takes advantage of this new technology with large icons and gesture sensitive actions. It might not be an iPhone, but it surely sounds like a compelling improvement to Windows Mobile devices." And they promise a "first touch" review in a week or so.

Promises of reviews - and video - come from Matthew Miller, who pointed out the main difference between iPhone and Touch: you don't have to have an AT&T phone account to use the new HTC phone.