Mark your calendars, Android fans — HTC has just started sending out invitations to press events in New York and London on February 19. Granted, those invitations are very vague (no teasing any big features a la Motorola, I’m afraid), but the Taiwanese company is widely expected to officially reveal its latest flagship Android smartphone, codenamed “M7.”
Considering the sheer number of leaks floating around recently, that shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but there’s something to be said about how HTC is handling this whole thing. After all, the beleaguered Taiwanese smartphone maker officially unveiled its original One series handsets at a huge press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last year — those devices and the design choices inherent to them would go on to influence much of HTC’s 2012 device portfolio.
Taking an announcement like that out of a grand event and splitting into two seems more than a little peculiar to me, but it certainly makes some sense. By pushing out its big news ahead of the scrum, HTC seems eager to avoid the crush of news and mobile minutia that comes out of shows like MWC — arguably, the best way to stand out from the crowd is to avoid the crowd entirely. Factor in some early reports that HTC would reveal the M7 well ahead of MWC and this whole thing is starting to feel like a lock.
Of course, all this raises yet another compelling question — if HTC does officially out the M7 in New York and London not even a week before MWC is slated to kick off, what else does it plan to show off in Spain? With less than a month to go before the big event, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the company’s full agenda is leaked sooner rather than later.