HTC Sensation XE available online for Rs. 32,400

As always, new smartphones make it to online retailers way before it’s officially announced by the company in the respective country. HTC’s new flagship offering, the Sensation XE, has already found its way to online stores like Flipkart and in the hands of many eager customers. Priced at Rs. 32,400, it’s similar to what the old Sensation debuted at. Fused with the same DNA as its predecessor, the Sensation XE is geared to be a music phone rather than a mere speed bump like the Arc S. The XE has been showered with Beats Audio by Dr. Dre and other than a software enhancement; the phone comes bundled with Beats in-ear phones, as well. The phone now sports a trendy red and black theme, distinguishing it from the old model.

Old wine in new bottle?

Other notable changes include larger internal storage space with 1GB available to the user. This is still a far cry from what others like LG and Samsung offer but it’s still an improvement nonetheless. While it’s still powered by the same Qualcomm MSM 8260 chipset, the speed has been bumped up to 1.5GHz from 1.2GHz. It also packs in a larger 1730mAh battery pack due to which the weight has gone up a bit to 151g. Everything else has pretty much stayed the same. We still don’t have NFC support either. At the end of the day, it’s pretty obvious that this is not a new phone but merely a rebranded HTC Sensation with some red paint on it. With all the screen issues plaguing the first model, HTC may be having a tough time getting rid of the inventory. So what do you do? Simple, bump up the speed, throw in some new features and give it a cool new snazzy look. We still feel this pricing is a bit high, for what is essentially a refresh of the old Sensation. Here’s a quick look at some of the main specs:

• 4.3-inch SLCD Capacitive touchscreen with a 540 x 960 pixel resolution

• 3G, EDGE/GPRS, Wi-Fi with hot spot creativity, DLNA

• GPS with A-GPS support

• Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP and USB 2.0

• 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, video capture up to 1080p resolution

• VGA resolution secondary camera

• 3.5mm earphone socket

• 4GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB