Those lucky guys at Gizmodo got a chance to play around with not just one, but three of HTC's latest beauties; namely the HTC Touch 3G, HTC Touch Viva (formerly known as the Opal), and my personal favorite, the HTC Touch HD.

The HTC Touch 3G is just an upgraded version of the Touch. It’s slightly thinner, taller, and faster than its predecessor and now features 3G.

The HTC Touch Viva, on the other hand, might deceive you into believing it’s a Touch, but it's actually a downgraded version with only a 2D TouchFLO UI instead of 3D but nonetheless pretty responsive, and features only a plastic film on the display replacing the hard glass. It’s intended for developing markets so it probably won’t be available in all regions across the globe.

Now, the new big boy on the block, the HTC Touch HD carries most of the features we’ve already mentioned in an earlier post, and looks every bit the part of a worthy iPhone contender. The 3.8-inch display is definitely much larger than the 3.5-inch screen on the iPhone, and as a result of the bumped up specs, the TouchFLO interface is impressively fast.

Unfortunately, according to the Gizmodo folks, typing on the on-screen keyboard was better, but still not as good as the iPhone despite the larger screen. Sad, but I guess that's the result of the software failing to be at par with the hardware. Aside from the iPhone, it looks to be a good match-up against the soon-to-be-released Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1.

[source]