HTC used its London event on Tuesday to unveil a new flagship Android phone, the Sensation. It packs the same dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor as the Evo 3D we tried last month as well as the 4.3-inch, 540×960 display, but with a more conventional design. HTC is using a regular 2D display and packs a single eight-megapixel, 1080P-capable camera on the back.
The phone still has the front 1.3-megapixel camera for chat and brings in the same mixture of Android 2.3 and Sense 3.0, which brings in a smart lock screen: users can launch favorite apps from the lock screen just by dragging an icon for it to a launcher ring. It also brings a certain amount of pre-supplied information like weather or the Friend Stream and has badges to show the mail count. Sense also carousel of home screens as well as video with tap-to-focus, stereo audio, and simple on-device movie editing.
The phone carries 768MB of RAM. Just 4GB of storage is built-in, but an 8GB microSDHC card will come bundled with most versions.
HTC’s promised Watch service is coming and will let users buy or rent movies to stream directly to a phone or tablet.
The phone talks to 3G networks at up to 14.4Mbps and will,come to T-Mobile. Its version will be badged as the Sensation 4G and switch over to the carrier’s 1,700MHz 3G bands for a summer debut.
Europeans will be the first to get the Sensation in any form and should pick it up in May or June, starting on Vodafone. Asia and other regions should get the flagship soon.
