HTC has updated 2010’s Phone of the Year, the HTC Desire, with the HTC Desire S, the company has confirmed at it’s press conference at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday.

The new model is just one of five smartphones the company is launching at the tradeshow, as it tries to keep up with Samsung and LG to be crowned the manufacturer with the must-have devices of 2011.

John Wang, chief marking officer, outlined the unibody design, HD video recording and integrated video chat, presenting the new phone to a packed auditorium in Barcelona.

The new model will sport a new design that continues HTC’s theme of a single unibody and ultimately merges the design of the 2010 models, the HTC Legend and the HTC Desire, although HTC’s iconic chin has all but been lost.

“What we are doing with the Desire S is building on the success of the Desire,” a spokesman for the company told Pocket-lint.

Design is one thing, but what about its inner strength? Well here you’ll get a 3.7-inch WVGA display, a 1.2GHz 8255 Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 768MB RAM, front facing camera for video calling, 5-megapixel rear camera and Android 2.4, yes Android 2.4.

“The HTC was the most successful product in 2010 and here we’ve made it better,” HTC told Pocket-lint.

The new smartphone will be available mid Q2 according to HTC, which should mean it’s likely to land in the UK in May all being well. No word as yet as to which operators will be taking the new Desire S, but we suspect it will be most of them as was the case with the HTC Desire.