HTC is looking to regain some lost ground in the U.S. smartphone market this holiday season with the release of a seriously spec'd up device on the nation's largest carrier. Announced in a joint press event this morning, the Droid DNA's standout feature is a five-inch Super LCD 3 screen boasting a 1920 x 1080 resolution. That's a massive pixel density of 440 PPI, the highest on any mobile on the market.

HTC says they've made the screen brighter and faster than on the already impressive One X – which uses a Super LCD 2 screen – and also improved the viewing angles to 80 degrees. By comparison, the company says the Samsung Galaxy S III offers a 30 degree viewing angle.

The device runs on a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chip from Qualcomm with integrated LTE connectivity and paired with 2GB of RAM. It packs an 8 megapixel camera with the same f/2.0 aperture and ImageChip processor as on the One X, 16GB of built-in storage (no microSD), Beats Audio, and NFC. The DNA features a 2,020mAh battery and is also among the first phones to support the Qi wireless charging standard.

On the software side, the device runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with HTC's Sense 4+ layered on top. Despite the large display HTC insists that the Droid DNA is a phone, not a "phablet". It's slimmer than both the Galaxy III and Galaxy Note II at 9.73mm thick and doesn't come with a stylus.

The Droid DNA will go on sale November 21st for $200 with a two-year contract from Verizon.