HTC Mini introduces concept of a remote control for your smartphone

HTC has introduced a new piece of hardware to their ecosystem. The HTC Mini is a remote control aimed at the Chinese market for the HTC Butterfly, the Chinese market variant of the HTC DROID DNA. The device works by pairing it with an HTC Butterfly initially via NFC. Once paired, the devices can communicate wirelessly with the HTC Mini providing several remote functions.
The HTC Mini has a pseudo-candybar form factor, with a small monochrome screen on the top half of the device and a numeric keyboard with a couple navigation keys below that. The screen is used to display a variety of notifications and messages that it pulls from the phone. This might be useful if one was in a position to not be able to access their phone but had the HTC Mini available.
Perhaps more useful is the ability of the HTC Mini to function as a remote control. Imagine you have downloaded a movie or are streaming a movie to your HTC smartphone. You hook it up to your big screen TV via an HDMI cable and have settled in to your favorite chair across the room to enjoy the movie. If someone comes knocking at the door at that point, instead of having to get up, trudge across the room to pause playback, then answer the door, with the HTC Mini you could just use it as a typical remote control to pause things.
It is not clear, but the HTC Mini may be able to function as a remote trigger for the camera on the device, which would be helpful for photographers. The device also has a “find my phone” type feature that will let you trigger a ring from the phone in case you cannot find your HTC Butterfly but you are sure it is close by.
There is no word on a release date or what the cost for the HTC Mini will be. We also don’t know whether HTC will make the device available for other markets or capable of pairing with other devices in their fleet.