Hasta La Gadget!

HTC’s designers may soon be more famous for their expense accounts than their designs, but that shouldn’t detract from their latest color-picking masterpiece. We’ve been playing with the vivid blue HTC One and One Mini and have to admit, it’s a tough choice deciding between this and the glamour red version we saw in July. While we were there, we also asked if the company would be introducing a Mini version of the One in red, but that’s not yet confirmed. HTC is looking to hawk this as a carrier or retailer exclusive in various territories, with the official line being that it’ll land in “select markets” from Q4 — but we’re reasonably sure that Sprint’s got this one locked up for September. Keen-eyed readers will notice in the gallery below that the highlight colors are darker on the One than on the Mini, but that’s the only difference between this and the original vintage.

Update: While there’s nothing official to emerge from the US just yet, we do have official confirmation that both the HTC One and One Mini in “vivid blue” will be sold through the Carphone Warehouse in the UK. The flagship can be had on plans starting at £33, while the smaller model is available from £26 a month.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC

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The HTC Butterfly S which was first announced sometime in the middle of this year, where it came with a 5” Full HD display that certainly impressed, but it certainly did not manage to make its mark as a flagship device that beat out the rest of the competition at that time. Perhaps affiliating your smartphone with a hugely popular comic character might do the trick? I do not think so, but for some strange reason or another, an HTC Butterfly S recently leaked out, boasting Hello Kitty livery. The mouthless feline will be decked in either a flight attendant suit or a pilot get up, sporting EVA Air uniforms, as part of paying homage to its Hello Kitty jets.

Not only that, it is not only external cosmetic changes that the Hello Kitty version of the HTC Butterfly S would come with, since this 5” device would also sport a fair amount of room for you to stick other Hello Kitty stickers on the outside, all the while coming with nine different wallpaper themes for the 1080p display. Right now, this special edition of the HTC Butterfly S will retail for approximately $770 as a Taiwan exclusive, although the fan base of Hello Kitty can be considered to be worldwide.

HTC Butterfly S Gets A Touch Of Hello Kitty original content from Ubergizmo.

For some employees at technology companies the lure of easy money for selling trade secrets or embezzling funds earmarked for other purposes is too hard to resist. The technology world is riddled with accounts of executives getting caught stealing money out a company tills or selling trade secrets to competitors to turn a profit. HTC […]

You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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A bit of drama has unfolded over at HTC. Several top designers of the company based in Taiwan were arrested after they were suspected to have made fraudulent expense claims and stolen trade secrets. The designers were leaving HTC to set up a new mobile design company in mainland China as well as Taiwan. Five people were taken into custody and interrogated, Vice President of Product Design Thomas Chien, R&D director Wu Chien Hung and senior manager of the design team Justin Huang, who sketched out the design for HTC One, were among those who were arrested, their offices were also raided during the investigation. Thomas Chien and Wu Chien Hung have been kept in custody while the others have been released on bail.

HTC chairwoman Cher Wang reportedly filed a complaint personally with the Taiwan Investigation Bureau. In it’s investigation the Bureau found that Chien, Wu and Huang were setting up a new mobile design company, registered already as Xiaoyu, and that they would have resigned after receiving mid-year bonuses from HTC. The company reportedly discovered that Thomas Chien had downloaded Sense 6.0 design files and sent them to external contacts over email. All three of them are also accused of falsely billing HTC for over US$334,000 in commission fees for an external design firm, while the design for HTC One was done in-house. They are accused of splitting the money between themselves. HTC has said in a statement that it expects all employees to “observe and practice the highest levels of integrity and ethics.” It is refraining from making any further comments as relevant authorities are in the process of conducting investigations.

Several Top HTC Designers Arrested Over Allegations Of Fraud And Stealing Trade Secrets original content from Ubergizmo.