HTC Bliss renamed to Rhyme, not aimed at women anymore

We had a nice laugh last month when HTC announced that the key demographic for the HTC Bliss would be women. From those blurry pictures that surfaced, the new droid didn’t really have any ‘feminine’ traits at all, so we were a bit puzzled with HTC’s logic. It didn’t look particularly slim in any way and it had a double chin, which is not cool, period. HTCInside now reports that HTC will be changing the name from Bliss to Rhyme and the new leaked press shot shows off a more generic silver colour, instead of the previous sea green seen on the Bliss.

Not too appealing

These subtle changes also indicate that HTC is perhaps re-thinking their previous strategy and have changed their target demographic to suit a wider audience. None of the other features or specifications seemed to have changed since the last time we saw it, just the name. The droid will have a 3.7-inch screen, most probably SLCD and will run the latest version of Sense 3.5 UI. It should also come with Android 2.3.4 and will sport a slightly slower 800MHz CPU.

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We could be looking at a September 20th, 2011 announcement, which is when HTC is having their event. By the time it launches in India, we should expect a price tag of sub-20K as anything above that would be too expensive. Even under Rs. 20,000, it faces stiff competition from the Samsung Galaxy S, Nexus S and LG’s Optimus Black. Let’s wait and see how HTC markets this phone.