Rumours surrounding a new flagship smartphone from HTC codenamed the ‘M7’ are gathering pace after a computerised render of the phone leaked online last week. We’ve now spotted the rumoured phone in real-life pictures, sporting what looks to be Sense 5.0 software.
Two separate images of the phone have been revealed by AndroidPolice, who claim that the phone is a pre-production model sent out by HTC for testing. Looking over the images, the phone certainly carries many of HTC’s design styles and trademarks, but there’s one thing that’s bugging us; the location of the home button. HTC’s Android phones have always had a specific layout, rolling from left to right as Back, Home and Menu/Multitasking. Here, the home button is on the right, which is odd.
Aside from the strange home button positioning, the handset looks set to have Beats Audio integration and a rather large rear camera with LED flash. To us, the image of the phone’s back looks to be computer generated, but that could just be poor lighting and focus. The front of the phone looks to be finished in a glossy black, whereas the back could well have a soft touch matte black finish to it.
One image of the phone shows a screen layout that we’re not familiar with from previous HTC phones, and that’s because it looks to be a brand new version of the company’s Sense user interface. The current crop of HTC phones run on Sense 4+ and it’s expected that the M7 and any other possible phones coming from HTC this year will use Sense 5.0.
Of course, the software shown on screen could be trial software, or not even from HTC itself. However, the new look weather widget and application icons do carry a distinct hint of HTC styling, so we could well be looking at the new-look Sense UI.
The M7 is rumoured to pack a 4.7-inch Full HD display, quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM and a 13-megapixel camera. We’re expecting to get some official info from HTC themselves at next month’s MWC in Barcelona.