Images of HTC One Successor Leaked Online
Yesterday the tech press learned that the next flagship smartphone in the HTC One series would be revealed to the world on March 25. Today, images of that phone have purportedly appeared online, leaked by the ever-diligent Twitter account @evleaks.
Behold:
The All New HTC One, 2014. pic.twitter.com/HmOEzq87A5
— @evleaks (@evleaks) February 19, 2014
As you can see, the image shows the smartphone sporting two camera lenses on the back, along with a dual LED flash. So what gives with two cameras? Is the new HTC One going to take stereoscopic photos?
A post on TechCrunch about the supposed leak explains what the dual camera set up could be for:
“[The two camera sensors would] offer focus that can be changed after the fact and selective deletion of objects from photos, which explains the twin lenses. Based on what’s been making the rounds so far, HTC will be focusing on camera quality this time around, in a bid to give it something that clearly differentiates it from other Android OEMs.”
If that’s the case, the HTC One successor could indeed find a pretty strong niche that would help it stand apart from other Android phones. And depending on how powerful the cameras themselves are, this handset could even manage to give Android users a reason to stop sniffing around the Nokia Lumia 1020, a Windows phone featuring a ridiculous 41-megapixel camera.
The post’s description of the dual camera’s function also sounds a lot like the Lytro camera, which uses “light field” technology and gives users the ability to make major edits to their images after the fact. Bringing this kind of tech into a smartphone could be hugely disruptive to the market, and just what HTC needs to win some new customers.
On the other hand, as you can see in the image, the home screen seems to take a page out of the Windows Phone UI book, moving further away from the stock Android experience. Having used an HTC phone for about a year and a half, I grew to really hate the HTC Sense UI, mainly because I felt like it got in the way of Android just going about the business of running my phone’s guts. To me, a stronger sense of, well, Sense, is a bug, not a feature.
It’s also important to note: this could all be bogus. Thus far, @evleaks has managed to provide lots of supposed images and rumors for new gadgets and smartphones, but until we actually see HTC reveal this thing, we’ll have to take all this with a grain of salt.
Would a powerful, dual camera system like the one described above be enough to get you considering the new HTC One as your next smartphone?