We're barreling towards another gadget-filled Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, and one of the companies with a press event booked in for the show is HTC. Could we be about to get a 4K-resolution HTC Vive for 2018?
That's certainly what this tweet from the official HTC Vive account would suggest, which was posted over the weekend and promises a "New Year's Resolution" on Monday. The top line of the text is blurry, while the second is in focus, suggesting more pixels for your eyes – see what they did there?
The current HTC Vive offers a 2,160 x 1,200 pixel display, stretched across both eye, so to get up to 4K (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) would mean a doubling of that. Perhaps HTC will settle for something less than 4K, but it would certainly help the marketing if it could stretch as far as today's big-screen TVs.
Competitive market
Whatever the upgraded resolution turns out to be, it seems certain that an upgrade is on the cards for the VR headset, which is approaching two years old now. The Vive has been given several discounts this year as it looks to woo more buyers. There's even talk the enterprise might be sold off.
More immersive controllers and wireless operation are two of the rumors that have been floating around about a potential HTC Vive 2, but this tease looks to be more about a minor upgrade than a brand new product. A bit of refinement in the visual aesthetics of the device wouldn't go amiss either.
With cheaper Windows Mixed Reality headsets gaining ground, HTC knows it has to stay competitive, so we're looking forward to seeing what it's got in store on Monday. TechRadar will be on the show floor in Vegas, so we'll bring you all the announcements as they happen.
