HTC Leo aka HD2 Coming To North America

The long-rumoured HTC’s latest flagship phone, the  Leo (aka HD2), has finally been confirmed by the company, and the list of specs are nothing to sneeze at.  There have been a couple of reasons why it wasn’t brought up here before.  One is the fact that we’re not big on hollow rumours (that’s why you don’t see us talking about the Apple tablet).  The other is that the HD2, like the original HD, appeared to be aimed at the European market, but that’s been disspelled by HTC’s CEO Peter Chou.

Just a little bit bigger than the iPhone, the HD2 sports a massive 4.3″ 800 x 480 capacitive touch screen, a first for a Windows Mobile device, and a 1GHz Snapdragon processor to power it along.  Among the other specs are a 5mPixel camera with dual LED, compass, accelerometer, a 3.5mm headphone jack and much more.  It will ship with Windows Mobile 6.5, but make no mistake about it, this phone meets all the hardware requirements leaked back in the spring for Windows Mobile 7 chassis 1 compatibility, suggesting that at the very least, the fine folks at xda-developers will be coming out with WM7 ROMs when available.

The HD2 is the first phone to make good on the promise to bring the Sense UI, first seen on the Android based HTC Hero, to Windows Mobile.  Sense looks like a brilliant UI, and I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’ve always found its predecessor, TouchFLO, to be the best smartphone UI I’ve ever used.  The latest iteration looks even better, and seems to improve it in all the ways I was hoping…

There are three strands to the HTC Sense UI ethos. Firstly, it’s all about ‘making it mine’. So the home page features a fully customisable 3×3 grid, giving you the freedom to decide what apps and widgets go onto each of the 13 home screens – yes, 13 home screens. You don’t need to have them all, so if 13 is a bit too much, take it down to whatever suits you.

Secondly, it’s all about ’staying close’ and the HD2 reinforces the idea that communication is not just about applications, emails, messages et al – it’s about people. With that in mind, the HD2 has a ‘favourites’ option, allowing you to aggregate your contact’s details in one place, not to mention being a great tool for conference calls.

Lastly, it’s all about ‘expecting the unexpected’ and the HD2 has a few cool tricks up its sleeves. For example, when your phone rings it will detect when you pick up your handset and automatically lower the ringtone volume. Its backlight will automatically adjust to suit its surroundings as will go to sleep when you’re nattering away to prevent unknowingly hanging up while you’re on the phone to your mum and of course saving some juice in the process [from Stuff’s hands on].

There are plenty of hands on videos from those lucky enough to put it through the wringer, and all accounts are giving it a big thumbs up.   This first video is a quick hands on from Engadget Spanish, and just skims through the interface…

The video below from Pocketnow shows the interface running on an HTC Diamond 2, and although it’s not the same speed at the HD2, gives the best impression of some of the features coming to the device…

Of course, if you want to get all official-like, you can head over to the HTC HD2 product page.