5 inch HTC Windows Phone 8 handset cancelled

5 inch HTC Windows Phone 8 handset cancelled

December 17, 2012 | By Surur

Bloomberg reports that HTC has scrapped plans for a large-screened Windows Phone 8 handset due to the OS not supporting 1080P screen resolution,

Characterising the move as  blow to Microsoft, as only Android will be supporting the emerging form factor, they note that  HTC concluded that a larger-screen Windows Phone 8 phone wouldn’t be competitive against Android devices from HTC, Samsung and others.

HTC has just released the HTC Butterfly with full HD resolution and a 5 inch screen. The handset was initially released in Japan, then on Verizon, and will not be rolling out widely worldwide.

HTC was said to have a 4.7 inch’ed handset, the HTC Zenith, on its Windows Phone 8 roadmap, and it is not clear if the Zenith is the cancelled device in question.

Cheryl Chang, a Taipei-based spokeswoman for Microsoft and HTC both declined to comment on the rumour.

I am personally of the opinion that such a large screen should have an OS optimised for the form factor, rather than simply scaling up the existing phone UI to a larger size and resolution, suggesting Windows RT would be a much better operating system for such large handsets.

Do our readers agree that this is no big loss, but that Microsoft needs to make sure Windows RT support for sub-7 inch “phablets” with phone support comes rapidly? Let us know below.