Both Samsung and Sony had a pretty busy opening day at the IFA 2012 in Berlin, which might have raised the bar of expectations for other companies present at the tradeshow. HTC, however, doesn’t seem to have many aces up its sleeve for the event, despite early rumors that HTC would come out with a “hero” phone at the event.
The first (but hopefully not last) gadget to be unveiled by HTC in Germany is a far from impressive budget-friendly phone which might get lost in the crowd if it won’t be priced correctly. The Desire X has been leaked for a while, has starred in a bunch of unofficial photos and has had an almost complete spec sheet since a couple of days ago.
Basically all the rumors were spot on, so there aren’t many things to surprise or shock us. As suspected, the Desire X will sport a 4-inch Super LCD WVGA screen with 800 x 480 pixels resolution. That might not sound like the greatest panel ever, but the guys at
The Verge, who’ve caught some alone time with the fresh new mid-ranger, are reporting it as “one of the nicest WVGA units we’ve seen.”
That seems to be due to the fact that HTC has used optical lamination technology found on the One X too, aiming to “bring the technology from the One Series to a more affordable price point.”
The Desire X is powered by a dual-core 1 GHz Qualcomm MSM8225 processor and features 768 MB of RAM, which is again a decent hardware configuration, but not the absolute best you could hope to find on a mid-ranger. The chip is a Snapdragon S4 “Play” reported to drain more battery life than the S4 “Plus” procs. That might well be a major hassle, especially that the battery is a rather modest 1,650 mAh unit.
However, HTC has straightened out one of their biggest errors with the One Series phones and has equipped the Desire X with a user-removable battery. The 4-incher’s 4 GB on-board memory could be yet another hassle, but there’s microSD support and 25 gigs of free Dropbox cloud storage to make up for that inconvenience.
The Desire X runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box with Sense UI on top (probably version 4.0), and comes with integrated Beats Audio sound enhancement, a 5 MP rear-facing shooter with autofocus, LED flash, HDR capture and continuous shooting. The camera is reported to be below average by The Verge, but we wouldn’t sweat it too much just yet, as the software on their test unit was “unfinished.”
In terms of design, the new handheld looks basically identical with what we saw in those early leaked pics, so expect a pretty elegant and slim little guy (measuring 9.69 mm thick) available in black and white. Unfortunately, that metallic frame around the camera is still there and kind of bugs us, especially at the white version of the Desire X.
HTC is keeping mum on the phone’s pricing and availability for now, although company officials have confirmed that the Desire X will go out in select European and Asian markets starting next month. It’s also very likely for the new 4-incher to be made available slightly cheaper than the One V, so a $250-280 price point is in the cards.
What do you guys think of this new budget-oriented phone from HTC? Is it a winner? And could we hope for more from the Taiwanese at this year’s IFA?
