HTC's Next Flagship Leaked: The HTC M8 Prime

Notorious, prolific, and more often than not, accurate phone leaker, @evleaks (AKA Evan Blass), has been teasing us since last week with information about HTC's next flagship device, the HTC M8 Prime. Today he finally released an image of the phone.

While details are scarce, and of course completely unsubstantiated, the M8 Prime is supposed to be equipped with a Snapdragon 805 SoC, a 5.5-inch WQHD (1,440 x 2,560) screen and have 3 GB of RAM. It will be HTC's first phone that has a 300 Mbps CAT 6 LTE modem (part of the SD805 feature set), and will also be waterproof, like the Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2. The most interesting specification that has been leaked, though, is the material from which it is made. HTC has always pushed the envelope when it comes to the materials it crafts its handsets from, and if @evleaks is to be believed, the M8 Prime will be "made out of an exotic material, a composite of aluminum and liquid silicone." When we first heard this, it sounded a little far-fetched, but some research online shows that this material does exist and is "almost as light as aluminum but stronger."

Looking at the render, we can also see that it has HTC's trademark Boomsound speakers, what look to be marks on the left side where the SIM card and microSD card go, and that it carries over the One M8's Duo Camera.

While many of you may wonder why HTC would be planning to release a new flagship phone so soon after the release of the HTC One M8, it's clear that the Snapdragon 801 was a stopgap SoC designed to tide OEMs over when the release of the 805 was presumably delayed. With next week's announcement of what is rumored to be the first SD805 phone, the LG G3, we're sure both HTC and Samsung do not want to be too late to the 805 party. Therefore, it only makes sense that they'd have phones coming out using Qualcomm's latest and greatest sooner than later. Samsung is supposed to be working on a metal bodied 805-powered device too -- the Galaxy S5 Prime.

Yet there are still many questions that remain to be answered about the M8 Prime (the first, of course, is if it actually exists!) such as its go-to-market name, whether the camera sensor has been upgraded, how big the battery will be, what version of Android it will use, and when it is due to be released. One bit of speculation we can indulge in is that if by chance Google is planning to release a new version of Android at I/O next month, perhaps a Play Store version of the M8 Prime will be one of the launch devices for it, seeing as the Nexus program is supposed to be over.

Hopefully, @evleaks will oblige us with more information soon, so keep checking back with us for more HTC news.

UPDATE: Well, we did say soon! @evleaks just released another tidbit of info - the M8 Prime "will be the first Sense 6.5 handset"

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