Just as expected, HTC has announced a pair of Android handsets at this afternoon’s London press event — the Desire HD and Desire Z — along with an online service for cloud backup and locating/wiping a lost or stolen device called HTCSense.com
The 4.3-inch, WVGA Desire HD (pictured top) has been seen quite a bit prior to this announcement, so its specs were already fairly well-known. Powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon 8255 processor, the all-aluminum device features an eight-megapixel camera with dual flash and 720p video capture, n-flavored WiFi, and Dolby Mobile sound; it will also reportedly be HTCSense.com-capable.
As is pretty obvious by its appearance, the Desire Z (pictured above) is the unlocked international version of T-Mobile’s soon-to-be-released G2. Specs are nearly identical — 800MHz Qualcomm processor, five-megapixel camera with flash and HD video, and like the Desire HD, 802.11n and HSPA+ cellular data — except the Z features HTC’s Sense UI along with HTCSense.com compatibility.
This online component sounds a lot like Apple’s mobileme service, in that it will backup contacts, messages, etc along with pinpointing the device’s location on a map, forcing it to ring loudly, and wiping its contents, if necessary. Moreover, the Android version of Sense has been updated to include “advanced multimedia capabilities” plus real-time effects and filters such as those found in desktop photo manipulation software like Adobe’s Photoshop.
Both the Desire HD and Desire Z will hit Europe and Asia beginning next month, though pricing has yet to be announced.
