BARCELONA – HTC unveiled three updated versions of its most popular smartphones, the Desire S, Wildfire S and Incredible S. Featuring the company’s Sense user interface for mobile devices running Google Android, Brew and Windows Mobile, the phones will be broadly available to customers across major European and Asian markets in the second quarter.
As a successor to the Desire, the Desire S is inspired by the company’s Legend smartphone’s aluminum design; the Desire S is sculpted out of a single block of aluminum. Powered by Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon MSM8255 processor, the handset offers dual front and back cameras, high-definition video recording and a 3.7-inch WVGA touch-screen display.
The Wildfire S builds on the concepts embodied by the earlier version of the handset, offering social-networking features like the ability to tag friends in photos before posting them on Facebook or share discovered applications found in Android Market. The Wildfire S is one of HTC’s smallest phones ever-measuring just 4 inches long and less than 2.5 inches wide-and boasts a 3.2-inch HVGA display.
Users can choose from a variety of colors, including black, purple and white. The phone’s home screen is fully customizable for organizing favorite applications, widgets and content. A 5-megapixel color camera with auto focus, expandable microSD memory and support for a variety of audio and video formats round out the multimedia offerings.
Rounding out the selection is the Incredible S smartphone, which features a stylish, contoured body that highlights the internal hardware components of the device. Capturing and viewing video in high-definition is possible, and a bright 4-inch WVGA Super LCD display and stereo surround sound offer an enhanced handheld multimedia experience.
The Incredible S also features an 8-megapixel camera with dual flash, and it enables videos, photos and music to be shared from the handset direct to a TV using DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) technology. Thanks to the handset’s front-facing camera and video-call functionality, users are also able to chat with their friends and colleagues face-to-face.
“HTC developed the HTC Sense experience to bring cutting-edge innovation to our customers in simple and natural ways that just make sense; this is what Desire S, Wildfire S and Incredible S represent best,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corp. “These new phones offer an exhilarating mix of style, innovation and features that extend people’s mobile experience in ways that feel personal and completely original.”
The update complements the announcement of two HTC smartphones also debuting at this year’s conference, the ChaCha and Salsa handsets, which offer one-touch Facebook connectivity. Facebook messages and conversations are integrated within the phone and appear within text and e-mail inboxes alongside regular conversations. When a user makes a phone call, the dialer screen displays the friend’s latest status and photos, and if their birthday is approaching.