During a Taiwan 5G showcase event, a HTC smartphone was spotted with a thick case and has its forehead and chin covered. The device was used to showcase HTC’s gigabit LTE capabilities using Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA). This is a form of carrier aggregation that uses the unlicensed 5GHz spectrum that’s also being utilised by WiFi.
What’s interesting is the device is different from the current U11 and U11+, and serial leakster @evleaks has indicated that this is HTC’s upcoming flagship model.
According to Evan, this is the HTC Imagine which is the codename for the U12. From the picture above, it looks like a 6-incher with a tall 18:9 display aspect ratio. The edges of front looked curved but it isn’t clear if it’s curved on the glass or with the display. The full specs are still unknown and it is worth pointing out that the Snapdragon 835 platform with X16 LTE can support gigabit speeds with LAA.
During the speedtest demo, the device had shown a download speed of over 800Mbps and uploads of about 50Mbps. This is already achievable with LTE Advanced networks and flagships from Huawei and Samsung are already capable of delivering gigabit speeds if it supported by the network. You can check out the video from the event below:
