HTC previously released multiple colors for other phones, my last phone was the HTC Touch, and it was in a different color for every cell carrier. A friend of mine got the extended battery and gave me his normal sized white back, it is smooth, not soft like the black, the only thing I can think of is either the piano key slick finish, more like the screen's smoothness than plastic. it actually looked pretty cool being half and half, and was unique, no one else had anything like it, even if they had the same phone. real easy to find when you have 4 friends with the same model cell as you. I however will be sticking with black, I like it, at least until I get the Seidio extended 3500mAh battery...