After months of speculation, humors, and tips, Project Emerald is finally coming to fruition.  The T-Mobile myTouch 4G will sell for $199.99 on November 3rd with a new two year contract.  We’ve know n every detail about the handset for a while, so it’s finally nice to see the official launch date and price revealed. [...]

Looking for some new details on the mythical Project Emerald?  The guys over at Phandroid are now reporting that Project Emerald is actually a reference to the launch of two different HTC handsets, not one.  The source behind this new rumor claims that will have a “dual-launch of the HTC Vision as the G1 Blaze, and the HTC Desire HD as the myTouch 3G HD” with the first handset hitting stores on September 22^nd and the other will make an appearance one week later on September 29^th. 

While we like the idea of a dual-launch plan, there are a few things here that simply don’t add up:

• According to the leaked T-Mobile roadmap, the HTC vanguard and Emerald are launching two months apart from each other
• There are no similarities between the HTC Desire HD and the myTouch 3G HD
• No concrete details are known about Project Emerald, but neither the HTC Vision nor the HTC Vanguard are expected to feature a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor

We may be wrong, but we’re going to be labeling Phandroid’s rumor as pure speculation.  We know that HTC and T-Mobile have something big planned with Project Emerald; we just don’t think a two phone launch is what they have in the works. 

Source: Phandroid

We’re still not 100% sure that the upcoming HTC Glacier will actually feature a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, but new investigative work by AlienBabelTech seems to be pretty convincing.  Last week they were able to unearth benchmark scores for the HTC Glacier which were much higher than HTC’s current Android handset’s running on Qualcomm’s 1GHz single-core processors.  The benchmarks themselves didn’t indicate which processor was powering the HTC Glacier, but the assumption was made that HTC was using Qualcomm’s new dual core technology. 

The GPU score on the HTC Glacier is about 87% of the score of the Samsung Galaxy S using the PowerVR SGX 540 GPU. Samsung has stated that the Hummingbird processor is capable of processing up to 90 million triangles per second (MTPS). For confirmation on that watch this Samsung Galaxy S keynote video around the 3:45 mark. Now here’s an interesting fact: Qualcomm states that the QSD8672 can process up to 80 million triangles per second. So what’s 80 MTPS divided by 90 MTPS ? The answer is around 88% which is almost the same percentage of performance from the above result.

What we have here is still pure speculation, but we want to thank AlienBabelTech for crunching the numbers.  We’ve known for a long time that HTC is planning something special for Project Emerald.  And if you ask us, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor is definitely something special. 

Source: AlienBabelTech

The HTC Glacier (a previously unknown handset) has recently been spotted on GLBenchmark’s website.  Not much is known about the new handset except for its screen resolution (800 x 480 pixels) and its GLBenchmark Pro 1.1 scores (1432 frames).  The scores themselves are not anything revolutionary since it falls right below the Samsung Galaxy S, but we would like to point out that the HTC Glacier’s score is nearly three times higher than those posted by the HTC EVO 4G.  Due to the significant performance boost, AlienBabelTech is speculating that the HTC Glacier may be running a dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon processor. 

AlienBabeTech is also making the assertion that the HTC Glacier may also be the rumored Project Emerald that is supposed to hit T-Mobile in early November.  The benchmark scores were uploaded to GLBenchmark’s site by a T-Mobile USA employee.  We know that T-Mobile has a few new HTC handsets set to launch this fall, but only Project Emerald is expected to be equipped with a dual-core processor.   

Source: AlienBabelTech

Those of you who follow TmoNews may have already heard about Project Emerald. The initial rumor was that T-Mobile was working on bringing the HTC Desire to their customers some time this summer. But now things are shifting in a different direction and Project Emerald may be even better than we initially thought.

New rumors indicate that HTC will be manufacturing a new handset for T-Mobile which will sport the Sidekick brand. The HTC handset would sport a 1GHz processor, Android 2.1, 16GB of on-board storage, front facing camera, and a 4.3 inch Super ALOMED display. Rumors are also flying around that the phone will be called “Sidekick Twist”.

At this point, it’s hard to distinguish facts from fiction. Though we would like to believe that all the details are true, some of them just don’t seem to add up. Yes, HTC already has a 4.3 inch device on T-Mobile (HTC HD2) and another one on the way to Sprint (EVO 4G) which also sports a front facing camera, but a Super AMOLED display is patented by Samsung and they still have not released any handset of their own that sport one of them. Also, the name Sidekick Twist would imply that the phone swivels or twists to display a keyboard, but the leaked info makes no mention of one and if you’ve ever held the HTC HD2 or the EVO 4G, it’s hard to imagine that phone with a keyboard.

We’re not trying to debunk the whole rumor, just trying to clear some things up so that you aren’t too disappointed when we get the real facts on Project Emerald. Here’s a list of the most credible scenario based on the rumor:

• HTC made phone with Sidekick branding
• Large AMOLED display
• Front facing camera
• 1GHz snapdragon processor
• 16GB on-board storage
• Android 2.1

We’re sure we’ll be getting more details on this mysterious handset as the next few weeks unfold. How many of you would actually be interested in an HTC phone with the Sidekick name?

Source: TmoNews