HTC has confirmed to Pocket-lint that it is to hold a special press event on 19 February in London. We've just received our invite for the pre-MWC event although it doesn't give us any details of what will be launched.

But it's widely believed to be the HTC M7 flagship phone, much talked about over the past few weeks.

There have been several reported leaks and rumours about the new handset, including purported pictures taken by AndroidPolice. Other rumours claim the device will come with a quad-core Qualcomm processor, 4.7-inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution display, 32GB of internal storage (although there will be no microSD card slot), 2GB of RAM, 13-megapixel rear camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling.

It's also believed that the phone will land with a refreshed version of HTC Sense, the company's user interface layered over Android, dubbed HTC Sense 5, which is purported to be a lighter take than previous iterations.

From the alleged pictures of the M7 and other written reports, the handset is said to look a fair bit like the US HTC Droid DNA (or J Butterfly in Japan), bringing a large-display powerhouse to the UK and Europe. 

It was initially believed that the next HTC flagship phone would launch at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona in February, following the trend of previous years. However, we doubt HTC would hold such a showpiece press event without a flagship phone to wave about.

It seems HTC wants to make a buzz about its new Android superphone as it looks to claw back territory from the likes of Samsung. It's not great news for the annual mobile congress run by the GSMA, however, as there's a growing trend of big manufacturers launching handsets outside of the conference circuit.

Naturally, Pocket-lint will be in attendance at both the HTC launch event in London and MWC 2013 in Barcelona.