HTC hasn’t released competitive flagship smartphones for many years, but so far the company hasn’t given up. HTC Desire 22 Pro, the successor to last year’s HTC Desire 21 Pro, was announced today. It’s a smartphone for the so-called metauniverse.

In the UK, the device will sell for £399. The smartphone was developed as the “perfect companion” for the recently announced Vive Flow VR headset and is used to access Viverse, HTC’s metadata storage. But the headset is designed to work with any Android phone, so the benefits of the Desire 22 Pro are not clear.

In general, the characteristics of the smartphone are average. It has a 6.6-inch display with a 1080p resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate, and in the upper left corner there is a cutout for the 32-megapixel selfie camera. There are three cameras on the back: 64-megapixel main, 13-megapixel ultra-wide angle and 5-megapixel depth sensor. The device is based on Snapdragon 695 processor, 8 GB RAM, 128 GB internal memory and 4520 mAh battery. It supports wireless and reverse wireless charging and runs Android 12.