HTC received plenty of critical acclaim for its boldly styled HTC One flagship handset. In particular its luxurious aluminium chassis, capable display and fast performance earned it high review scores from across the web. But, the uptake by consumers hasn’t echoed such enthusiasm, or at least not enough to drag HTC out of its financial quagmire.
Understandable then, that the company is having another crack at it. The successor model broke cover with the codename HTC M8, an increment on the original HTC One’s M7 codename, but rumours have subsequently been labelling it with the frankly ludicrous-sounding HTC One 2.
It doesn’t matter whether you associate what that sounds like with testing a microphone or a phrase shouted at football games, it still sounds as mad as a bag of ferrets. Still, that’s the name we’re left with for now, but hopefully by some act of divine intervention HTC will choose a different name when it finally announces the phone later in the year.
While the rumours aren’t concrete, there’s usually at least some truth to the more consistent ones and, importantly, there’s enough to work with when it comes to piecing together a tentative comparison of the HTC One to its successor. So without further ado, let’s take a look at how they might stack up if the rumours prove correct.
Processor
First and foremost, the most prominent rumour surrounding the HTC One 2 is that it’ll be fitted with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core chip, an upgrade from the HTC One’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. While the Snapdragon 600 already delivers excellent performance inside the HTC One, the Snapdragon 800 is noticeably smoother still. We’ve already seen it in operation inside a number of phones where performance is almost flawless. Expect the clock-speed to improve from the HTC One’s 1.7GHz on Krait 300 cores to something like 2.2GHz-2.3GHz on Krait 400 architecture with an Adren 330 GPU.
The HTC One had 2GB of RAM and while some rumours have previously suggested the HTC One 2 could have 3GB (like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3) more recently and more consistently it’s been pegged with 2GB.
Build and design
The HTC One 2 isn’t expected to change much from the HTC One’s design with its aluminium unibody. Pictures have leaked allegedly showing the rear panel which looks pretty much the same as the original device, it doesn’t even feature a port for the HTC One Max’s fingerprint scanner, suggesting it’s unlikely HTC will continue such capabilities.
Display
With the display, HTC is thought to be enlarging the HTC One’s 4.7-inch panel, but not by much as it’ll be the popular 5-inch size and with a full HD 1080p resolution. There’s no word on what display tech might be used, the HTC One and most recent HTC One Max both used Super LCD3 (SLCD3) technology. At any rate, HTC usually excels when it comes to touchscreens so we can expect something suitably colourful, bright and sharp.
Camera
The original HTC One promised much with its Ultrapixel camera technology and while it definitely presented an above average image and video quality the lower 4-megapixel rating failed to truly impress with a distinct lack of detail. Low-light performance was reasonably good, however, thanks to a wide f/2.0 aperture and optical image stabilisation (OIS).
Currently, rumours suggest the HTC One 2 will retain the same 4-megapixel Ultrapixel setup, which on the face of things seems like a bit of a disappointment. However, some reports claim HTC will be improving the lens configuration for better low-light performance, but also to adapt for intense lighting conditions too.
But, it still seems likely that, for the most part, camera performance will remain the same.
Storage and connectivity
The HTC One featured 4G LTE, 3G and a full suite of Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, Hotspot, DLNA, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, micro USB, GPS and MHL connectivity options.
An updated HTC One 2 is expected to meet all these capabilities but with the added boost of 5GHz and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi bands for improved speed and reliability.
So far, only one connectivity option has been mentioned on an AnTuTu benchmark showing the HTC One 2 to have 16GB of onboard storage, which is interesting considering the HTC One had 32GB and 64GB options. Is HTC down-scaling its storage variants? Hopefully not, or at least, if so, we would hope it’s also including the previously omitted microSD card expansion. Or, could we be seeing a full range of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models? Perhaps.
Software: Android
While HTC is planning to update the HTC One to Android 4.4 KitKat, at present it runs on Android Jelly Bean with the Sense 5 UI, which has been updated to Sense 5.5. The HTC One 2 is thought to ship with Android 4.4 KitKat already installed and it’s said to feature a new HTC Sense 6 overlay, though specifically what features this will introduce are unknown at present.
Thoughts
While it’s early days yet, and we wouldn’t want to count our chickens before they’ve hatched, it is sounding like the HTC One 2 will be more of an incremental update than a major milestone. Unless, that is, HTC is keeping something significant very well hidden to surprise us all with at launch.
by pbriden via Featured Articles
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