HTC has just announced a device for the UK market called the One SV. If you go back to February of this year, when HTC announced announced the One S, they pitched that device as a highly competent 4.3 inch Android smartphone. And it was, but it didn't have 4G LTE. The One SV fixes that, but at a cost. Whereas the One S had a 960 x 540 pixel display, this new handset only does 800 x 480. The camera has also been downgraded from 8 megapixels to 5 megapixels, though admittedly it still has that awesome f/2.0 lens. The One SV comes with 8 GB of storage which can be expanded via a microSD card slot, it'll come in two colors (blue, white), and we'd like to tell you the price, but that information wasn't provided.

What should you think of this phone? It's yet another HTC device that shouldn't have seen the light of day. Why couldn't HTC have waited just one month until CES or two months until Mobile World Congress to announce a midrange phone that featured the company's new 2013 design language? The Droid DNA (Butterfly in Europe/Asia) offers us a sneak peak as to what HTC's portfolio is going to look like next year. The One SV on the other hand, it looks like a cross between the two year old Desire and the one year old One X.

And then there's the more important question: If you're in the UK, should you buy a 4G LTE phone? Not really. Coverage is horrible, there's only one operator (EE), and worst of all the pricing plans are expensive. The One SV is basically a device that was tailor made to make one operator in one country happy. We don't like when handset companies to that.

Go global or go bust.

Update: The One SV hit Australia in November.

Update: The German website BestBoyZ has hands-on photos; one is below.