HTC has long been rumored to announce its next-generation flagship called the HTC Bolt (or HTC 10 Evo in markets outside the United States). Last week, we learned that, based on an unconfirmed report from ePrice, the Taiwanese equipment manufacturer is likely to unveil the HTC Bolt later this month. The report also claims HTC could roll out the phone initially on its home turf and later in the U.S. as a Sprint exclusive. That being said, a Twitter post from ROM developer and HTC leakster LlabTooFeR suggests one other phone, codenamed HTC Desire A17, could be launching alongside the HTC Bolt.
While there are no comprehensive details regarding the HTC Desire A17 at the moment, LlabTooFeR reveals that the upcoming phone will run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with the Sense 8 user interface on top. The codename in particular brings to memory the HTC Desire 530, which was codenamed Desire A16. Rumor has it, then, that the Desire A17 could be the successor to the Desire 530, unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2016. As a quick recap, the Desire 530 sports a 5.0-inch display with a 1280 x 720 resolution and packs 1.5GB of RAM along with 16GB of expandable internal storage. It is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 210 chipset clocked at 1.1GHz and fueled by a 2,200 mAh battery. The phone also includes a slot for a 2TB microSD card. On the optics side of things, it shows off an 8-megapixel primary camera and a 5MP front shooter. Since the Desire 530 features modest hardware specs, it is likely that the Desire A17 will bring a slight bump in terms of configuration under the hood. By comparison, the HTC Bolt is rumored to sport a 5.5-inch QHD display with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. Other rumored features include the Snapdragon 810 chipset, 3GB of RAM, 64GB of expandable internal storage and the Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box with a custom Sense UI on top. HTC has been struggling to keep its smartphone business afloat for the past couple of years, and the upcoming Bolt and Desire A17 handsets do not seem to offer much hope by any indication.