While Samsung’s Galaxy S7 has been stealing most of the headlines recently, HTC’s upcoming phones have also seen some rumour mill attention. This week we learned about HTC’s One M10 flagship… and a very intriguing possibility that the company will develop a Nexus smartphone for Google this year.
HTC One M10
The HTC One M9 was an iterative update on a now-dated formula, an approach that found critical failure in 2015. Is 2016 going to be different? According to Chinese blog ITHome, the Taiwanese company may be going back to the drawing board, with an entirely new design planned. That level of reinvention has pushed back the phone’s expected announcement date to March, after the frenzied MWC period, and also pushes back the device’s launch into April.
The M10 is said to include a Snapdragon 820 processor, a fingerprint reader, a 23-megapixel rear camera and a 3,000mAh battery. Little of the design is known at this stage, but the source does suggest that the phone will be built for an IP68 water and dust resistance rating. It’ll be interesting to see if any photos or leaks of the new design emerge before the release… and given the size of the internet rumour machine, it seems pretty likely!
HTC Nexus
Now onto the even more interesting rumour: according to LlabTooFeR, HTC will actually create two Nexus phones this year. Last year Motorola and Huawei shared responsibilities for creating Google’s flagship phones, to great effect, so a move to HTC for both devices would be significant.
Two codenames, T50 and T55, have been released, which bear little resemblance to past HTC codenames (the closest being the T5, known later as the One Max). The numerals could refer to screen sizes, making for slightly smaller Nexus models compared to last year.
It’s not known if the two phones will be related to the One M10 or wholly new creations, but it would be an unusual coup for a troubled Android manufacturer — maybe Google’s throwing them a bone for the good of the ecosystem?
Conclusion
Interesting stuff, huh? Let us know what you think in the comments below, or write to us on Twitter at @mobilefun.