HTC planning a Hero successor, is it the QWERTY-totting Espresso?

A recently leaked XML revealed the specs of the second HTC Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard - the HTC Espresso. Strangely, that coincided with an HTC spokesperson confirming an upcoming Hero successor in February.

The codename HTC Espresso was first found embedded among others in the company's latest leaked Android ROM.

In a recent interview, Patrik Andersson, HTC's Sweden exec, said that half of company's 2010 devices will run the Android OS. And one of them will be the successor of the highly popular HTC Hero due for announcement in February during the Mobile World Congress 2010.

Now we're not really sure if that adds up to the leaked XML and whether the HTC Espresso is the mentioned Hero successor, but one thing's for sure - we'd gladly have a cup of this one.

The QWERTY keyboard aside, the Hero and Espresso share the same coffee beans - the Qualcomm MSM 7200A 528 MHz processor and the screen resolution of 320 x 480 pixels (screen size is still unknown).

Unfortunately, the leaked XML data also points out only 16-bit color rendering - the 65K colors that we've seen on all Androids below 2.0 upsofar are... how do we say that... less than exciting.

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