Verizon’s Latest LTE Smartphone Leaked: Is This The HTC Incredible 3?

With MWC drawing ever closer, new handset leaks are hitting the wires hard and fast. Today alone we’ve seen the Galaxy Mini 2 break cover and new images of the LG Miracle Windows Phone emerge, and now HTC’s latest LTE-friendly Android phone has been caught on film.
As PhoneArena notes, this mysterious handset sports the same sort of curvaceous back that gave devices like Verizon’s HTC Incredible and Rezound a bit of extra visual flair. That, coupled with the appearance of Verizon’s own 4G LTE logo and what looks like the Verizon Wave wallpaper means that we could be looking at an early version of a Big Red-bound Incredible 3.
With the announcement of their renewed focus on “hero” devices still fresh in my mind, I can’t help but think that this handset doesn’t seem like much of a standout. Ice Cream Sandwich and the Sense 4.0 UI notwithstanding, the device’s 1.2 GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 8-megapixel camera aren’t much of a bump over previous Incredible models. Audiophiles — or at least, audiophiles who don’t mind listening to compressed mp3s on their smartphone — may also be tickled by the inclusion of Beats Audio support, and it’s a safe bet that the Beats headphones should ship with it.
Strangely,HTC opted to go for four hardware buttons rather than the three on-screen keys that are baked into Ice Cream Sandwich. A leaked demo video of the forthcoming HTC Ville clearly shows that the Taiwanese company has adopted the three key layout, though The Verge points out the possibility of this device launching with Gingerbread first before receiving the 4.0 update. Considering that HTC plans to push ICS to certain devices as early as this March though, the thought of HTC launching a handset without the latest software is more than a little puzzling.