A brand new leak from tech news site Phandroid has revealed what looks to be the latest flagship phone from HTC, the HTC One M9. With only subtle differences in the design, the M9 looks to be more similar to the M7 than the M8 so far.
This latest series of leaked photos may not be the first to come out, but they're the clearest, showing off the front, sides, and back of the rumored new HTC phone. Phandroid says that they got the photos from "a trusted, reliable source of Phandroid's close to the Taiwanese company" and they were passed along to the site as an exclusive.
The most notable change in these leaked photos is the change of placement for the power button from the top on the M8 to the right side on the M9. "It's a small change, but anyone with an HTC One M8 knows how annoying it can be to have to reach for the top of the device to power it on or off," Phandroid stated.
A series of leaked photos also came through the night before these newest ones dropped, and they showed off a similar design, adding a bit more credibility to these pictures.
The volume rocker was also moved slightly to accommodate the moved power button as they both sit a bit lower than we saw on the M8. "We reckon the change was made to make for more comfortable access to said buttons for those with smaller hands," Phandroid pointed out. "It's a move we typically see with phablets (such as Motorola's Nexus 6), but to our knowledge we're still getting the same 5-inch form factor featured on the HTC One M8."
The source also confirmed the rumored specs of the new smartphone to include the octa-core Snapdragon 810 chipset with Adreno 430 GPU, 3 GB of RAM, that same 5-inch 1080p HD display, a 2,840 mAh battery, a 20.7-megapixel rear camera and the UltraPixel camera on the front. The HTC One M9 will also feature the latest version of Android 5.0 Lollipop as the mobile operating system, with HTC's Sense 7.0 customization included.
Many of the commenters in the Phandroid article explained their own thoughts on the moved power button and the revealed specs with some positive and some negative responses.
"The power button on the M8 has never been a problem for me since you can tap or swipe to wake the screen," member Exlectech said. "With that, they shouldn't have even bothered to move it. Not enough external change for me to consider upgrading my already good M8."
User krudl3rx disagrees. "I don't care for ANY button in the middle of the phone, where it will interfere with basically all car mounts."
But the throwback look to the M7 didn't sit well with everyone. "Looks like the m7 with tweaks," user ConCal said. "You should never look like a two year old phone."
While these specs and the images themselves are all unconfirmed at this point, HTC is expected to officially announce and reveal the M9 at the Mobile World Congress on March 1.
