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.

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.