14 DAY TRIAL // It's only been a few days since HTC announced its flagship smartphone, the One M9, and the company is now readying yet another high-end devices.
The One M8s hasn't been officially announced by HTC yet, but Mark Moons, HTC Benelux director, told TechTastic his company would launch this smartphone on March 31.
The handset will go on sale in Benelux countries for no less than €500 ($560) outright. The HTC One M8s is meant to replace the One M8, HTC's previous flagship smartphone.
You may be wondering why HTC would want to replace a flagship smartphone just one year after its release. Well, according to Moons, HTC wants to continue to sell the HTC One M8, but the new 64-bit chipsets from Qualcomm are too good to skip, which is why they decided to launch a different version.
Unfortunately, the rest of the hardware specs will remain the same, which means the same 4-UltraPixel rear-facing camera, which isn't that competitive on the high-end smartphone market.
So, HTC One M8s will actually be equipped with an octa-core 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor clocked at 1.7GHz, an Adreno 405 graphics processing unit and 2GB of RAM.
Android 5.0 Lollipop onboard, but no Sense 7 UI
It will also feature the same 5-inch full HD capacitive touchscreen display and 16GB/32GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card slot.
It's a pity that the main camera hasn't been replaced with single module camera, but HTC probably felt that it would increase the phone's price unnecessarily.
The good news is HTC One M8s will ship with Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system out of the box, but only Sense 6 UI on top, not the new version announced at Mobile World Congress 2015.
On a side note, the smartphone may be released in other regions as HTC One M8i, but it will have the same specs nevertheless.