HTC is prepping another monster device for this winter

Jun 25, 2015 09:19 GMT  ·  By

HTC unveiled the One M9 back at MWC 2015, but the flagship didn’t prove to be very popular with consumers. Actually, we have recently told you that one Canadian carrier has apparently discontinued the phone due to extremely low demand.

However, HTC doesn’t seem to be willing to give up on its smartphone business just yet. A few days ago, we told you that the One M9+, which was unveiled in Beijing, would hit European shelves after all. And it now looks like HTC will be launching a new flagship by the end of the year.

The first we heard of the phone was from Evan Blass, aka @evleaks, who said that the so-called HTC Aero would make a debut into the wild in Q4 2015.

A new HTC flagship coming towards the end of the year

No information about the upcoming phone was revealed then, but today a report coming out of Bench Life hints towards the fact that the HTC Aero will come bundling Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon 820 silicone piece.

There’s no confirmation that this will indeed be the case, so for the time being we advise you to take the info with a big grain of salt.

HTC’s current One M9 is the recipient of the Snapdragon 810 platform that has been often accused of overheating, which put a damper on sales of the devices equipped with it.

But with the Aero, HTC will be employing the help of the Snapdragon 820 CPU, which will hopefully come clean of any issues.

The rumor mill is a little torn concerning the Snapdragon 820. The most recent info we have on silicone pieces indicates that the chipset might not actually be an octa-core affair, but a quad-core one.

What is the Snapdragon 820 all about?

The Snapdragon 820 is said to be built on a 14nm FinFET process (probably manufactured by Samsung), which will help achieve improved power efficiency and reduced heat generation (will the Snapdragon 810 issues finally be left behind?).

Instead of relying on the usual ARM stock cores, Qualcomm will take advantage of its own ARMv8 architecture called Kyro per core.

The four cores will be divided into two cluster cores, one clocked at 1.7GHz and the other at 2.2GHz. Furthermore, the Snapdragon 820 will probably play nice with LPDD4 memory clocked at up to 2100 MHz and will include Adreno 530 GPU running at 650 MHz.

Alongside the HTC Aero, the LG G4 Pro and Xiaomi Mi5 are also tipped to come with a Snapdragon 820 out of the box.