HTC One 2 - Future Android King?
The HTC One was our favourite phone of 2013, in fact it won the TrustedReviews Best Mobile Phone Award. But soon it will be out of date. The HTC One 2, also known as the HTC M8 and the HTC One Plus, will soon be a reality.
It will square up to the Sony Xperia Z2 and the Samsung Galaxy S5 as HTC’s most important phone of 2014. We don’t know anything official about the phone as HTC hasn’t even admitted it exists yet. However, there are enough rumours to fill a Carphone Warehouse. Here’s what we’ve learnt about the phone so far.
HTC One 2 Release date
The HTC One 2 is due for release soon. However, reports suggest it will not be released in February at the MWC conference. This is a trade show where many of the year’s top phones are unveiled. The very biggest phones are often given their own, separate launches outside of the show.
March is when the HTC One 2 is reported to launch, according to serial phone leaker @evleaks on Twitter. This places it long enough after MWC 2014 for it to win lots of attention, rather than being outdone by the Samsung Galaxy S5.
HTC One 2 Name
One of the most basics things we’re unsure about is the HTC One successor’s name. HTC did not set itself up with an easy naming task with the first phone.
There are three top contenders being talked about at present. The HTC One 2 is the favourite, but HTC One Plus and HTC One M8 are also possibles.
HTC One 2 Price
The HTC One 2 is a top-end phone. That means it won’t come cheap.
However, prices are some of the lesser-leaked details of phones. This is in-part because the prices vary significantly between countries and exactly how the phone is bought – on contract, SIM-free or on pre-pay locked to a network.
It’s not hard to make an educated guess about the SIM-free price of the HTC One 2, though. Almost all mainstream top-tier phones start their shelf lives at between £500 and £600 these days.
HTC One 2 Design
It is believed that the HTC One 2 will have a design similar to that of the first HTC One. That means an aluminium body with some small plastic inlays.
Fairly convincing photos of the HTC One 2’s rear were released on Twitter in early February by @htcfamily_ru, which show some important differences, though.
Notice the use of dual camera-style cut-outs on the phone’s rear. One is clearly the main camera sensor, sitting exactly in the same position as the HTC One’s camera.
The other one, on the top of the HTC One 2’s rear, is the mystery. Some suggest it is a secondary camera lens, others that it is a fingerprint scanner.
There are problems with both hypotheses. It is quite small compared with the majority of ‘swipe’ fingerprint sensors – the kind used by the HTC One Max.
It is also not a great place to put a traditional camera sensor, as it’s under where your hand would naturally rest when holding the HTC One 2 on its side. Why would the phone want a second camera sensor at all? Some say the phone will have a standard, high megapixel count camera for good lighting and a lower-res UltraPixel one for low-light shooting.
There is another possibility. The HTC One 2 may employ a non-swipe capacitive or optical fingerprint scanner in this top circle. This is the explanation that makes the most sense, design-wise, as it’s roughly where your index finger would sit when fully extended on the phone’s back. However, the most recent leak shows a clear camera lens in the cut-out. But is it real?
Also notice the use of a dual-LED flash rather than a single-LED one. This may be used to replicate the TrueTone flash on the iPhone 5S.
The other big design change is only visible from the front. The HTC One 2 is expected to ditch touch sensitive soft keys in favour of software buttons.
An HTC Sense interface screenshot leak by @evleaks on Twitter suggests this is the case too. Such a move will help the phone lose some of the length of the HTC One. The HTC One is a particularly tall phone – given its screen size – because of its use of front-loaded stereo speakers. It is 137mm long, a millimetre taller than the Galaxy S4 even though that phone has a significantly larger screen.
HTC is unlikely to ditch front-loaded speakers in the HTC One 2. They separate the phone from its rivals, and were applauded by critics and the public alike.
HTC One 2 Screen
In the HTC One, a slightly smaller screen than rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S4 let the phone stay roughly the same size as the competition while using space-hogging BoomSound stereo speakers.
The same sort of design approach is likely to be used in the HTC One 2. Once again, the leak comes from @evleaks on Twitter, who suggests the phone will have a 5-inch display. The Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 are expected to have screens of 5.25 inches.
Like those phones, though, the HTC One 2 will reportedly use an ‘edge-to-edge’ style display, where there is hardly any screen bezel at all to the left and right of the panel.
The resolution is a point of contention. @evleaks suggests the phone will have a 1080p screen, rather than the 2K display that many top phones will use in 2014 – if we are to believe the rumours. It would not be a great loss, as we already know that 1080p resolution stretched across a 5-inch LCD display looks super-sharp. However, it’ll lose the phone a fistful of spec brownie points among super-geeks.
HTC One Camera
One of the most talked-about features of the HTC One was its camera. It introduced the UltraPixel camera, which reduced the megapixel count in favour of having larger sensor pixels.
It’s strange, then, that there have been relatively few leaks concerning the actual specs of the HTC One 2’s main camera sensor. Suggestions that the phone will have two UltraPixel sensors deserve to be treated with scepticism.
What will be exciting is if HTC continues to develop its UltraPixel concept, but using a higher-resolution sensor. The HTC One’s 4-megapixel sensor provided good dynamic range and decent overall reliability but actual detail captured was pretty poor compared with any other phone at the price. HTC’s issue is maintaining the larger pixel size while increasing resolution.
It’s not as simple as just doing it either – in case you didn’t know, HTC did not make the HTC One’s sensor. STMicroelectronics did. It needs to rely on another company having made a sensor that could do the trick for them.
We’ll be back with more information on the second HTC One 2 as it surfaces.
Next, read all about the Samsung Galaxy S5