Classic HTC phone could be ailing company's next big attempt

When you're no longer able to keep up with the fast-paced cutthroat smartphone market, it seems that the next big bet would be to try to remind the world of the legacy you created. Nostalgia, after all, is a very strong emotion and has recently proven to be quite profitable, too. That may be the appeal that HTC will try to make if it does come around to reviving a classic phone, perhaps inspired by the media frenzy around the new foldable Motorola Razr.

To be fair, the new Motorola Razr isn't a simple nostalgia trip the ways some recent Nokia feature phones have been. On its own, it's a modern phone with modern components like a flexible display. But had Motorola launched it with any name other than the Razr, the phone would have probably generated a brief amount of hype only.

Just days after Motorola's big reveal, HTC Creative Labs chief Drew Bamford goes on Twitter to ask which classic HTC phone would its fans love to see revived. With modern tech, of course. Given the timing, there's little reason to expect the Razr announcement had nothing to do with the sudden interest in bringing back classic phone designs.

Which classic @htc phone would you like to see us bring back with today's technology?

— Drew Bamford (@drewbam) November 15, 2019

To its credit, HTC has quite a few, not even counting the white box phones it let other companies sell under their own name. There's the HTC Dream, the very first Android phone, and even some Facebook-branded phones.

Of course, HTC might simply be polling people with no solid plans of making such a phone or are testing whether there's interest in making such a phone in the first place. But even if it does make one, it will be curious to see what kind of modern technology HTC can put inside to make it more than just a revival, especially considering it has already failed to keep up with most modern mobile tech trends in the past years.