HTC has announced a new mid-range smartphone with a unique metaverse angle, the HTC Desire 22 Pro.
The HTC Desire 22 Pro is described as “a powerful midrange 5G Android 12 smartphone”, and it’s being positioned as the ideal partner for the brand’s VIVE Flow VR glasses.
At heart, though, it’s a fairly modest-looking handset. Key specs include a 6.6-inch FHD+ 120Hz display and a Snapdragon 695 5G, accompanied by 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
Its camera system is led by a 64MP wide sensor with an f/1.79 aperture, with a 13MP ultrawide and a 5-MP depth-sensing camera backing it up. There’s a 32MP front facing camera for selfies and live streaming. All of which sounds like a quintessential lower-mid-range offering.
The announced 4520 mAh battery is a little smaller than we’ve come to expect at this end of the market, so we’ll have to wait and see how that performs. IP67 certification, on the other hand, is quite rare in this category.
HTC’s pitch for the phone has been drawn from the company’s primary concern these days: VR and the metaverse. HDCP 2.2 support means that your can wirelessly mirror content from platforms like Disney+ and Netflix, which should play nicely with the VIVE Flow glasses.
Elsewhere, wireless charging is a rare provision in a mid-range smartphone, as is the related reverse wireless charging. The latter feature is evidently intended to power the brand’s aforementioned VR glasses.
The HTC Desire 22 Pro will cost £399, and is available to pre-order now ahead of its August 1 release.
It’s something of an understatement to say that HTC isn’t the smartphone force it used to be. Following early prominence in the fledgling Android smartphone market, a steady decline in fortunes culminated in HTC selling a large chunk of its smartphone business to Google in 2018. The company never officially left the smartphone business, however.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.