HTC Rhyme

Available now
20th September 2011

The HTC Rhyme is a mid-market Android smartphone that is designed to be a bit more fashionable than most of the competition.

There are two main selling points with the HTC Rhyme: first of all, this isn't your usual black slabby smartphone, sharing a similar design to the HTC Radar, the Rhyme looks fresh and interesting, without a black version in sight. Secondly, the Rhyme has a range of useful accessories, including a docking station, sports armband, carefully designed wired headset and "charm cable" which appear to be standard in at least some packages, plus an optional car speaker and Bluetooth headset. All of these are colour matched to the Rhyme, and each one is carefully styled to look just as good as the handset.

The charm cable is worth a mention in it's own right: it's a cable with a cube shaped light on one end that plugs into your phone, and it lights up when you have a call or a message. The idea is that you put the cube outside your handbag so you can see it, and it makes the Rhyme easier to find when you need it, without having to rummage around.

Some of these features make the Rhyme a bit "girlie", but not overly so.. it's not as if it is pink. We think that the Rhyme might appeal to anyone who admires attention to detail and wants something tastefully different from the mainstream.

Underneath, the hardware is pretty similar to the HTC Desire S, with a 3.7" 480 x 800 pixel display, a 1GHz single core processor, 768MB of RAM, around 1GB of available flash storage plus a microSD slot, a 5 megapixel camera on the back and a VGA resolution camera on the front for video calling, and all the usual Android features including GPS, WiFi and 3.5G support plus Bluetooth.

The operating system is Android 2.3 enhanced with HTC Sense 3.5 which features coordinated themes to match the handset. It can do everything every other Android phone should do, and although it's not the fastest thing on the market it should certainly cope with almost everything you can throw at it. Of course, the Rhyme comes with a web browser, multimedia player and access to thousands of applications from the Android Market.

There are three different colours, a plum version (this is the one that Verizon Wireless will have in the US), and a white/silver version plus one called "Hourglass" which is an attractive sand colour. The HTC Rhyme measures 119 x 61 x 11mm and weighs 130 grams. The large 1600 mAh battery provides up to 8 hours talktime and 14 days standby time on 3G.

Not all colours will be available in all regions, and the contents of the standard sales package may vary. We would expect to see the Rhyme retail for between €400 to €500, although HTC have given no official indication as to the price, however the handset should start shipping in most regions from October onwards.