One of the biggest challenges in the market for Android phones is the sheer number of devices — a.k.a. the notorious fragmentation of the ecosystem.

When you’re buying an iPhone, you’re buying an iPhone. When you’re buying an Android device, it feels like you need a continuing education seminar to know exactly what you’re buying.

Here comes HTC, trying to simplify things with the announcement today of its new HTC One lineup — three Android devices meant to be sold by a variety of carriers under the same name and with the same specs.

This is apparently such a radical idea that PCMag’s Sascha Segan predicts it “could pretty quickly be torpedoed by U.S. carriers, who demand unique names and slightly different specs for every phone so that devices can’t be easily compared across carriers.”

HTC, which has its North American HQ in Bellevue, says the the One lineup represents “the most premium mobile experience” it has been able to muster to date.

The phones run Android 4.0 (a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich) and the HTC Sense 4 interface. They target photo fans with advanced imaging features, such as the ability to pull pictures from the HD 1080p video camera during or after shooting video.

No prices announced were today.

The flagship device is the HTC One X (pictured at right) with a 4.7-inch HD super LCD display. It’s coming out on AT&T’s LTE Network “in the coming months,” price TBA.

T-Mobile USA, HTC’s neighbor in Bellevue, is getting the HTC One S, which HTC describes as the thinnest phone it has ever made, at 7.95 mm. It comes with a 4.3 inch screen, and will run on T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ 42 Mbps network.

The final phone, the HTC One V, revives the design of the HTC Legend. No carrier was announced today for this device.

These are among the first in a wave of device unveilings from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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