HTC, the former Taiwanese flagship of mobile telephony, has not said its last word on the smartphone market. Indeed, a prototype was unveiled by a leak from Asia. According to the source, this phone is equipped with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, an SoC whose successor was unveiled by Qualcomm in March 2023. This phone will certainly never be marketed, but he confirms that HTC is still investing in telephony.
Does the HTC brand ring in your ears? For us, yes, of course. This is the former flagship of mobile telephony, made famous in the early 2010s thanks to its One and Desire ranges. Some will remember with nostalgia the original HTC One from 2013 or the excellent HTC One M9 from 2015. The HTC U12+ is the brand’s last high-end attempt in telephony before a shift towards the mid-range and cryptocurrencies ( with the HTC Exodus range in particular).
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Recently, HTC has failed in the smartphone market. The brand has launched Desire and Wildfire in Asia. These are only entry-level or mid-range phones. No ambitious phone has appeared in HTC’s catalog for 3 years. As proof, the only phone officially sold in France by the brand is the Desire 22 Pro, launched in June 2022 and based on a Snapdragon 695 and a 6.6-inch IPS display. It’s sold 329 euros.
A mysterious mid-range HTC prototype appears
If HTC does not seem to want to return to the very competitive high-end market, the firm nevertheless seems to be eyeing the segment ” mid-range premium where you find Xiaomi’s POCOs, Realme GT Neo or Vivo’s V range. We want proof of this by the appearance of a mysterious phone on a Chinese forum. A user claims to have purchased an HTC brand smartphone of which he has published some photos (including those accompanying this article). The model serial number is 2QC9100. And his trade name could have been HTC U23 Pro.
The technical sheet of the U23 Pro is rather balanced, In the center of that sits the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1a SoC that Qualcomm recently replaced with the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2. The SoC is here accompanied by 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage and a 4600 mAh battery compatible with wireless charging (and certainly fast charging).
Outside, we find a plastic shell, a Fingerprint reader on the side, a large screen with a central punch for the selfie sensor and a rectangular photo module. In this last, four goals are visible of which the main sensor is a model 108 megapixels. The others should be, in our experience, an ultra wide angle sensor, a macro sensor and a sensor for calculating distances.
This is clearly a prototype of a phone that will never see the light of day. But it shows that HTC continues to invest in telephony. Should we hope for a next offensive from the brand more ambitious than a Desire 22 Pro? Certainly not.
Source : ptt.cc
