HTC have announced a budget Android smartphone which manages to cut rather a dash, sporting a design reminiscent of the mighty HTC One.
It’s a wee slip of a thing at 107.7 x 60.8 x 11.9mm – not that much bigger than a credit card – and it won’t weigh your pocket down either, tipping the scales at just 100g.
The 3.5″ screen supports a very modest resolution of just 480 x 320, while inside a single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 1Ghz processor backed by 512MB of RAM endeavours to keep things moving along smartly.
Despite its low end status, HTC have added Beats Audio processing, while the 34mm, f2.8 5-megapixel rear-mounted camera looks better than you might expect.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are present and correct, while the removable 1,230mAh battery promises 3G talktime of up to 7.4 hours and a standby time of up to 821 hours.
Running an unspecified version of Android with HTC Sense on top, the device comes with 4GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot offering up to 32GB expansion.
There’s no pricing details yet, but those specs – particularly that low-res screen -say this is going to right at the bottom of the price range.
It’s available in Taiwan from 19th July, with a global rollout following.
Specs:
CPU SPEED
Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ S1, 1GHzPLATFORM ANDROID
Android™ with HTC Sense™SIM CARD TYPE
Regular SIMMEMORY
Total storage : 4GB, available capacity varies1RAM : 512MB DDR
Expansion card slot supports microSD™ memory card for up to 32GB additional storage (card not included)NETWORK2
2G/ 2.5G – GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
850/900/1800/1900 MHz
3G/ 3.5G – UMTS/ HSPA:
900/2100 MHz with HSDPA up to 7.2 MbpsGPS
GPS/AGPSSENSORS
Accelerometer
Proximity sensor
Ambient light sensorCONNECTIVITY
3.5 mm stereo audio jack
Compliant with Bluetooth® 4.0
Bluetooth® 4.0 with aptX™ enabled
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g/nCAMERA
5 MP camera with fixed focus
F2.8 aperture and 34 mm lens
VGA video recordingSOUND ENHANCEMENT
Studio-quality sound with Beats Audio™
High fidelity tangle-free headset with built-in MicrophoneMULTIMEDIA
Audio supported formats:
Playback: .aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9)
Recording: .amr
Video supported formats:
Playback: .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv (Windows Media Video 9), .avi (MP4 ASP and MP3)
Recording: .mp4BATTERY
Removable & rechargeable Li-ion batteryCapacity : 1230 mAh
Talk time:
Up to 7.4 hours for WCDMA
Up to 10.9 hours for GSM
Standby time:
Up to 821 hours for WCDMA
Up to 693 hours for GSMAC ADAPTER
Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240 V AC, 50/60 HzDC output: 5 V and 1 A
had one for a week it was rubbish, battery life was awful and got worse over the week with a climax of loosing a full charge while I had a six hour sleep. No magnetic sensor, no camera flash, bottom navigation buttons do not illuminate, web browsing was pretty pointless despite it linking in with my tabs and bookmarks on my home pc, the gmail interface was nice but running two accounts caused it not to give timely alerts on the second account. very slow and laggy processor leading to miss-dialed calls when selecting from the recent calls list (ie the top call would change as it updated as you pressed it) there must be something better than this at this price point.