Since we last reported on the HTC One (2?)(2014?) there have been a few developments over the last few days since Mobile World Congress last week, namely a few major leaks. The two biggest leaks have come from a young kid that had the audacity (or stupidity) to show a device that clearly coincides with all of the previous leaks of the new HTC One’s body and design, which we also reported on. If you notice, these leaks are happening almost on a weekly basis with the first major one happening about 2 weeks ago. Keep in mind, that we are now 3 weeks away from the phone’s official reveal, which means that we’re likely to see the speed and quantity of leaks to increase exponentially. And to be fair, they’ve been pretty consistent, but today marks the day where the first non-blurry video leaks online with what appears to be an attempt to review the device. We’re including a mirrored YouTube linke of the video because the original was pulled by the kid likely under pressure from HTC. If you feel like watching the whole video, we’ve got it included below:
This kid is already pretty familiar with the HTC One as he has the original one and seems to know some information about the phone that isn’t detailed on the device itself. He appears to be using an AT&T branded version of the new HTC One due to the pre-loaded AT&T software. Additionally, he makes a lot of excited statements about the phone’s camera and the quality and speed of the camera which he feels is absolutely incredible. The most interesting developments that we gain from this video are that the HTC One will have a MicroSD card slot, a headphone jack at the bottom and that it will look like the leaked images. It also confirms that the dual cameras are indeed correct as shown by the previous leaked images. He also struggles to properly use the camera due to some software bugs, even though this was originally 2 weeks old which means that the software is likely even older. Hopefully this doesn’t negatively reflect upon the device itself, which may be one of the reasons why HTC doesn’t want this video up. The other interesting fact is that the phone no longer has the physical capacitive buttons but rather the soft buttons that the Nexus 5 and other devices have.
There’s also a retailer in the UK of smartphones that has listed the new HTC One for sale for $969 including VAT which is usually much higher than the US price of phones. Converted to dollars, one should expect this phone to be for sale for £580, which if VAT is removed should normalize the US price to $720. Realistically, though, I would expect this phone to retail for $600-$700 for the 32 GB version which they’re listing. And if we know anything about HTC, we know that the 32 GB version will likely be the baseline and a special 64 GB version will be made available to developers and probably one exclusive carrier like they did last time with AT&T.
This retailer also has the phone listed for availability in 2 months, which means that the new One will likely ship around a month after the launch this month. However, their info isn’t necessarily entirely accurate because they are claiming that the new HTC One will ship with a Snapdragon 800 and dual 5 MP cameras, which remains to be seen. Clearly the phone has two cameras, but I’m not entirely sold that it will have a Snapdragon 800, as it would make more sense for it to have a Snapdragon 801 or 805. The fact that they also used one of EVleaks’ own leaked images from Twitter further makes this leak somewhat questionable as they weren’t able to get their own image for the device itself. It would be really disappointing, though, if they did release it with a Snapdragon 800 since that would put it around the same performance level as the Nexus 5 which has a Snapdragon 800 and has been shipping with one since October for $350 a pop.
They’re also claiming that the phone will have a 1920×1080 resolution 5" display, which makes sense, but doesn’t seem that out of the ordinary to figure out. Additionally, they completely ignore the fact that the MicroSD card slot exists on the HTC One in the video that we just saw, but is not mentioned anywhere in their product listing. As always, all of these leaks need to be taken with a grain of salt, but hopefully we’ll have more info for you soon leading up to the launch from more credible sources.
