The handset might run under the upcoming Windows Phone 8 OS

Jan 5, 2012 09:12 GMT  ·  By

Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC Corporation is getting ready for the launch of new devices running under Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system, recent reports suggest.

One of these handsets could be the HTC HD8, a smartphone that has just emerged online, and which is reportedly powered by Windows Phone 7 Build 7740.

This would be the fourth HD smartphone that HTC brings to the market with Microsoft’s mobile operating system.

The most popular of them are the HD2, which was launched with Windows Mobile 6.5, and the HD7, which landed in 2010 with Windows Phone 7 on board (later, it was pushed to AT&T as HD7S).

Naturally, HTC HD8 would come as the successor of HD7, though specific info on what it would be able to offer to users hasn’t emerged so far.

Even so, rumor has it that HTC might load it with Windows Phone 8 when the time comes. This also means that we might see the phone released sometime in late 2012.

HD8 was spotted in the “I'm a WP7” application and reportedly runs on the network of Romanian wireless carrier Vodafone, WPCentral notes.

What is yet unknown is whether the device will make an official appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas or at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Provided that the handset will be launched in the first half of 2012, we might see it powered by the Windows Phone Tango platform release, reportedly set to debut in the next few months. Since details on this smartphone are scarce, we can only imagine that it will pack high-end hardware when released, the same as its predecessors.

It could arrive on shelves with a large touchscreen display, similar to the one on TITAN, as well as with a fast application processor, maybe even a dual-core one (Windows Phone Apollo was long rumored to add support for this kind of chips).