iPhone is still one month away, but the traditional mobile phone makers are already prepared to compete with Apple’s latests gadget. Today, HTC joined the the touch-screen mobile war with a Windows Mobile-based smartphone, HTC Touch.

Similar to iPhone, HTC Touch includes TouchFLO, a proprietary touch screen technology developed by HTC. Consumers simply sweep their finger up 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 efficient access to the features consumers use most. TouchFLO also enhances finger touch scrolling and browsing of Web pages, documents, messages and contact lists.

“With the HTC Touch, access to your most commonly used content, contacts and features is only a simple finger flick away,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer of HTC. “Mobile phone makers have done a great job of cramming ever-more exciting features into ever-smaller phones. But the way in which one accesses these increasingly sophisticated features has not kept pace. That ends today with the HTC Touch.”

As technical specs, HTC Touch offers a 2.8” LCD touch screen with backlight, a 240 x 320 dots resolution with 65,536 colours and a 2.0 mega-pixel CMOS colour camera.

It weighs only 112g with battery and, according to HTC, has a standby time up to 200 with a talk time up to 5 hours.

The HTC Touch is now available in the United Kingdom and will be released later this month in Asia and throughout Europe.

Two weeks after iPhone was announced , LG Electronics and Prada have presented a touch-screen mobile comparable to the Apple iPhone. "An extra-wide LCD screen maximizes visual impact, allowing the user to benefit from several key features of the phone, including the 2-megapixel camera featuring Schneider-Kreuznach lens, video player and document viewer capacity," the manufacturer said. The phone also has an integrated MP3 player, and the internal 8-megabyte memory can be upgraded via the external memory slot.

Another phone maker, Samsung, has joined Apple and LG into the club of touchscreen mobile phones manufacturers. The company unveiled the F700 handset, which is the only one of the three to support the latest mobile network. The phone is the first that is compatible with 3G (third generation) WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) in addition to conventional GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). It also works with the companion HSDPA and EDGE data transmission systems so, on 3G networks, it can receive data at up to 7.2Mbps (bits per second).

The phone features a 2.8-inch 440x240 screen to control calling, internet access, and music functions. Media playback support includes multiple AAC audio formats, Real, and variants of MPEG-4 including H.264.

Samsung's Ultra Smart F700 also includes VibeTonz, a vibration system introduced in the recent W559 that simulates tactile feedback to touchscreen presses.