Slowly but surely, HTC’s latest trifecta of handsets is making its way westwards. After appearing on Amazon’s Deutsche hub with a pre-order value of €519 ($707), the Desire has now reached the UK with an even steeper £528 ($795) price and an estimated arrival time of April 1. Let’s just hope this pattern doesn’t continue or we’ll be looking at a four-figure sticker when this thing comes all the way Stateside. The HTC Legend is also slated for an April 1 delivery and carries a price of £400 ($602), while the HD Mini will straggle a tiny bit with an April 14 launch and a palatable £369 ($556) price. All are without contractual obligations, so it’ll be interesting to see what incentives carriers can come up with to get us to jump on board.
We haven’t heard much about much more than a rumored German price when it comes to HTC Legend availability, but the phone has now cleared the FCC, which could well indicate that it’s headed over here sooner rather than later. No other details (or pictures), unfortunately, but you can dive into a few test reports at the link below if that’s your thing. And if, for some reason, you’ve yet to be acquainted with the Legend (a.k.a. “the return of the chin”), you can check out our hands-on from Mobile World Congress right here.
Curious as to what HTC will be charging for its Sense-enabled Desire? If Amazon’s German portal is to be believed, it’ll go for a cool €419 ($572). Of course, the site doesn’t give any indication as to when it’ll actually ship to those that order, but it is clear that Amazon is doing the selling and not some third-party merchant. Just under six Benjamins for a souped-up Nexus One? You know you’re in for that.
[Thanks, Lars]
Update: We had a feeling this price was too good to be true and sure enough, Amazon.de now lists the Desire for a steeper €519 ($711), alongside the newly arrived Legend, which has shown up with a €459 ($629) asking price [Thanks, Sebastian].
OK, we admit it — we’re complete HTC fanboys here today at MWC. But c’mon, can you really blame us? Today’s HTC launch — including the HD mini, Legend, and Desire — while not surprisingly lacking a Windows Phone 7 announcement, was still full of some very, very fine hardware. The Legend is an all-metal set — the housing is the frame of the handset — and like the other launches, this one features the updated version of Sense, a new optical trackpad (which seemed to behave quite well) and a stunning 3.2-inch AMOLED display. The Legend also seems pretty sturdy, as demonstrated by HTC’s CEO Peter Chou when he smacked it against the wall during the press conference. The take away here is this phone is pure beauty and class, and an absolutely huge upgrade (as far as aesthetics go anyway, we’ll hold judgment til we can really test it out) from the HTC Hero it replaces. Follow on for a gallery of photos and check back soon, as we’re definitely going to get some video once we can get it into some better light.
Update: Full Legend and Sense UI walkthrough after the break!
Our recent chance encounter with a multitouch-friendly iteration of HTC’s Sense UI turns out to have been a preview of the company’s latest version of the software. Announcing that it has “enhanced” the already quite delectable skin, HTC has noted it’ll be available preloaded on the brand new Desire and Legend handsets, and as a free download for the venerable Hero. So what’s new? The press event this morning told us about Leap, the new pinching function that allows you to view all your home screens at once (see above), and Friend Stream, which aims to be your social media aggregator du jour with its one stream combining Facebook, Twitter and Flickr updates. There’s also a new newsreader application and widget, along with additional improvements to the browser and web client. You’ll find the full PR after the break and early impressions of the new interface in our hands-on with the new phones.
Update: See a full walkthrough of the new UI in a video after the break.
Those among us with minds like steel traps might recall that HTC’s 2009 was leaked with shocking accuracy way back in January of this year, which lends some credibility to this already-believable series of slides we have seemingly showing off most of the good stuff we can expect out of the company in the coming months. The stuff we’re privy to here was allegedly presented at a meeting in Vienna back in October, with both Windows Mobile and Android designs broken up into four target demo categories: Design / Lifestyle, Social, Performance (we like the sound of that), and Productivity — but don’t take our word for it. Follow the break for everything you need to know about this very real-sounding downpour of specs and renders.
