There’s a brand-new HTC flagship smartphone on the horizon (yaaay!). But it’s designed for use with the metaverse (awwww!). It illustrates that whole ‘the gods give with one hand and take away with the other’ rather neatly, doesn’t it?

Once upon a time, back in the dim dawn of smartphone pre-history (2010), HTC fielded the most wanted smartphone in South Africa. That would be the HTC Desire, a phone so popular that the company brought it back last year. We think.

HTC on the buzzword bandwagon

Word on the street (for a given value of ‘street’) is that the Taiwanese brand is bringing a new flagship to market. It’ll be the first serious effort since 2018, which was a… strange time for the company. A dedicated blockchain smartphone? Who thought that was a good idea?

This new handset won’t include a dedicated crypto wallet (we think), but it will tie up with the company’s metaverse aims. Details as to which hardware is included in the unnamed phone are invisible, but it’ll work with Viveverse.

Viveverse, in case it isn’t obvious, is the company’s own open-source metaverse platform. The phone, which might see release as soon as April this year, will focus on augmented reality and virtual reality functions. The company can, at least, handle the latter environment fairly well. Even so, a metaverse-focused smartphone sounds much like the Exodus 1 blockchain phone. That is an interesting idea but one that may prove too niche to really have an impact.

Source: Digitimes (paywall) via GSMArena