HTC today Tweeted a link to a YouTube video clip under the hashtag “#BeEdgier” and the tagline “it’s coming” with a date that appears to be September 20. The YouTube clip shows that looks like a smartphone with a curved metal body and a rear camera located in a top corner of the device, but other than this, there is not a lot more to go on. The September 20 is the best part of three weeks away and this could be the first in a marketing campaign designed to tease or torment the HTC fans among us.
Although HTC has not provided any more details as to the handset they are teasing, it was in October 2015 that HTC released the One A9 smartphone, which at the time was called a “hero device.” When the One A9 was released, many were disappointed that the device did not contain amazing specifications and instead it received fairly substantial criticism for being too similar in design to Apple’s iPhone. Either way, HTC was hoping that the One A9 would win over people through its combination of carefully optimized software, the promise of quick software updates and a reasonable but perfectly usable specification list on a device that was not as large as many 2015 flagships. To this end, the One A9 had a good quality AMOLED panel, a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, an effective main camera (that scored higher than the flagship One M9 camera in industry standard tests) and a beautiful design and build quality. The One A9 was the first non-Nexus device to be released running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and at the time, some versions of the One A9 came with a promise of very rapid software updates, inside fifteen days of the release of the source code.
It would seem logical enough that HTC are preparing a follow up to the One A9 device, which has already been rumored as the HTC One A9S. If this is the case, it will be interesting to see what HTC’s 2016 take on a premium mid-range device is. The device could be expected to be smaller and less powerful than the flagship HTC 10, perhaps based around a similar Qualcomm Snapdragon 600-series chipset, and with a smaller, lower resolution display than the QHD panel as used in the HTC 10. It would also be expected that the microUSB port is to be replaced with a USB Type-C port and perhaps upgrades to the camera too. Although any replacement to the One A9 won’t be the first non-Nexus device to use Android Nougat due to that honor going to the LG V20.