HTC Rhyme deals & review

The HTC Rhyme is meant to be an Android phone aimed particularly at the female kind of phone user, with a ´Charm Accessory´ that will glow a pretty colour when you receive messages or miss calls. This can be removed of course, and once it is taken off there is nothing that particularly screams "no males" with this phone. Despite the marketing and choice of colours it is about as gender neutral as most Android phones from HTC.

With a 3.7 inch touchscreen the Rhyme is fairly similar in size to the popular Desire S. In fact, in terms of hardware specifications this phone is very similar in most details to the Desire S. The Rhyme comes with a WVGA resolution and will be one of the first phones with HTC Sense 3.5 on board. HTC Sense 3.5 offers a big redesign and will mark the first significant revamp to the popular interface in quite some time.

Sense sits on top of Android Gingerbread and the phone is powered by a 1GHz Scorpion chip with 768MB RAM. A good deal of connectivity is available with 3G, EDR Bluetooth and DLNA enabled Wi-Fi. Because of this owners of the Rhyme can enjoy the full range of Android online features including YouTube, instant messaging and excellent social networking integration for Facebook and Twitter and others.

Android Market is on offer for apps and games and the Rhyme comes with a good range of other entertainment options too. This includes YouTube, as already mentioned, as well as excellent offline music and video support. The phone comes with 4GB internal storage and can hold an additional 32GB microSD too. An FM radio is also on offer.

The Rhyme has a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, 720p video recording and front facing VGA camera for video calls and mirror apps. As usual, photos and videos can be uploaded to various online services including Facebook and YouTube or sent via email or MMS.

I am still trying to figure out why this phone is marketed exclusively at women. The only conclusion I can find is the Light Up Charm Indicator accessory that comes with the Rhyme. This is essentially a device on the end of a chain that can indicate missed calls and new messages, along with other notifications.

If you have the phone in your bag you could have the Charm Indicator dangling out so you don’t have to keep checking your phone. While admittedly not many men will be interested in this feature it is not an essential part of the phone so it can be removed if needs be.

There are some other accessories for the HTC Rhyme too, including a sports armband so that you can carry the phone on your arm (and listen to music presumably), when doing sporty things like running. Essentially the Rhyme is an HTC Android phone that comes in some pinkish-purple colours and has a charm accessory, and also the latest version of HTC Sense.