MWC 2012: HTC Unveils Ice Cream Sandwich-Powered ‘One’ Series

Taiwanese manufacturer HTC has announced the new One Series of smartphones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The One X, One S and One V handsets represent an attempt at consolidating HTC’s range and all boast improved audio quality and camera functionality.

Audio and video emphasis

The new line will be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4 and will integrate Beats Audio like last year’s Sensation XE. HTC claims that its new feature ImageSense, using the company’s ImageChip, will provide superfast capture in 0.7 seconds, with an autofocus of 0.2 seconds. The upgraded camera functionality also allows users to take photos whilst capturing video. In addition, all three phones will come with 25GB of free Dropbox storage.

“The best moments in life are captured with a photo or remembered by a song, so it was key for the HTC One series to improve these emotional experiences with an amazing camera and authentic sound experience,” said HTC CEO Peter Chou in a statement.

“We are very focused on creating a camera and audio experience customers will love and use often and we believe the HTC One series delivers this in a way never seen on a phone before.”

The One Series’ flagship phone is the quad-core One X. Like LG’s high-powered Optimus 4X HD, also scheduled to appear in Barcelona, the phone features Nvidia’s Tegra 3 ‘4-Plus-1’ 1.5GHz processor, which uses four main cores and one low-power core to improve battery life. Designed to be lightweight, the One X has a polycarbonate unibody available in either white or grey. Other key features include 1GB of RAM, 32GB of inbuilt storage and a 4.2 inch 720p S-LCD Gorilla Glass display.

The One S is being touted by HTC as a compact high-end handset and boasts a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor and 4.3 inch AMOLED display. The metal body of the One S is only 7.9mm at its thinnest point and comes in two special finishes, one of which uses a microarc oxidation (MAO) process used in developing satellites, making the surface four times harder than anodised aluminium.

HTC’s cheapest offering of the three, the One V, is based on the HTC Legend and will have a 3.7 inch display and 1GHz single core processor. HTC said that the devices should be out globally by April and will be carried by Virgin, Everything Everywhere, 3G, O2, Virgin and Vodafone in the UK.

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