Music-centric phone coming in the first half of the year from HTC?

A tweet sent out by master leaker evleaks reveals that HTC is working on a music-centric phone that will be released in the first half of 2014. This would be the first such model to be offered by the Taiwan based manufacturer since it launched the the HTC Rezound in November 2011. Back then, the Rezound offered some of the top specs available on an Android phone. The unit was equipped with a 4.3 inch screen, and was the first panel to have a 720 x 1280 resolution. At the time, the handset had an industry leading 341 ppi pixel density, and was powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 with 1GB of RAM on board.

What got everyone excited about the phone was the audio quality of the Rezound, which came equipped with the Beats Audio earbuds and the cool red licorice styled cables. It also was the first handset to include Beats Audio support, which was a fancy equalizer that pumped up the bass on the phone.

Despite plenty of pre-release excitement over the HTC Rezound, the phone never lived up to its promise. Right off the bat, static interference coming on the headphones hurt sales of the device. While the Taiwan based manufacturer called it the best phone it ever made at that point in time, Verizon customers were turned off by the interference issues and other problems with the phone.

If the tweet is right, HTC obviously believes that the time is ripe to launch a music-centric phone again. This time around though, there is no deal with Beats Audio for HTC to capitalize on. And with the M8 expected to command most of the manufacturer's attention right now, it should be very interesting to see what the Taiwan based company has in mind.


source: @evleaks