There’s touchscreens, then there’s touchscreens. If you know what we mean. You don’t? Hmm. Okay, so there’s some touchscreens that have been added to phone’s in a kind of last minute way. A bit like when someone realises at the last minute that the party they’re going to is a fancy dress party. You know the type. They’re looking sheepish in the corner, trying to explain to someone that the piece of foil stapled to their shirt and paper-clipped to their ear lobes is because they’re from outer space. The point being, some touchscreens just have FAIL written across them from the very first caress.

The HTC Hero, however, has a screen that screams WIN from a distance. From a very small distance, as it goes, but it screams it very loudly indeed. Why is that? How does three reasons sound to you? First, it’s been designed from scratch, with the user in mind, not transported from the same software used to run a now discarded physical keyboard. That means it just plain works, just plain makes sense, and that’s good enough for us. Second, it’s a capacitive screen, meaning that it’s about as sensitive, responsive and downright right as a touchscreen gets (capacitive screens work by sensing the electrical currents in your fingers, meaning that you don’t even need to touch it – just get very very close – and that the more/less you touch it, the more/less it responds. Third, and this is our favourite: the keyboard presses back when you press the keys. So, as your typing, the keys – somewhat like real keys – seem to be offering resistance. How cool is that?! So there we have it, the HTC Hero features a touchscreen made 100% of win.

Oh, and, well, yes, I guess there’s lots of other things going on with the phone… 5mp camera… yadda-yadda… some kind of new interface… blah blah… Teflon… Teflon?! Oh dear… you should probably read this official product overview or even this HTC Hero review for some less touchscreen fetish thoughts. Or just have a looksy at this video.

Like those people who believe writing things out by hand or on typewriters is better than writing on a computer, those people who believer phones should come with full-QWERTY physical keyboards are, well, just plain wrong. They may deny it, they may even spit in your eye for suggesting it, but you can hankie out the phlegm happy in the knowledge that you are right, they are wrong, and that’s the end of it.

And it seems like HTC have cottoned on to the fact, because the HTC Magic, the follow-up to the first-ever Android-running phone, the keyboard-sporting G1, has done away with its keyboard. Huzzah, we say, whilst sticking our middle finger up towards the tweed-jacket wearing keyboard supporters as they weep into their pints of CAMRA-supported real ale. Because the HTC Magic is 100%, absolutely, completely, undeniably better for the addition… or the subtraction, as it were. It’s far, far lighter (coming in at a bikini-friendly 116g, just in time for summer). It’s slimmer, a Special-K-tastic 13.6mm, no more or less. And, the fantastic touchscreen thingie that’s replaced it is great. Boo-hoo Mr Keyboard Fiddler, it might take you all of four minutes to get used to the sensation of touching a screen rather than pounding some poor defenseless key. Waaaa, Mr Caps Lock Caresser, your fat fingers are too fat for the portrait mode… then flip it you imbecile, because this keyboard does what your favoured thing can’t – it rotates to fit the screen whichever way you turn it. And, thanks to the G-sensor, you can turn the Magic anyway you want, even upside down.

Anyway, that’s our keyboard-based rant over. Got to get that out of the system once a month at least. What’s that? You want more specs? More details? Bah! You’re so demanding. Check out the HTC Official page for some opinionated guff, or check out this HTC Magic Review, for some slightly different opinionated guff.