According to a recent leak by @upleaks, HTC M8's successor will come with an ARMv8-based Snapdragon 810 processor. This flagship device is apparently codenamed "HTC Hima" and not "HTC M9."
This leak also contradicts another recent rumor that the successor to the HTC M8 would only have a Snapdragon 805, which would mean HTC's flagship device for 2015 would once again be 32-bit only. Given that upleaks was endorsed by evleaks's reliably accurate owner Evan Blass, before he quit, the new leak should be considered quite reliable.
These specs also make more sense in the context of what HTC would choose for its flagship device.
The Snapdragon 810 processor is essentially a big.LITTLE 8-core/2-cluster CPU design, with four Cortex A57 cores (clocked at 2 GHz each) and four Cortex A53 cores (clocked at 1.5 GHz). All of the cores are based on the new ARMv8 architecture, which brings increased general performance and hardware acceleration support for AES encryption. The latter could potentially resolve the issues Nexus 6 owners have been reporting about the device's default encryption.
The SoC comes with an Adreno 430 GPU, which has 30 percent higher graphics performance than the Adreno 420 found in the Snapdragon 805 and 80 percent higher performance than the Adreno 330 found inside the Snapdragon 800 (and many high-end devices from a year ago). The new GPU should also support the latest OpenGL ES 3.1 graphics API.
The device will apparently have "only" 3 GB of RAM, which should still be sufficient for an Android flagship in 2015. However, if true, it feels like HTC is missing a marketing opportunity here to prove to potential customers that its phone does indeed have a 64-bit chip inside and is fully utilizing it (unlike the Galaxy Note 4 right now).
The "64-bitness" is seen by many as the ability to use 4 GB of RAM or more, even if at least in the case of ARMv8 (not directly comparable to x86 and x64), there are more advantages beyond merely supporting more than 4 GB of RAM. It's also been possible to support more than 4 GB of RAM since the Cortex A15 days, although nobody has taken advantage of that.
The display seems to be 5" and has a 1080p resolution. If HTC uses a smaller and more efficient panel than the competition this year, along with a lower resolution, then the battery life should be quite good even with the 2840 mAh battery.
Again, however, this feels like another wasted marketing opportunity from HTC, because most people expect a 3,000+ mAh battery from a flagship device. Many could see the battery as "too small" for a phone of this caliber. An extra 160 mAh shouldn't cost HTC too much, but that could save it many lost sales because of the negative perception of the HTC Hima's battery life.
If the leaked camera spec is real, then it looks like 2015 could be the year that HTC kills the "UltraPixel" camera for good. Even since this year, HTC started experimenting with some high-megapixel cameras on its mid-range devices. We could indeed see a 20MP sensor on the "Hima" -- possibly the same Sony sensor we saw in the Sony Xperia Z3.
There's a slim chance we could even see the newer IMX230 that has 192 phase-detection auto-focus points, but this will depend on whether the sensor is even ready by then or if HTC wants to pay extra for it. The Snapdragon 810 allows for 4k video capture and playback using the HEVC codec format, so we could see some efficient 4k video recording capabilities supported by the HTC Hima.
In the front, the leak says HTC will either go with a 13MP sensor or a 4MP UltraPixel sensor, but if it wants to benefit from the "phone with the highest resolution selfie camera" marketing message, then the company will probably go with the 13MP camera in front.
The device will support VoLTE (Voice over LTE) and LTE Cat6 (up to 300 Mbps download speeds).
As expected, the phone will come with Android 5.0 Lollipop along with HTC's own Sense 7.0 customizations. We'll have to see just how close or how far HTC has strayed from Google's new Material Design language in the weeks before the launch, when HTC announces the device.
HTC will likely launch this "Hima" flagship smartphone and HTC M8 successor in March next year, just as it typically does every year.
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