After wondering for a while what HTC’s mysterious media event would uncover, the woman-friendly (because women, like yours truly, apparently need gender-specific handsets) HTC Rhyme for Verizon has finally reared its pretty little head with several clever accouterments.
As per the announcement (and earlier leaks), the Rhyme will run Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a 1GHz single core processor, with HTC’s latest and greatest version of Sense slapped on top. That’s about the best part, so go ahead and let your excitement peak out.
Past that you’ll see a 3.7-inch LCD WVGA touchscreen with a 5-megapixel rear shooter and a 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera for video chat. As per usual, Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi radios are in tow, along with 4GB of internal memory and 768
MB of RAM. Obviously, the Rhyme also has support for Verizon’s network, but no 4G LTE for the ladies it seems.
The HTC Rhyme also has charm factor. By that, I mean the phone literally has a little charm that is meant to hang out of a woman’s purse and lights up to tell if they’ve missed a call. While I see this as more of a Status-esque Facebook button gimmick, it will probably go over really well with 13-year-old girls. And that’s it.
The Rhyme also launches with a surprisingly sweet charging station that also features speakers for improved sound quality, and what HTC is calling tangle-free headphones. Past those accessories, you’ll also get a Bluetooth headset (in matching magenta), a wireless visor speaker for the car, and an arm band for working out.
As far as Sense 3.5 goes, HTC has thrown in 12 new stock wallpapers, updated the Flip clock, and added a preview tab that lets you peek into your recent emails, photos, music, texts and apps. These preview tabs remind me a lot of Windows Phone Mango’s live tiles, though on a much more subtle scale.
Sense 3.5 also enhanced the camera app to add face recognition, the ability to take a quick-burst style series of shots, and a cool auto-upload feature. If you preset a certain Facebook album to upload pics from your phone, the Rhyme will automatically send any pictures taken on your phone straight to that specified album. This could make for a couple embarrassing moments, but it takes thinking out of the process of posting mobile pics to Facebook.
According to Verizon, the phone will be available on September 29 at Verizon in-store and online, as well as at Target. Verizon says the Rhyme will cost $199 on-contract, with the docking station, the charm, and the headset all included.
