HTC Unveils an Android “Renren Phone” for China

HTC (TPE:2498) has today unveiled a so-called ‘Renren phone’ – an Android-powered smartphone with baked-in widgets and features crafted especially for Renren.com (NYSE:RENN), China’s largest Facebook-like social network. The phone is dubbed the HTC Daren (pictured above). It’ll be priced at 2099RMB (US$330) unlocked, available only from official HTC or mobile telco outlets, and will launch a bit later this month.

It was unveiled by the Taiwanese handset maker at its HTC Week event which is taking place in Beijing (in the same place where we were at for TC Disrupt and the 2011 CMDC last week).

In actual fact, the HTC Daren is just the budget HTC Explorer handset with a slight tweak in its Sense UI that ditches Facebook and Twitter integration in HTC’s Friendfeed feature, and replaces it with Renren instead. So it’s nowhere near as special as it’s made out to be. The phone has fairly low-end features, such as a low-res (480px by 300) 3.2-inch screen, and a 3-megapixel camera. It’s totally out-run by the new dual-core Xiaomi phone, which is a few dollars cheaper.

Back in July of this year, HTC did a similar thing with its ‘Weibo phone’ called the HTC Weike. On that occasion, it was a disappointing reworking of an aging HTC Salsa handset. At least this new device for China is based on a brand-new model.

Boosting Android in China

At the HTC event (pictured above), CEO Zhou Yong-ming also outlined the company’s revamped China line-up of five new Android smartphones, which includes the Sensation XE coming to the mainland for the first time.

HTC Android phones are so popular in China that they’ve been given nicknames whereby each new one is a higher number suffixed to a ‘G’ – thus the fairly new HTC Sensation has become commonly known as the G14. The Taiwanese firm will be hoping to continue this success – which is taking away a good deal of sales from Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) – with this new line-up.

[Source, inc. images: HTC’s official Renren Page – in Chinese]