HTC to bring souped-up Sense to handbag handset
Rhyme and reason
HTC has officially unveiled the Rhyme, a sleek handset that comes with the company's freshly updated Sense platform.
The Rhyme arrives flaunting a 3.7in display and 5Mp stills'n'video camera as well as a front-facing 0.3Mp webcam. It packs 4GB of storage and 768MB of Ram.
The phone runs a 1GHz Qualcomm CPU with Android 2.3, layered up with the next generation of Sense. This packs an all-new home screen that seeks to keep everything uncluttered and organised. So HTC says, at any rate.
As well as tangle-free headphones and a nifty docking station, there's a little thing called the 'Rhyme Charm' thrown in the box. This is a small glowing cube which attaches to the handset with a cable and dangles out of a bag for easy access and to present phone notifications through coloured lights.
With its thin curvy form factor and aforementioned accessories, the HTC Rhyme is clearly pitched towards those with handbags. It comes in three colours - "clearwater", "hourglass", and "plum" - and is penned for global release this October.
Retailer Clove claims the handset will be available Sim-free on 8 October. It will then be offered through O2 from 17 October in an exclusive colour profile. Pricing is yet to be announced, but pre-order pages will surface soon. ®
COMMENTS
Charm
OK. Why can't I have a keyring or something that does the same as their glowie phone charm? The teeny tiny LED on my Desire is so hard to see it is useless; same on my G1 before that.
My first phone was a brick of a Sagem back in '99 that had a really bright multicolour LED on the top. It was really easy to see when I had a text without waking the phone up. and I've missed it on every phone i've had since.
Sense 3 and now Sense 3.5 - upgrade older phones?
I remember when the Sensation came out with Sense 3 (I think..) and it was mentioned that the Desire HD couldn't handle it because it needed a dual-core CPU. This was obviously shullbit from HTC and most knew it as such. Now this new Sense 3.5 has all the same functionality of Sense 3 with a few little extras thrown in and it's on a phone that has practically identical specs to the Desire HD.
Will the Desire HD see any sign of Sense 3.5? I doubt it. Will HTC admit that the Desire HD could run it easily? Hell no. Customers remember how you treat them and if HTC had any real sense (hah!) they'd upgrade phones that are capable of running it for as long as possible. This is what a customer remembers and that is what earns repeat business. They don't go out and buy a newer phone for a few new features when most are tied into 18 month or longer contracts, not unless they're quite well off.
Will they come out with a version for men call "Reason"?
