Reference Auto

Reputed Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, which is yet to make it big in the Indian handset industry, is eyeing a slice of the burgeoning 3G phones market in the country, rolling out what it calls the Incredible S. The Incredible S runs on Android 2.2 Froyo but can be upgraded to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

The new smartphone comes with a mega 4-inch Super LCD screen, HTC Incredible S packs along with an 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and HD video recording. There is also a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for video calling.

At Rs 28,900, the price of the handset is rather steep taking into account the fact that it runs on the Android 2.2 Froyo, even though it has a feature that allows you to upgrade.

The Android smartphone will have HTC Sense interface. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC with 1GHz Scorpion CPU, the smartphone comes with a 1GB ROM and 768 MB RAM.

But at a price of Rs 28,000 and above, the memory offered should have been a higher one – say, may be a 2GB ROM, for instance.

The phone’s connectivity options include DLNA, GPS and Bluetooth 2.1. The built-in DLNA technology paves the way for seamlessly sharing videos, photos and music with other devices that are DLNA compliant.

To sum up the features, the Incredible S comes with a 3.5 mm headphones jack, micro USB, digital compass, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, 3G, GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and internal GPS antenna. The Incredible S also offers 580 minutes of talk time, 370 hours stand-by and has a 1,450 mAh battery.

Also, the HTC Incredible S will have to vie with models that are priced cheaper (near the Rs 25,000 mark) and they include the Motorola Milestone XT720, Samsung Galaxy S, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Dell Streak and Venue and Acer Liquid Metal, among others.

So, if a customer gets popular brands for a lower price, will he opt for the HTC Incredible S?

HTC is constantly coming up with advertisements in newspapers, and in spite of this, it is yet to find a place among the popular brands. This could be because the company does not offer basic handsets, a factor it should consider seriously while launching phones in the near future.

The Incredible S is HTC’s most expensive offering in India, and taking into account that the brand is yet to gain ground in the country’s market, the handset overall is priced on the higher side. Considering it is offering features that are not really new or for that matter revolutionary, the company may not see a big response to its Incredible S.