HTC held a press conference today to announce a few new products that will definitely expand the Android presence in the smart phone sphere. For those of you that have decided to go the way of the Android, HTC has announced that it will introduce two new handsets into the smartphone sphere. The first handset is the Desire HD, which will have a 4.3-inch screen, run Android 2.2 and will be fueled by a 1GHz 8255 Snapdragon processor. It will also have a, now standard, 8-megapixel camera and use HTC's Sense UI.
The second handset announced is called the Desire Z and it will, essentially, be a re-imagined version of the G2 with an 800MHz Qualcomm processor, 3.7-inch display and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The handset will also come with an 8-megapixel camera and HTC's Sense UI.
Both devices will be available sometime in October, though it's not yet clear if they'll hit the United States.
The company also announced that it will launch HTCSense.com, which many are pegging as a rival to Apple's MobileMe cloud service. The new service will add on to HTC's Sense user interface and supposedly make the phone smarter, depending on how you use it. For example, if you dump the phone into your messenger bag and it's ringing, the ringer will go louder or softer based on the environment surrounding the phone.
HTC is also introducing a few features that might even sound a little familiar. Unified inboxes, anyone? Yep, HTC's bringing 'em to their new phones so that users don't have to switch between email services. Additionally, users will also be able to send messages to the phone and remotely lock the device or wipe it clear of sensitive data should it be lost or stolen--just like Apple's Find My iPhone. And, HTC is even including their own proprietary e-book reader on the device, much like Apple's own iBooks.
The new service from HTC is, essentially, what the Android phones should have had a long time ago. These new features might even give Mac users who were thinking of switching cell phone providers another reason to consider a mobile phone outside of the Apple sphere. However, the similarities are ridiculously uncanny, and perhaps a little too late. Plus, older HTC handsets aren't supported. Though the service is free, it's tough to say if it will really be a worthy competitor to Apple's own cloud ecosystem.
And in a last bit of HTC news, the company is also planning on launching a tablet PC in the first quarter of 2011 that might be equipped with the next iteration of Android.
It's safe to say that Android is Apple's biggest competitor in the mobile market. So much so, that the company is actually borrowing a few of Apple's bright ideas for their own handsets.
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