Traditionally, with Windows Mobile 6.1 and earlier, the proposition from HTC and Microsoft is that you can either choose to have the HTC Touch FLO 3D layer or the classic Microsoft Today screen. It looks like with the recent announcement of designer themes at New York Fashion Week, Microsoft and HTC may be working more closely together to create a more tightly integrated experience, letting you have the main Windows Mobile 6.5 home screen as well as space for the TouchFLO 3D Manila bar at the bottom. One of our readers spotted the oddity of having both the Microsoft default start page for Windows Mobile 6.5 together with TouchFLO 3D.

TouchFLO3 is an HTC customization, or as HTC likes to call it the HTC Innovation, that presents a carousel at the bottom of the screen where users can go through different tabs to bring up quick information without launching applications. From the carousel on TouchFLO 3D, users can call up calendar appointments, see pictures, view contacts, check email, and glance at the weather forecast. Windows Mobile 6.5 presents all this information in a list on the main Today notifications screen rather than the horizontal carousel created by TouchFLO 3D.

While I think the mockup for designer themes may be just a mockup as having both the HTC and Microsoft implementations would be redundant and overkill, it is an interesting proposition that we’ll see confirmed from HTC in due time with devices with Windows Mobile 6.5 or with 6.5 upgrades. For now, I’m just going to call the rendering a mockup, demonstrating how themes will look under Windows Moble 6.5 in the default mode and with the TouchFLO 3D carousel on the bottom. The value proposition here is choice and we’re probably going to get an either-or rather than both.