HTC gears up for February 19 event with countdown timer

It looks like HTC is gearing up for a big announcement. The company has started a countdown timer on its website that counts down to the day of HTC's upcoming event on February 19. At the time of writing, the countdown has six days and four hours to go.

It is rumoured that HTC will be unveiling its new flagship phone during the event—the HTC M7—which is happening just a day before MWC 2013 kicks off. After the unveiling, the company may show the phone off during the event in Barcelona.

Getting ever so close

Going by an earlier report, it is rumoured that the M7 will be available in March and will cost €650 (approx. Rs 47,000), and will be available in different colours. The report also states a few of the phone's specifications. As expected, the HTC M7 will boast a 4.7-inch Full HD display, Sense 5, 32GB of internal memory, 4G LTE, a 13-megapixel camera and an audio technology called Double HP techno Beats Audio.

We have heard about most of the specs a few times before, but the 13-megapixel camera mentioned is not in keeping with a recent rumour that HTC is ditching megapixels to go with a marketing term called ultrapixels—the stacked sensor and image processing technology in the HTC M7.

The listing also confirms the name of the device as M7, if you had any doubts about it despite HTC CEO Peter Chou yelling out the phone's name on stage at a recent company party.

The likely specifications of the phone are:

• 4.7-inch display with a 1080p resolution and pixel density of 468 ppi
• 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS
• Bluetooth, Micro USB
• 13-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording and 2-megapixel front-facing camera
• 32GB of internal storage

The phone is expected to run on a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and 2GB of RAM.

Earlier, the phone popped up on inventory sheets at UK’s Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone Germany. From the leaked images, which were sent to Pocket Lint by an anonymous tipster, the M7 is listed as coming in black or silver.

There have been a lot of leaks and rumours about the HTC M7. In fact, this is one of the phones with a very high number of leaks and rumours (the iPhone 5 takes the cake here). We have had glimpses of the phone’s design, the new Sense 5.0 UI, the chassis construction and have seen it being flaunted by Korean pop stars and CEOs on stage. At this rate, we won't be surprised if full-fledged reviews start popping up before the phone is even released.