Meet the HTC Edge: reportedly the company’s first — and probably one of the world’s first — cellphone powered by a quad-core processor. Information from a reliable source paints Edge as a premium handset incorporating the latest mobile technologies — for the most part.

The 4.7-inch Edge will allegedly be slightly over ten millimeters thick, and appears to be very much the successor to the just-unveiled Rezound/Vigor, as it should feature the same 720p resolution, 1GB of RAM, and backlit eight-megapixel camera with 28-millimeter, f/2.2 lens. The major improvement, then, would be Edge’s supposed AP30 Tegra 3 CPU from Nvidia, which offers four 1.5GHz cores to Rezound’s two. Internal storage will likely be bumped to 32GB, while the Bluetooth radio should hit version 4.0. Naturally, Beats Audio enhancements would be part of the package.

Edge may also see the rollout of new or improved HTC content services, such as the previously tipped HTC Listen music store, HTC Read bookstore, and HTC Play gaming hub; the HTC Watch movie portal will reportedly begin to offer HD fare. Additionally, Edge could be one of the first Sense 4.0 devices.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned was LTE capability, with Edge only said to support 21Mbps HSDPA; it’s possible that carrier-specific variants will still offer this highly-desired functionality. Also absent was mention of a specific version of Android, although if it doesn’t ship with Ice Cream Sandwich (fairly unlikely), an upgrade would surely be deployed in short order.

We’re expecting Edge to arrive in late Q1/early Q2 of next year.