While Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint have its high-end HTC handsets either available, or on their way soon, we’ve been wondering what AT&T will bring to the table from the popular handset-maker. The second largest US carrier may have the Atrix 4G, and the Infuse 4G ready to do battle with others, but it looks like we can look forward to the HTC Lead as well, a dual-core super phone.
With the exception of the HTC Thunderbolt, the Lead, Sensation, and EVO 3D look to be virtually the same phone. While Sprint’s handset will be the only 3D version, all of the handsets sport a 4.3 qHD display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and likely HTC Sense 3.0.
HTC looks to be doing the same thing Samsung has done in the past – releasing the same handset for all four major carriers, and have them tweaked slightly for differentiation. The only thing we’re not seeing HTC do is give this line of handsets a name, as Samsung did with the Galaxy S phones.
Nonetheless, the Lead should be one hell of a phone, and will challenge the upcoming competition easily with its high-end internal guts. Aesthetically, the Lead looks like every recent HTC handset we’ve seen lately – a brick phone with a large screen.
The specs of the lead were obtained via a leaked ROM, which shows that that handset will ship with Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth 3.0, and WiFi b/g/n. HTC handsets rarely lack bells and whistles, so we can imagine that the Lead won’t be in short supply. That said, the handset is missing a front-facing camera, which means it won’t be able to take advantage of the video chat capabilities that Android 2.3.4 touts.
We still have no launch date for the Lead, but it could land just in time to do battle with the Galaxy S 2 when it lands in the US as the Samsung Attain for AT&T. HTC has long been the king of Android phones, but other companies are bringing compelling devices to the table. Do you plan on grabbing a HTC device for your next phone, or something else?
