First look: HTC BoomBass

A boxy new portable speaker for your HTC phone

Alongside a new color option for the HTC One series and a new mid-range phone, HTCs also unveiled another member of its growing smartphone accessory family. The HTC BoomBass (yes, thats really the name) is a small (64x64x64mm) matte plastic cube that lets you take your volume and bass a step beyond HTCs admittedly impressive BoomSound front speakers.

The BoomBass is split into two parts -- the large, upper bit houses the speaker and subwoofer, while the slide-out red tray extends to give you a shelf for your phone. Pairing the speaker with your HTC phone is as simple as tapping it to the top of the accessory -- NFC kicks things off, after which a Bluetooth connection does the heavy lifting. And as its a Bluetooth speaker, theres no need to keep your phone shelved when in use, although for the same reason you probably wont want to venture too far away from it -- HTC advertises the range as up to 10 meters.

The speaker contains an integrated 1,200mAh battery, giving up to 9 hours of playback, and this can be charged through a microUSB port at the rear. Theres no way to pass this charge through to your phone, however, as the stand part is just for holding the phone in place. Interestingly, theres also no Beats Audio branding anywhere on the BoomBass device we previewed -- perhaps further evidence of the growing distance between the two companies.

The BoomBass units we played with were only engineering samples, not final hardware, but the sound quality on offer was decent. Music came through loud and clear, although obviously theres a limit to the kind of output you can get from a device so small.

Silly name or no, the BoomBass is a stylish, useful addition to HTCs accessory line-up.

The speaker is expected to go on sale in the UK during the fourth quarter. Hit up the ShopAndroid newsletter to learn when new accessories like this go on sale.

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Via: First look: HTC BoomBass