14 DAY TRIAL // It was only a few weeks ago that we learned HTC might be getting ready to come to the market with yet another high-end mobile phone powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, the HTC Dragon. The company already announced officially the launch of its first Snapdragon-based device, the HTC HD2, but, while this device comes to the market with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system, the HTC Dragon is expected to run under Google's Android platform.
A series of photos that seem to feature said Android-based Dragon have emerged into the wild now, following previously leaked images with the handset's ROM, and showing us what to expect from the phone when it will come to the market. Interestingly enough, the new device does not feature the “Android chin” that HTC promised for all of its high-end mobile phones that would come to the market with Google's operating system.
The images that can be seen below (courtesy of theunlockr) show four buttons on the front of the HTC Dragon (Home, Menu, Back, and Search), the same buttons that can be found on the HTC Hero that landed in Europe. The buttons are placed right below the screen, and one can also see a large trackball right under them.
The specification list of the device is said to include a Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 CPU, 512MB of ROM and 256MB of RAM, Android 2.0 (Eclair), a 5-megapixel photo snapper, a multi-touch screen that boasts a 480 x 800 pixel resolution, Bluetooth connectivity, FM Radio, 3.5mm headphone jack, and support for GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 and UMTS 900 / 1900 / 2100 network frequencies.
Interestingly enough, the HTC Dragon has been previously rumored to come with an OMAP processor from TI, still clocked at 1GHz, but it remains to be seen which chipset has been included with the phone as soon as it becomes official. Unfortunately, there are no details on when this high-end device might find its way to the market, yet one should expect it to land in the first quarter of next year at best.
