Details have begun to emerge of what could be an upcoming handset from HTC, named the Zeta. The imagery and specifications were leaked to Engadget, which reported on it yesterday. It is still unclear whether the details of the smartphone are a design concept or if this will be HTC's next flagship model.

The phone measures 4.32 x 2.4 x 0.39 inches (109.8 x 60.9 x 9.8mm), weighing 5.15 ounces (146g) and is a real departure from previous more rounded designs from the Taiwanese-based manufacturer. It features a squarer look with a curved rear cover that appears to thin towards the top and bottom. The front is dominated by what is believed to be a 4.5-inch 1280x720-pixel HD display, with four capacitive buttons across the bottom.

Moving on to the hardware, the handset is said to pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon 2.5GHz quad-core APQ8064 processor, a full gig of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage, Bluetooth 4.0, and a 1,830mAh battery. The rear cover features an 8MP camera paired with what looks like dual LED flash, while a 1.3MP camera sits on the front.

The device would run Android's Ice Cream Sandwich reselease with HTC's Sense UI layered on top, most likely version 4.0. Interestingly, it appears that the firm has decided not to part with the capacitive buttons on upcoming releases despite ICS not requiring them. It will also be Beats Audio compatible like the HTC Edge.

With double the clock speed of the soon to be announced Samsung Nexus handset, it certainly makes for an interesting comparison. Samsung's current flagship model, the Galaxy S2 for example features a considerably less powerful 1.2GHz dual core processor.

HTC also recently announced plans to offer customers purchasing new handsets 5GB of free storage with the popular cloud-storage platform, Dropbox. New handsets will come with the Dropbox app pre-loaded, ready for immediate use once signed up.