About a month ago, we reported that HTC intends to bring the Ultrapixel camera to their upcoming phones that will be aiming for the middle and lower ends of the smartphone market in both price and hardware categories. Now, a month later, rumors are confirming that what they said was not just dust in the wind (and the song from Kansas is playing in my head).
Back when the HTC One was just a rumor (codename M7), there was also talk of two other phones also known as the M4 and the G2, which were believed to be One’s smaller brothers. After the long radio silence, rumors about the M4 started to appear, one of which listed the device’s specs. The soon to be commercially annouced M4 will come with:
- A Dual-Core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400 MSM8930 CPU
- 1 GB of RAM
- 4.3-inch display with a 720p resolution
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Ultrapixel camera with unknown pixel resolution
- GPS and GLONASS
I don’t know about you, but I’m not used to seeing GLONASS in the spec sheet. In case you don’t know, GLONASS is a positioning system that works along or instead of the ubiquitous GPS (or related A-GPS) technology and stands for Global Navigation Satellite System (in Russian the acronym looks like this ГЛОÐÐСС; I’m not gonna make a “In mother Russia…” joke). Working alongside GPS, it increases the positioning accuracy as well as probably draining the phone’s battery twice as fast (both being key features of GPS systems). But the main reason GLONASS is added to all major phones, is that the Russian government added a 25% tax for all imported positioning devices that don’t have GLONASS support.
Jumping back, you may have heard these specs mentioned before. Well, all besides the Ultrapixel camera. In fact, the specs are about the same as HTC’s latest Facebook phone, the First (I think HTC is thinking only at getting the top of the market if their latest device names is something to go by: One, First).
We don’t know yet what Ultrapixel sensor the M4 will have, but I doubt it will be the same from the One. The One has a quad-core clocked at 1.7 GHz which is more than capable to do the heavy-lifting necessary for its camera sensor.
The rumor of the Ultrapixel-ed M4 comes as a surprise to me honestly, with all the Ultrapixel supply shortage the production line for the HTC One is facing, among other supply chain problems the manufacturer is facing at the moment. Either way, fingers crossed for HTC, they need get back on that horse.