Verizon Wireless and HTC on Thursday unveiled the first Beats Audio-paired smartphone, the HTC Rezound. It will hit Verizon stores and Best Buy on November 14 for $299.99.
The HTC Rezound is a 4G LTE device featuring a 4.3-inch 720p HD display, a 1.5-GHz dual-core processor, 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM, and the latest version of HTC Sense. It also sports an 8-megapixel camera that comes with an F2.2 lens and records video in 1080p.
It will ship with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, though HTC promised to update it to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich "early next year."
"This is a phone that brings you closer to everything you love, a phone that combines the best sights and sound experience of any smartphone on the market," said HTC CEO Peter Chou.
And for Beats fans, the phone also comes with a pair of Monster Beats by Dr. Dre in-ear headphones, customized to come with a remote control that lets you answer calls and control the music player in your phone. You can switch out those headphones, like many do with Apple's iOS devices, but on the Rezound, the phone automatically tunes to the Beats headphones. For a hands on look at the Rezound, see the photos in the slideshow below.
"The record industry has got to go mobile, because right now every kid on the street—even if he has a smartphone, he has an iPod," said Beats Audio founder Jimmy Iovine. "Music is still the best app on the Internet or on the phone. We just have to bring back the quality."
With the Rezound, Iovine said, "We were able to translate this culture into hardware."
In August, HTC announced a $300 million investment in Beats Audio to bring its high-quality sound to HTC devices (and, presumably, to cut down on royalties paid to Dolby Audio). However, PCMag lead mobile analyst Sascha Segan framed the partnership as a branding exercise rather than a tech-centric deal.