Details Leaked On HTC Desire Mark II

Product details about the successor to the popular HTC Desire smartphone have been leaked on the blog of a UK retailer.

According to Supertrader, the new handset has been dubbed the HTC Desire HD (Ace) and will come with 4.3-inch WVGA touchscreen (bigger than the 3.7-inch AMOLED Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode touchscreen of the Desire).

The handset is also reported to come with an 8-megapixel camera with HD (720p) video recording capabilities, 1GHz Qualcomm CPU, Android 2.2 OS, support for Flash, Xvid, SRS Surround, an ebook reader feature, and 4GB internal memory (expandable to 36GB).

There were no pictures of the new device, but the body of the phone will feature an “aluminium unibody design” like the one that is used on the HTC Legend.

Supertrader quoted rumours that the HTC Desire HD (Ace) will be released October 2010.

Desirable Desire

How Supertrader gathered this information is unclear as it quoted “leaks all over the internet”, so it remains to be seen how reliable this information is.

Certainly, it would be strange for HTC to launch a successor so soon after the arrival of the Desire, which HTC launched at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this February, with a formal launch in the UK in March.

The HTC Desire, like the HTC Evo 4G, have gained good reviews in the US, and the Desire handset has been previously described as the unbranded sister phone of Google’s Nexus One (notably replacing the trackball of the Nexus One). Google boss Eric Schmidt said recently that the search engine giant is not working on a successor to the Nexus One.

Apple Lawsuits

HTC is meanwhile locked in a bitter legal tussle with Apple at the moment, after Apple alleged that HTC infringed 20 patents related to the iPhone’s interface, architecture and hardware. It also filed a second lawsuit in June against HTC, alleging that HTC infringed two additional patents not mentioned in its original suit in early March.

HTC filed a suit of its own on 12 May with the International Trade Commission (ITC). The suit accuses Apple of infringing on five HTC-owned patents, and requested that the ITC prevent Apple from selling its iPhone, iPad and iPod devices in the United States. Some feel that Apple’s legal actions are in reality aimed at Google.

That said, HTC has been on something of a roll lately thanks to its backing of Google’s Android, after the company announced a 33 percent rise in profits to $268 million (£176m) for the second quarter of 2010.