The same source that brought us the first pictures of the dual camera mounted rear of the HTC M8 has delivered another look at the HTC M8, this time from the front. The Russian source @HTCFamil_RU has seemingly found a source willing to show off the device.
As seen above you can see the on-screen software keys which leaked last week. But this time we can see them sitting above a completely, seemingly superfluous black bar, which on the HTC One was for the capacative buttons, but on the M8 seems to just be a strip for HTC to show their logo.
The appearance of the black bar could be tied with the decision by HTC to not venture too far from the critically acclaimed visual look of the HTC One. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise to find that the bar could actually be the same capacative strip from the HTC One but with no defined buttons or internal connectors. A tear down by iFixit after the release should help to reveal the true story if this is a final design, which is more than likely not the case.
The other thing to note is the off-center speaker grill at the top of the device. The new approach to the speaker placement is a different approach to the design for the Boomsound speakers on the HTC One, whose speaker grill was centred at the top of the phone, creating a visually appealing symmetry to the phone. On this device the top speaker grill has been moved to allow the camera as well as what appears to be a notification LED to be placed together on the right hand-side.
HTC is well known for building many prototypes as well as dummy units that have apparently been released merely to throw the press off the scent of the final design. They will generally release the internals in ‘test boxes’ with non-final design to carriers and the like for testing on their networks before release. The design isn’t bad and the hint of HTC Sense clock widgets on the screen is promising as well but we’ll have to wait for mid-late March before we can say for sure what the M8 will look like.
Do you like the look of this HTC M8? Do you think it’s a ‘final’ design?
