HTC Smart budget touchscreen phone set for India launch

HTC plans to launch its low-priced HTC Smart touchscreen phone in India, by the end of March 2010.The phone will be priced around Rs 10,000, reports say. HTC has said that it will invest around  $1 million in promotional activities for the HTC Smart.

Photo: HTC Smart phone back, front and side view

The HTC Smart is not really a smartphone, but it does come with a user interface similar to that of the HTC Sense UI.

The phone will run HTC’s homegrown Brew mobile platform and will be powered by a 300 MHz processor.

The HTC Smart has a 2.8-inch LCD touchscreen with QVGA resolution. It weighs 108 grams (with battery) and measures 104 x 55 x 12.8 mm.

The phone comes with a 3-megapixel camera with fixed focus and flash, but without video recording.

The HTC Smart works on HSDPA/WCDMA at 2100 MHz and Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE at 850/900/1800/1900 MHz.

Photo: HTC Smart budget phone

The phone offers 256MB RAM and ROM and a microSD memory card slot.

There is Bluetooth v 2.0 with A2DP, USB 2.0, 3.5-mm jack, but no WiFi. The phone supports aac, .amr, .qcp, .mid, .m4a, .mp3, .wma, .wav audio formats and .mp4, .3gp, .3g2, .m4v video formats.

The 1100mAh battery offers Talk time of up to 370 minutes for WCDMA
and up to 450 minutes for GSM. Standby time is up to 600 hours for WCDMA and up to 450 hours for GSM.

HTC sells its high-end smartphones in India, such as the HTC Tattoo and HTC Hero. The former is priced at Rs 16,990 and the latter will be available at a price of Rs Rs 31,990 across India. Both run the Android operating system.

In October 2009, HTC had launched the HTC Touch2 phone in India at a price of Rs 24,490.