Taiwanese company HTC has officially announced its newest flagship today - the HTC One M8, finally making the details official after many leaks leading up to the event.
The smartphone is an updated version of the original HTC One which shipped a meagre 6.4 million units, despite winning several awards, according to figures provided by IDC. That's poor in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S4's 43.3 million and Apple's 39.5 million iPhone 5S sold in the same period. HTC has high hopes that the new flagship will turn around its recent weak earnings whilst helping it boost its market share.
Starting on the outside, the device has a metal zero-gap unibody chassis with the antenna built into the rear of the body to avoid interference. The main tech specs to highlight in the HTC One M8 include a larger 5-inch 1080p HD display. Inside a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor paired with 2GB of RAM should help Google's Android 4.4.2 OS with HTC sense 6.0 run nice and smoothly. The HTC One M8 also has 32GB of internal storage with microSD expansion for up to an additional 128GB, an HTC UltraPixel Duo Camera, a 5MP front-facing camera, a 2,600mAh battery, Stereo BoomSound speakers, GPS, Wi-Fi ac, NFC and an IR Blaster. It weighs in at 160g and measures 146.3 x 70.6 x 9.35mm.
Different shades of the new HTC One M8
The battery is said to deliver a 40 per cent longer life than the original HTC One, and the company has also implemented a new 'Extreme Battery Saver' mode which allows the device to stay on for up to two weeks in standby mode if the battery was fully charged to start with. Settings will allow users to enter this mode either manually or when battery capacity reaches 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 15 per cent.
The BoomSound speakers are also upgraded to become 25 per cent louder than the previous model. Also any music playing can be sent through to any Bluetooth speaker from the device following the swipe of three fingers.
A new 'Motion Launch' feature can take the user to the camera, the most recently used app, the home screen or BlinkFeed depending on how they swipe the screen when unlocking the device.
A cover accessory offers a dot matrix style info display when double-tapped
HTC Duo Camera
An important new feature, the 'Duo Camera', consists of HTC's 4.1 UltraPixel camera and an accompanying 2.0MP depth sensor on the smartphone back panel. The addition of a depth sensor on the rear of the device is used to record distance where an app can then take that information and allow users to apply 3D effects to an image taken or imitate effects of changing focus, blurring the surroundings of selected objects. The depth information on each photo taken will also allow the device to remove a photo's background easily for photo editing purposes.
Additionally the camera has been improved to include a 50 per cent faster focus speed and comes with a new gallery app and quick access to different shooting modes including the popular 'selfies' and slow motion video.
New and old, side by side
The handset will be heading to carriers globally before the end of April whilst being available online on several U.S. mobile networks from today. I've also just got emails from Three and Phones4U in the UK stating the immediate availability of this new HTC flagship smartphone.
