Sensationalism
One of the secrets of HTC's success is the frequency of its handset launches. At the start of the London launch event for the HTC Sensation, European boss Florian Seiche was quick to point to the launch of six new devices at MWC, and that HTC recently announced a year-on-year tripling of profits.
In his preamble, Seiche dwelt on video and multimedia, so this handset is designed for media creation and consumption. He then handed over to European product boss Phil Blair, who went straight into hyperbole mode. "I've never been more excited about a new phone," he said, revealing that the Sensation has a dual-core Snapdragon SoC, which we presume to be the MSM 8260.
There are also some new software and services. HTC Sense has had a refresh, and this is the first phone to incorporate HTC Watch - a video streaming service first introduced in the HTC Flyer. Other details Blair was keen to highlight were: an aluminium unibody chassis, 8MP camera and 1080p video recording.
In a spooky coincidence, it was announced while we were at the event that Cisco is going to shut down the Flip entry-level video camera unit. Flip's demise will be almost entirely due to products like the HTC Sensation.
The HTC Sensation will launch exclusively with Vodafone in the middle of may across Europe, then everyone else gets a go a month later. They got Patrick Chomet from Vodafone on stage to say that within a couple of years he reckons over 70 percent of phones sold in Europe will be smartphones. He also said mobile Internet revenue has overtaken SMS revenue for the first time.
Here are a couple more piccies from the event.
