Back at Mobile World Congress, HTC did the impossible — it teased a brand-new phone set to arrive in the coming months. Legions of old-school fans ran to their desk drawers, digging around for their HTC One X or M8 in celebration. Those same collectors inevitably fell to their knees in disappointment as we all learned the gimmick for this next device: the metaverse. After an initial delay, HTC is ready to show the world the Web3 phone it deserves — for better or worse.

As spotted by SamMobile, HTC Taiwan shared an invite to a new event scheduled for Tuesday, June 28th. There isn't much to gather from this teaser, save for the Viverse branding that all but confirms its metaverse status. HTC defines the Viverse as "an interoperable ecosystem where different content platforms interconnect to form a seamless user experience in a decentralized, secure, and open way." If that sounds mostly meaningless to normal consumers, well,

It's unclear how HTC intends to leverage a smartphone with Viverse. It's possible the company is returning to the days of phone-powered VR headsets, giving users access to the litany of social features built by the Vive team. It could function as a more standard smartphone, with built-in, exclusive applications that connect to the lineup of concerts, meetings, and gatherings promised on the Viverse website, though a little-used social network doesn't sound like much of a selling point.

Unfortunately, your guess is as good as ours — especially on the specs front. HTC referred to its metaverse phone as a high-end device back at MWC, so a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and at least 8GB of RAM seems like a given. Then again, we're talking about the company that announced its blockchain phone without detailing any concrete specs, so maybe don't get your hopes up.

For those of you obsessed with Web3 and the metaverse, it's finally time to put your money where your mouth is. For everyone else, it's probably far too late to expect an HTC comeback here. But hey, you never know — maybe this phone really will bring the company back to its glory days. Or not. Probably not. Either way, we'll find out on June 28th.