A new HTC-made device identified as the “HTC 2Q5W1” appeared in the database of mobile benchmarking tool Geekbench earlier this year, having first been spotted by an industry insider Roland Quandt. The product is believed to be a smartphone meant to be released at some point this year, with its listing referencing a number of specs that place it in the mid-range segment of the market. Based on its motherboard information, the HTC 2Q5W1 is powered by the Snapdragon 625, Qualcomm’s 2016 system-on-chip which has already been commercialized in a broad range of Android handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy C7, Huawei Nova Plus, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4x, and the ZTE Blade V8 Pro. The octa-core silicon found inside the newly unveiled device was clocked at 1.8GHz during the test, which is approximately ten-percent down its maximum effective operating frequency. Given the age of the Snapdragon 625, HTC is likely to position the 2Q5W1 as a device competing in the lower mid-range market segment with an aggressive price tag.
The 2Q5W1 also features 3GB of RAM and is powered by Android 8.0 Oreo, according to the same source. While the benchmark doesn’t provide any more details on the device, the Oreo build running on the newly spotted handset has likely been overlaid with HTC Sense, as was the case with the majority of mobile offerings launched by the company over the course of 2017, though HTC recently also experimented with Google’s Android One program, having released a variant of the U11 Life running stock Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. Should the company stick with some of its other recently established product practices, the 2Q5W1 may also feature Edge Sense, a pressure-sensitive frame that users can squeeze in order to have it act as a physical shortcut mechanism.
The newly uncovered device could be announced at the 2018 edition of the Mobile World Congress that HTC is expected to attend, especially as the Taiwanese firm already confirmed it has no plans to introduce a new Android flagship at the Barcelona, Spain-based trade show, suggesting that its plans for the event are tied to another product category. MWC 2018 is scheduled to start on February 26 and run until March 1.