HTC unveils One series with dual and quad core phones

BARCELONA—HTC has announced its One Series of smartphones at Mobile World Congress (MWC), including a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 based device and another boasting Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4.

The series includes the HTC One X, the HTC One S and the HTC One V, all running Google’s Android 4.0 (Ice Cream) with HTC Sense 4 layered on top.

The X comes in a polycarbonate unibody shell, sports a .7-inch, 720p HD screen and runs on Nvidia’s 1.5GHz “4-PLUS-1” quad-core processor. The 4-plus-1 referring to the chipmaker’s “secret ninja core” which can power up to give an extra burst of power for gaming or photo intensive applications.


The S comes with a metal unibody design and at 7.9-mm thick it’s HTC’s thinnest phone to date, with a 4.3-inch screen of 3-D glass, protected by robust Corning Gorilla Glass and sporting a Qualcomm Dual-core 1.5GHz S4 Snapdragon.


The V, based on the design of the HTC Legend, is HTC’s budget offering, running on a 1.0 GHz single-core processor, with a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage. The phone has a 5-megapixel back camera, is 9.2mm thick and has a non-removable1,500 mAh battery.


All three phones apparently contain HTC’s new and mysterious “image chip” which the firm claims allows its phones to take pictures in just 0.7 seconds with a fast autofocus of 0.2 seconds. The chip also allows the phone to take photos while shooting videos, and deal with ultra-low light conditions, as well as high-lights and back-lit scenes, thanks to an f2.0 lens.

The phone’s camera can detect ambient light and decide between seven levels of flash for the perfectly lit picture.  

The HTC One lineup is also the first to integrate Beats By Dr. Dre audio and offers each user a 25GB Dropbox account for all their music, content and photos.

“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.

The phones also come with a wireless Media Link HD accessory which can be plugged into a TV’s HDMI port, allowing wireless sharing of photos, videos, documents and music, regardless of the TV’s brand.   

The handsets will be widely available across a range of operators from Q2, said the firm.