Let’s rewind back to February of this year when HTC announced the One. Wasn’t it pretty? Weren’t the specs out of this world? Didn’t the “UltraPixel” camera sound amazing? Then what happened? The phone barely made it to market before the Galaxy S4 due to a component shortage. Reviewers said battery life was decidedly average to below average. And that fancy pants camera, while it looked great on PowerPoint, failed to deliver in the real world. What’s worse is that the One was marketed heavily for about one month, and then radio silence.
Time for attempt number two, with a device that might be called the Two, but for now is only known by its codename: M8. According to the Twitter user who knows enough about a company’s portfolio to make them feel uncomfortable, HTC’s M8 will be on sale by all four of America’s large operators (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon) by the end of Q1 2014. In other words, by the end of March.
.@Julie122371 @doakills All four carriers, end of Q1 '14 [via tip; thanks, @gadget_pei]
— @evleaks (@evleaks) November 9, 2013
What’s known about the M8 so far? A few images of the back of the device have allegedly leaked, and it looks like the Two will have the same design language as the One. As for specs, again, there’s nothing but rumors, but they say Snapdragon 800, 3 GB of RAM, and one of those fancy new WQHD screens (2560 x 1440 pixels) that are supposed to become commonplace next year.
Circling back to the beginning of this article, HTC better make sure the M8 is a more compelling device than the S5, because if it isn’t, then people are going to question whether they’ll be around for much longer.
