As opposed to Samsung, which has few secrets left up its sleeve in regards to next week’s launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge (yes, it’s going to feature a curved display), HTC has been keeping things well hidden internally this year. The only certain thing at this point is that the company is in fact bringing the HTC One M8’s successor out sometime this spring, but apart from that, very little is known. No leaks are emerging regarding designs, no benchmarks are popping up in Asia reporting on performance – literally, there’s nothing, not even a single breadcrumb to give us any solid hints on what to expect from the next HTC flagship.
Or, should we say flagships? As with Apple and its iPhone/iPhone 6 Plus, all signs suggest that HTC is also going down the double-release route, preparing a HTC One M9, as well as an even better HTC One M9 Plus, a phone that has been surfacing as a code-name since fall 2014, under the name Hima Ultra. Of course, it’s just the rumor mill running its course at this time, with multiple renders being widely available, but not much else. The only sign of the M9 Plus’ existence seems to be the fact that people are actually talking about it, and in this regard, there are too many people in too many different places on the globe to ignore the fact that the Plus probably is a reality. Just how much better the phone will be compared to the regular flagship, the One M9, remains a mystery.
This minor teaser from HTC is the only sign we’ve been given about its upcoming flagship, the M9.
We have to commend HTC for its ability to keep things under wrap for so long, and so effectively though. The fact that no actual information is available for either the HTC One M9 or the supposedly premium M9 Plus is surprising, to say the least. It could also be somewhat detrimental to HTC’s sale figures, as some publicity and hype can go a long way towards promoting a new high-budget smartphone, and this aspect has been largely absent with both HTC phones, apart from word of mouth and of course, regular fans of the manufacturer. We’ve also noticed a considerably loss in interest towards new releases on the Android market, which is understandable – in past years, there haven’t been any particularly impressive improvements to the now standard smartphone formula. Sure, we can expect HTC’s new phones to bring a better display, a better camera (there are whispers that HTC will replace its back camera with a new, 20 Megapixel sensor), QHD resolutions and new hardware, most likely through improved RAM and the introduction of the new generation of Snapdragon CPUs. But it’s all rather unimpressive at this point. We’ve seen to hit a bottleneck point, in which yearly additions to popular smartphone lines come with minor improvements here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Even in terms of design, the prospect of the upcoming HTC One M9 is split into two distinct directions. On one hand, many believe HTC is planning to greatly change the design of its upcoming heavy-hitter, while there are also those that seem to believe and indicate that the phone will have an exceedingly similar design to last year’s model. The latter variant is harder to digest and believe – given the fact that HTC has already sent out invites for the unveil event in March (aimed at the M9, not M9 Plus), and is trying its best to hype the event without revealing any sort of information, it’s hard to believe the company would go with the same design all over again. One does not tease press members only to show off more of the same, after all – that would only result in a lot of negative publicity prior to the phone’s launch, something that we’re certain HTC is not gunning for.
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/560425983476789248
So, can we expect something entirely new then? It’s the most plausible scenarios, although we retain the right to be skeptical. After all, we all remember how “revolutionary” Apple’s iPhone 6 was supposed to be, and let’s face it – while the phone is solid on its own, it didn’t really bring anything spectacular to the market. Then, we also have this render from popular Android leakster @evleaks, posted on the 28th of January, which is the only somewhat credible source for what we could possible expect from 2015’s version of the One. Different? Certainly so, but it’s a render after all, and nothing official, so whether or not the product we’ll be shown next week resembles this design or not remains to be seen. In any case, we’re about to find out soon enough. For now, we’re keeping our fingers crossed, in the hopes that something truly impressive will be revealed at Barcelona. We can certainly do with a little bit of freshness in the Android smartphone market, don’t you think?