After months of not–so–secrecy, the sequel to HTC’s hugely successful flagship handset the One has finally been officially revealed – the HTC One M8.
Yes, that’s what they’ve called it, and whilst it may not make a whole lot of sense right now, we’ve been informed that the ‘One’ banner is going to be a continuous line of handsets with future editions simply receiving a different suffix. So that’s that sorted.
And of course, we now know what it looks like. Just in case you missed all of the many, many leaks over the past few months. Still, that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a terrific looking handset. It’s smooth, two-piece metal body comes in three alluring finishes, and provides that reassuring weight which HTC fans should be familiar with (it actually weighs in at 160g, 17g more than its predecessor). It’s available in three colours, which you can see below – Gold, Silver and Gun Metal Grey
If the body of the handset looks appealing, the screen looks positively radiant. It’s big, at five inches, but not so large that it loses out on quality. The display runs at full 1080p HD.
This is all powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801, 2.3GHzi quad-core CPU. That’s a sizeable improvement on the 1.7GHz of the original One, although it still pumps out 2GB of RAM.
It comes with the latest version of Android, KitKat 4.4, already installed, and uses HTC’s love-it-or-loathe-it BlinkFeed overlay. As before, there’s two versions of the handset – one with 16GB of internal memory and one with 32GB. Customers may not be too pleased to discover that a whopping 6GB of that is taken up by system software on the 16GB version, whilst 8GB is unavailable on the 32GB version. Why the two handsets require different amounts of unremovable software is anyone’s guess. Still, those unsatisfied with their 10GB or 24GB of useable storage will be pleased to know that the One M8 supports up to 128GB in external storage through microSD.
The biggest question that kept popping up time after time whenever a new leak of the One M8 surfaced was just what is that second lens on the back of the handset for? It turns out that it isn’t a second camera like some had speculated, but in fact a sensor. The camera itself is still HTC’s patented UltraPixel camera which, when you cut through all the jargon, is similar to a 13 megapixel lens, only it captures 300% more light. It is worth noting that video is recorded in 1080p though, not 4K like on Sony’s Xperia Z2. There’s also dual-flash for more natural tones, and a BSI sensor.
What the new second-lens sensor does is it enables the phone to adjust focus after the photo has been taken. It’s genuinely impressive, and is something that has to be experienced to be truly appreciated. When you take a photo, you no longer need to worry about lighting/foreground and background/depth of field – once you have your picture you simply tap on the part of the image you wish to focus on, and the phone refocuses it for you. It’s very clever, and is only possible because of that second sensor which essentially gives the camera depth-perception. This also means that you have a raft of fun (read: interesting the first time and then never to be used again) effects which you can apply to your snaps, like parallax-style artificial 3D.
With all this focus (sorry) on imagery, sound hasn’t been forgotten either. The HTC One was one of the most unnecessarily loud phones on the market, and their BoomSound dual front-facing speakers are still present and correct. In fact they’re even louder in the M8, and higher quality too so that audio doesn’t get muddied or distorted when the bass gets heavy. The mid range sounds crisper and high-notes stand out better to provide a more well-rounded sound when compared to the original One.
We’ve also previously seen a pretty funky-looking set of smartcovers for the device. Its perforated, Swiss cheese-style front allows you to see some basic information like the time, weather and messages in a pleasingly retro, Lite-Brite sort of manner. You can also perform some functions through the closed case thanks to its conductive capabilities – including knock-to-wake. It’s probably the most impressive smartcover we’ve seen, and to be so easy on the eye as well as so functional might make it the first real must-have accessory of its kind.
The handset will take nano SIM (no dual-SIM function here, sorry if that’s your sort of thing) and is reported to have a 3G talk time of up to 20 hours – although it is of course 4G-LTE ready.
Even better yet, you don’t have to wait around for it’s release. If you like what you see, you can head off to your local Carphone Warehouse right now and pick one up! The UK retailer have recently stated that they’ll be on sale at around 4pm today.
We’ll have a comprehensive review of the handset in the next issue of What Mobile magazine, on sale nationwide 10th April.
