Rumors have been swirling this week of a new HTC smartphone in the works codenamed "Ville," and BGR's reporting specs that should make even the most jaded power user swoon: Ice Cream Sandwich, an 8-megapixel camera with a backside-illuminated sensor, a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, and a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, all crammed into a shell less than 8mm thick. The phone is said to be mostly metal, and as such, it'll forgo NFC — a hot buzzword among high-end smartphones right now — but the overwhelming majority of users likely won't miss it. Naturally, Ice Cream Sandwich is going to mean that HTC needs to update its skin, and indeed, BGR reports that Sense 4.0 will debut on the Ville.

BGR doesn't give guidance on timing, but it'd stand to reason that we won't see it until 2012 — by all accounts, the Galaxy Nexus will be the only Ice Cream Sandwich game in town for a little while.