HTC hasn’t exactly been secretive about their new flagship phone, a follow-up to the well-received HTC One, in the works. Between a boastful event announcement taking a potshot at the Samsung Galaxy S5, leaked press renders and specs and even other leaked photos of actual hardware, the cat is pretty much out of the bag. But now, Ubergizmo is reporting to have photos of the new HTC flagship phone in the wild—and what’s interesting is that they look a little different than normal.
Specifically, the chrome trim ring around the primary camera lens. It could be part of the packaging (like a protective sticker that hasn’t been removed yet), a component of older testing hardware, or even an earlier prototype before the design was finalized or before final optical parts were available. We don’t know, and we might never know, the answer to this specific mystery, but we’ll at least find out the details of what HTC has under-the-hood for their new flagship phone—including the reveal of Sense 6.0, a larger screen, a new processor, the details of whatever they’re doing with the cameras, and whether or not they intend to name it “HTC One” yet again—on March 25th.
Interestingly, the photo of the front of the screen shows the reflection of an illuminated sign—presumably the word “Mobile,” with an elevated period following the E suggesting that it might be the T-Mobile logo. (The reflection shows up in error level analysis of the .jpeg as a possible edit location, explaining why it’s blue instead of pink.) The .jpeg’s metadata also reveals a GPS location of the Peachtree Mall, which doesn’t appear to have a T-Mobile store in it based on their web site. The photo was taken with a Samsung Galaxy S4.
The leaked HTC device image is courtesy of UberGizmo.