HTC Rhyme Targets Women; Will it Score Over iPhone 4?

HTC said its Android-powered smartphone called Rhyme would be available in the U.S. by Sept. 29 and by October in Europe and Asia.

The smartphone from HTC, which was initially called the Bliss, will sport three shades -- clearwater, hourglass and plum -- and will be available through Verizon Wireless.

This smartphone, pitted for ladies, has impressive specifications combining beauty and the beast. Although Apple's iPhone 4 is a superior phone, HTC Rhyme can lure female counterparts with its impressive design and different colors.

Powered by a 1GHz single-core processor, the Rhyme has Adreno 205 GPU, 768MB RAM. It features a locked customizable homescreen -- HTC Watch, which offers a wide range of movies and TV shows that can be downloaded for instant viewing.

Apart from the 3.7-inch touch screen with 480 x 800-resolution and a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, it also has an action burst scene that automatically takes five consecutive shots of a scene.

Most of the smartphones for ladies in the market feature a lesser specification or smaller design. But Rhyme stands out with quite beefy specs and accessories.

The retail package of the smartphone contains a docking station, sports armband, Bluetooth headset and Charm cable which lights up for incoming calls and messages. Rhyme will be priced $199 on-contract along with docking station, the headset included, according to Verizon.

Here is a comparison between HTC Rhyme and Apple Inc.'s iPhone 4.

Size: HTC Rhyme has 119 x 60.8 x 10.9 mm (4.68 x 2.39 x 0.43 inches) dimension and weighs 130 grams (4.58 oz) compared to iPhone 4's 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm (4.5 x 2.31 x 0.37 inches) dimension and weighs 137 grams (4.8 oz).

Display: Rhyme features 3.7-inch S-LCD capacitive touchscreen display (800 x 480 pixel resolution) whereas the best selling Apple iPhone 4 has 3.5-inch multi-touch Retina display (960 x 640 pixel resolution).

Operating System: HTC Rhyme is equally staged with Droid Bionic and Galaxy S2 as it features Android OS v2.3.4 (Gingerbread). On the other hand, iPhone 4 features iOS 4.

Processor: The processor found in Rhyme is 1GHz Scorpion Adreno 205 GPU Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset which is the same processor found in HTC Thunderbolt. On the other hand, iPhone 4 has 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, PowerVR SGX535GPU, Apple A4 chipset.

Camera: Both the smartphones have 5-megapixel camera which supports autofocus, LED flash and geo-tagging features and a secondary VGA camera for video chat. And there is 720p video capture option similar to iPhone 4.

Input features: Both the smartphones have multi-touch input method, accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, compass, proximity sensor for auto turn-off and touch-sensitive controls. In addition, iPhone 4 has Gyroscope sensor.

Memory: Rhyme contains 4GB storage and 768 MB RAM which is not bad when compared to the iPhone 4's 512 MB RAM and 16/32 GB storage. Rhyme has an external microSD storage up to 32 GB, while iPhone 4 doesn't have one.

3G: The Rhyme has HSDPA 14.4 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps. On the other hand, iPhone 4 has HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB: Both the smartphone has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot and comes with microUSB version 2.0. The Rhyme has Bluetooth version 3.0 with A2DP and EDR whereas iPhone has Bluetooth version 2.1 with A2DP support.

Pricing: HTC Rhyme, with three accessories -- a docking station, tangle-free headphone and the indicator Rhyme Charm -- will cost $199. On the other hand, iPhone 4 is sold at $199 for a 16GB version and $299 for a 32GB version. Separately people could buy iPhone 4 Dock for $29.

Battery: There is a Li-Ion 1600 mAh for a long-lasting use for Rhyme, while iPhone 4 has Li-Po 1420 mAh standard battery.

For a mid-range smartphone HTC Rhyme looks powerful and the smartphone also sports HTC Sense UI 3.5, 3.5mm jack, loudspeaker, HTC Watch streaming video support, SMS threaded view, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM, HTML browser, stereo FM radio with RDS, A-GPS support, light-up Charm Indicator accessory, SNS integration, digital compass, dedicated search key, Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration, MP3/AAC+/WAV player, MP4/H.263/H.264 player, organizer, document viewer, voice-memo-dial support and predictive text input feature.