HTC needs to put one in the win column and it needs to do so yesterday if it’s to survive past next year, so there’s a lot riding on the box-office success of the upcoming “M8” flagship smartphone. But will the “One Two” have what it takes to give Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and Sony’s Xperia Z2 a run for their money?
Only time will tell. What’s crystal clear right now is the M8 is indeed real and looming large on the horizon. The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place one by one, with the latest being a Wi-Fi certification of a handheld dubbed 0P6B10000/0P6B20000.
There’s no question this is the M8, with one SKU probably designating the standard, international version and the other a region-specific, dual-SIM, microSD-enabled flavor. Or who knows, maybe HTC has a surprise in store, and the basic M8, like the basic One max, will carry expandable storage. In any case, one SKU is most definitely for the Dual SIM One Two.
Anything else the Wi-Fi Alliance reveals? Not exactly, but we expected that much. The agency has always been discreet about the specs and features of approved devices, spilling the beans only on M8’s Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac support.
Luckily, we have a number of recent reports to guide us through the beast’s list of features, allegedly headlined by a 5-inch Full HD (not 2K) display and quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU. On the software side of things, Android 4.4 KitKat shall be seasoned with Sense 6.0 UI spices, with 2 GB RAM and a mystery “UltraPixel” camera filling the rest of the blanks so far.
Expected in the year’s first fiscal quarter, including on all four major American carriers, the M8 is destined to break cover at CES, in January, or MWC, in February. As far as design goes, we oddly don’t have any solid prototype leaks as of now, albeit there are two concept renders circulating around the web.
The first is an Ancel Lim sketch and actually rings true, being essentially a slightly larger, thinner, flatter, more rectangular HTC One with tremendously skinny bezels. Now, I for one would usually be an advocate of aesthetical overhauls rather than rehashes, but in this particular case why fix what’s very obviously not broken?
Well, one way to go if HTC ultimately decides to drastically change something could be Christof Gruber’s way, pictured above. The designer envisions a silky white One Two with red stripes for personality, a chunkier chassis, blocky overall vibe and massive battery beneath the hood. Nah, I still think I prefer Lim’s concept. Don’t you?
Via [Wi-Fi Alliance], [Concept-Phones] (1), (2)
