Long live the chin. As the junior member of HTC’s new trio, the HTC One V is perhaps the least-covered of the three. But as the cheapest and therefore most accessible of the Android phones, it’s arguably the most important piece in the strategy: if HTC can win converts on the low end, it’s more likely to garner repeat business. Android Community swung by HTC’s booth at Mobile World Congress to get a better look at the budget-minded Ice Cream Sandwich phone, and while it’s obviously not the high profile machine that the One X and One V are, it’s definitely worth a look.

The One V recalls previous HTC designs more than the other two new phones, specifically the Hero and the Legend. Its curved “chin” section seems a little odd, since there’s neither physical buttons nor a trackball hanging out on it anymore. That said, the shape is pleasing, especially for making calls, which is more important than browsing or texting to much of the target audience. Despite the older shape, the One V combines a unibody aluminum design with a slim (for a budget phone) 9.24mm body.

You can’t deny that the One V is dealing with low specs – inside and out, it’s got more than a little in common with the two-year-old Nexus One. A 3.7-inch LCD screen runs at 800×480 – interesting that the lowest of HTC’s new phones still has a larger screen than you-know-what. A 1Ghz single-core processor and 512MB of RAM are enough to run Ice Cream Sandwich and Sense 4.0, though they certainly don’t fly. More impressive is the 5.0MP rear camera with HTC’s F/2.0 lens – we cant’ wait to try this one out in a more ideal setting than a show floor.

Storage is limited to just 4GB, but unlike the One V’s bigger brothers, it has an accessible MicroSD card slot. While you can swap cards, you can’t swap the battery – the 1500mAh unit is locked down tight. We don’t know how much the HTC One V will cost, but a company representative said it was headed to low-cost American providers US Cellular, Virgin America and Metro PCS “soon”. Be sure and keep an eye on our Mobile World Congress portal for more hands-on looks at the latest phones and tablets from Barcelona.

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HTC has continued updating their developer site bootloader unlock tool with new devices and this time around they've gone ahead and added:

• HTC Desire Z
• HTC ChaCha
• HTC Aria
• Droid Incredible
• HTC Status
• T-Mobile G2

If you have any of those devices, and are wishing to have the bootloader unlocked then you can hit up the HTCDev site below to get started.

Source: HTCDev; via @HTCDev

HTC has ended its two-year long streak of growth, reporting a dip in sales that for the first time since the company’s Android-powered phones propelled high profits. In the fourth quarter of 2011, HTC had NT$101,419 million, a decrease of 2.49% in comparison to the same period last year.

Since 2008, HTC has seen several quarters with record sales thanks to the company’s pole position among Android manufacturers. But the popularity of the iPhone 4S and increased competition from Samsung and other Android phone makers led to a decline in sales in the latter half of 2011.

Samsung had more reason to smile in its latest financial reports. The Korean manufacturer declared that its smartphone sales reached 35 million in Q4 2011, up from 28 million in Q3 2011. The record high performance pushed Samsung contribute to making Samsung the top smartphone maker in terms of volume, at least according to estimates published in Reuters.

So what explains these numbers? In HTC’s case, the company released some duds this year (Salsa in particular) and had a large, incredibly diverse line of products. But it lacked a massive global seller like Samsung’s range of Galaxy S II phones. Both companies produce devices running other operating systems – HTC on Windows Phone 7, Samsung on Bada – but they live and die by how well their Android phones perform.

HTC will look to re-spark its momentum by focusing on key high-end products that will better compete with Apple and Samsung. In November of 2011, CFO Winston Yung had this to say about the company’s upcoming plans:

“We will focus on the product next year, better and more competitive. Other than new LTE phones for the U.S. market, we have phones for the global market. We will launch some worldwide flagship products. We’re confident in them.”

HTC has agreed to manufacture Facebook’s official phone. The device has been codenamed “Buffy” and you can be sure to find it oriented around cutting-edge social capabilities. But what will it run? Could it possibly scoop up WebOS from HP or even start from scratch in a basic Linux environment? The most possible (and even most practical) solution would be to heavily mask a version of Android OS.

With the Android 4.0 source code now available to the public, you can bet Facebook will manipulate in such a way similar to Amazon. After all, the Facebook phone is bound to look unique. As the king of social networking and such a strong following, who’s to say Facebook won’t try pushing out more than one device. I particularly prefer a device free of buttons to give a better multimedia experience. However, I know a good many that still insist on having a QWERTY keyboard; Facebook’s social network serves us all, so why shouldn’t its line of cellphones?

Social competitor Google+ won’t get as much love if Facebook has anything to say about it. So if Facebook decides to go with Android, you can bet on a heavily modded interface. After all, it will be competing with Windows Phone 7.5, Apple iOS5, the future of WebOS, and even others versions of Android. I would expect to see a Facebook button included in their phone as well. However, with Ice Cream Sandwich supporting phones with no buttons at all, it could be included inside the OS; much like the naivegation keys on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

A new Facebook phone may even build in their Facebook application into the OS, much like the Google+ app in the Galaxy Nexus. Hey, it may even slay a few vampires too – who knows.

[via AllThingsD]