If your heart skipped a beat after seeing the leaked photo of the HTC Mecha on Verizon's LTE network, you may want to sit down before reading the remainder of this article. All set? Ok. In a recent interview with Mobile World Live, HTC CEO Peter Chou confirmed that his company will be launching LTE-capable handsets, but that they won't be coming until the second half of 2011. So much for all those "new HTC LTE phones on Verizon early next year" rumors. There is some good news to be found, though, as Chou said that not only will HTC bring us LTE devices running Android, but that Windows Phone 7 will also appear on some LTE handsets. Additionally, HTC's phones will have support for near field communication.
Verizon has given us a couple of potential dates as to when we'll see LTE phones arrive on their network. Most recently, Big Red said that we'd begin to see "consumer-oriented handsets" arrive by the middle of next year, meaning the carrier's first LTE phone may not end up being the Mecha after all. Perhaps Motorola's Tegra 2-powered Etna will be the one?
