Through the years, HTC has been continually praised for the impressive designs that accompany its range of smartphones. For this piece, we are going to take a quick look back at the evolution of HTC’s smartphone designs…
original and unlike anything else
Before anything else, most people initially judge a smartphone based on its design. So, just like in real life, something appealing to the eyes tend to evoke favorable opinions about it from a cursory look. If it’s terrible, or just simply cheap looking, opinions would reflect that. First impressions are without question extremely important, so that’s why having a good design is the foundation that can help a phone achieve recognition right from the onset. Through the years, HTC has been continually praised for the impressive designs that accompany its range of smartphones. Even though they’ve fallen back in terms of market share in the last few years, the philosophy they’ve established has continued to resonate. In the last decade alone, the Taiwanese company has made countless smartphones with memorable designs – more so when many of those designs hold up even now, in the face of newer competition! For this piece, we are going to take a quick look back at the evolution of HTC’s smartphone designs, which seems quite relevant given that we’re more than likely nearing the announcement of the company’s next flagship smartphone. Having such a prestigious history in design, it’s really tough to go through every single pinnacle or monumental device that radically changed their identity, so we’re going to just simply skim some of the best highlights through the years. We all know that HTC’s humble beginning began with Microsoft’s Window Mobile platform, one of the dominant smartphone operating systems in contention during the 2000s. Back during the early 2000s, many of HTC’s smartphone were white-labeled products, often being rebranded after the respective carriers that were selling its phones. Take the HTC Apache for example, which was rebranded as the Sprint PPC6700 over on Sprint – while Verizon received the Verizon XV6700. The designs of these early Windows Mobile smartphones were uninspiring to say the least. Not only were they fashioned after PDA designs, accompanied with nubs for their antennas, but their silver plastic bodies seemed like a throwback to the antiquated boxy designs of PCs throughout the 1990s. Through the mid-2000s, smartphones like the HTC Wizard, Tytn, and P3600 Trinity, featured designs that followed after this practice. During an era dominated mostly by flip phones, the only reason why HTC’s designs stood out from the pack was because of their brick-like sizes and large touchscreens. Things really began to change with HTC’s design language with the release of the HTC Touch in 2007. Who knows if Apple ‘s unveiling of the original iPhone had anything to do with this redirection, but the HTC Touch offered a totally new design language that made consumers take notice. With the early HTC phones, you could say that they were trying to emulate the laptop design, evident in those physical keyboard and vast buttons littered throughout its phones. However, the HTC Touch simplified things with fewer buttons and going after that all-touch implementation. On top of that, this is also when we began to see shift. Gone was the ghastly silver plastic that dominated many of HTC’s early smartphones, replaced with other materials that were more inviting – like the soft touch matte finish of the HTC Touch. Not only that, but now its phones were slimmer, more compact in size. This new design language flourished throughout 2007, when subsequent phones like the HTC Touch Dual, HTC Touch Cruise, and HTC Phoebus (aka T-Mobile Shadow) all followed suit. HTC’s brand recognition was climbing steadily by the time 2008 came around, because this was arguably the turning point for when we all began to regard HTC as a premier designer. The termentered out vocabulary thanks in part to a couple of new HTC smartphones introduced in 2008 – the HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch Pro. These were still running Windows Mobile, but their designs were unbelievable because they wereseen during the time. These industrial designs featured reflective finishes, gunmetal frames, and angular cutouts that simply made them stunning – exuding a new benchmark of premium design that was largely absent in other phones. The transformation here was akin to how the Motorola RAZR upended the traditional flip phone design, as it was cool, sleek, and sexy. To HTC’s credit, they delivered the same level of meticulousness and craftmanship with its phones. Interestingly enough, HTC’s progress in design didn’t necessarily carry over when they joined the open handset alliance. Even though the T-Mobile G1 (aka HTC Dream) and subsequently the HTC Magic helped to establish HTC’s presence in Google ‘s brand-new Android platform during 2008 to 2009, it could be argued that the designs were rather dull – in comparison to the stuff they were putting out with its last line of Windows Mobile powered smartphones. These new Android phones weren’t particularly cutting-edge or stylish with their designs, but rather benign instead. Then again, it’s interesting to see HTC almost stepping backwards with the design of the two phones, but a lot of people suggested that they didn’t want to take away the star of the show, which was Google’s Android operating system. While those Android smartphones were a stark departure, the Windows Mobile smartphones that HTC released under its umbrella during 2008 and 2009 continued to push the boundaries. Successive devices, like the HTC Touch Diamond2 and HTC Touch Pro2, showed iterative growth within its industrial design philosophy. Even more impressive, HTC perfected its craft of keyboard designs – evident in the Touch Pro2’s superb landscape layout and tilting function. Conversely, they also showed us that they could whip up an equally compelling looking portrait QWERTY smartphone, just like what we saw with the HTC Snap. Despite the impending death of Microsoft’s aging mobile OS, HTC saved one of its best, all-time greatest designed phones for the platform – the HTC HD2. Yes, it was oneof a phone, dwarfing everything else before it with its immense size, but its curved chassis and the combination of soft touch matte plastic and a metallic cover definitely added to its premium look and feel. Having that sense of sophistication, the HTC HD2 helped to end HTC’s run with Microsoft’s platform on a high note. HTC’s first two Android powered phones didn’t necessarily convey the company’s signature design philosophies we saw with its last few Windows Mobile smartphones, but that all changed with the introduction of its third Android effort. Coming in at just the right time, the summer 2009 released HTC Hero brought on some of the familiar industrial design characteristics that the company had been known for. And you know what? It was every bit of a hero device, distinguishable and unique for its industrial design, Teflon coating, and protruding chin. The following year, we saw yet another milestone with HTC’s designs thanks to the 2010 released Google Nexus One – sold exclusively through Google. HTC’s expertise was again on showcase with the Nexus One! Although it ditched the angular cutouts of its previous offerings, the curvier looking chassis was comprised out of a metallic frame and two large rubbery plastic surfaces. The way that these two materials meshed with one another really added to the phone’s distinctiveness and premium construction. Using this design language as a blueprint, it eventually became the signature style we saw tweaked a little bit in other devices throughout 2010 – like the HTC Desire, Smart, EVO 4G, Droid Incredible, and Wildfire to name a few. During this period as well, we eventually got a successor to the Hero, the aluminum bodied HTC Legend. Even more minimalist in its design, it clearly borrowed some of the design traits brought on by the Google Nexus One. The next major design evolution we saw from HTC came in 2013, when polycarbonate became the material of choice for its flagship smartphone in the HTC One X.
