HTC has announced an April 12 online event to showcase its next flagship smartphone, which will succeed its HTC One M9 phone.
The company announced the planned event for the new handset in a March 22 tweet: “See what we’re obsessed about on April 12 on http://HTC.com #powerof10.”
In an accompanying image, the post said: “We admit it. We’re obsessed … but in a good way.”
The online unveiling will be live-streamed starting at 8 a.m. ET on the company’s Website.
No details about the new smartphone, or even its official name, have yet been released. If it follows past naming protocols, it could be called the HTC One M10. Some reports are already calling it the HTC 10.
The company’s existing flagship phone, the HTC One M9 (pictured), went on sale in the United States in April 2015 for about $650 through AT&T and T-Mobile. The HTC One M9 was packed with improvements over its predecessor that included a 5-inch, full HD 1080p display; an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with four cores running at 2GHz and four cores running at 1.5GHz; 3GB of RAM; 32GB of built-in storage that can be expanded up to 128GB with a micro SD card; and a 2,840mAh battery. The M9 ran on the Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system and HTC’s Sense 7 software.
Also included was a 20MP rear-facing camera with an auto-focus f/2.2 27.8mm lens with a sapphire cover, a backside illumination sensor (BSI) and 4K video recording. The front HTC UltraPixel camera featured a f/2.0 26.8mm lens, a BSI sensor and1080p video recording. The HTC One M9 also has an all-metal unibody design with distinctive metal edges, graceful curves and a dual-tone silver- and rose gold-colored finish. Also featured was an HTC BoomSound audio system with dual front-facing speakers as found on previous HTC One M series phones, as well as 5.1-channel Dolby Surround Sound simulation.
The M9 also featured a three-finger swiping capability on the display that allows users to connect the phone to compatible televisions or select external wireless speakers to send the audio feed to an external device.
HTC’s previous One M8 smartphone was released in March 2014, according to an earlier eWEEK report. The M8 was an Android phone with a 5-inch, full HD 1080p display; curved edges; a curved back; and a full gunmetal facade with a brushed hairline texture.
In August 2014, HTC unveiled its HTC One M8 for Windows smartphone, which ran Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1 in place of the original Android operating system in the first One M8 devices. The HTC One M8 Windows phone included an all-metal body; a 5-inch, full 1080p HD display; a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core CPU; 2GB of RAM; 32GB of storage; a 5-megapixel, wide-angle front-facing camera; HTC BoomSound front speakers with built-in amplifiers; and a non-removable 2,600mAh battery.
In October 2015, the company unveiled the $400 HTC One A9 smartphone, which included many features found in the HTC One M9 but with a lower price. The HTC One A9 featured a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor, 3GB of memory, 32GB of on-board storage and a microSD card slot that can hold a card up to 2TB, a 13-megapixel main camera and Android 6.0 Marshmallow. The HTC One A9 was built of metal and glass and had a 5-inch, edge-to-edge Full HD AMOLED display that’s covered by protective Corning Gorilla Glass 4.