HTC Brings Back the Boom (Sound)

BARCELONA—Boom! While I liked HTC's smooth, slim HTC One A9 phone more than than I idea I would, information technology was missing ane of the design-focused telephone-maker's signature features: front-facing speakers. Today at Mobile Globe Congress, HTC appear four new phones—one with front end-facing speakers and the other three with a unique splatter-painted design.

MWC Bug Art I'k going to start with the lower-end ones, considering they're more likely to come to the U.Due south. The HTC Desire 530, 630, and 825 are bones Android phones. The 530 has a low-cease Snapdragon 210 processor, and the other two are running Snapdragon 400s. While the 530 and 630 accept v-inch 720p screens, the 825'southward 5.5-inch 720p screen is going to look rather grainy. The 530 has 8-megapixel and v-megapixel cameras, the 630 has 13-megapixel and 8-megapixel, and the 825 has 13-megapixel and 5-megapixel, oddly plenty. Specs, specs, specs.

That last bit isn't a placeholder for specs. It's to highlight that specs aren't the point: it'south the blueprint. The polycarbonate Desire models are grayness and white, with a "random" arrangement of paint splatters across the case, footling dots looking like a field of stars. Each phone is unique, HTC says, created by substantially passing the phone cases under a sputtering paint sprayer as they laissez passer along the assembly line. HTC had a bunch of them, and yeah, they all had a different arrangement of dots. The idea is that instead of a phone with similar specs that looks like a generic black box, you'll pick something that's genuinely unique.

HTC Desire Paint-Splattered Phones

The models HTC announced here at MWC aren't U.Southward. units, simply our carriers picked upwards a lot of terminal year'south lower-end HTCs, with Desire 520s and 626es available widely through the U.S. I think these phones will exist bachelor to u.s. at pretty affordable prices.

The HTC One X9 (below, left, side by side to Want 530) will likely never come to the U.S., though. That'southward the Boomsound phone, an all-metal device in black, white, gold, and pink with dual front end-facing speakers. It also has a Mediatek Helio X10 processor, Mediatek'south attempt at competing with some of Qualcomm's college-end designs. I'm not going to go into the farther specs, considering the model is festooned with signs that information technology'southward China-focused, most notably in supporting Cathay's weird TD-SCDMA networks and none of our LTE bands.

HTC One X9 and Desire 530

All of the new phones run Android 6.0 Marshmallow with HTC'south Sense overlay. I used to think Sense was heavy until companies like Huawei and now LG really messed with Android'south UI past ripping out the app drawer; now, I call up Sense is relatively conservative in terms of manufacturer skins.

Will these little guys become HTC anywhere? At an HTC printing result, Graham Wheeler, HTC's Product and Service Manager for EMEA, said that smartphones are the core of the visitor's concern, "where we've honed our design and innovation skills." HTC makes quality products that carriers find to be reliable and easy to beloved, and their design skills are still a step beyond more popular rivals like Alcatel and ZTE. (It's in the fit and finish.)

Only that hasn't helped HTC notice profits in smartphones recently, as they're suffering from the tragedy of the middle: Android buyers are either choosing cheaper, adept-enough alternatives (primarily from Alcatel and ZTE), going to much bigger brands with broader portfolios (LG and Samsung) or, occasionally, fixating on a boutique maker like OnePlus. HTC, like Motorola, isn't standing out—even though it makes excellent phones.

The new Desire phones will ringlet out globally this March. Await them to show upwardly on U.S. carriers in April or May, if they practice.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.