If you are happy to be with Sprint or Verizon as a phone carrier then Amazon are offering a new sweet deal that consists of getting the HTC One M8 on a two-year contract. The price starts from as low as $149.99 and goes as high as $649.99 if you prefer to buy the smartphone outright. The latterly priced deal we would not touch because we are fearful of this handset being updated quickly enough. However, the low price makes for a terrific deal if you are prepared to swallow not having the top-end specs for roughly a year and a half until the contract finishes.

The M8 comes in two different colours: Gunmetal Grey and the Glacial Silver models. The Big Red is the only company selling both of them with this deal, while Sprint is offering the Gunmetal option only.

It seems every time I see a bargain available from Amazon it is not available for being shipped to Australia. However, inspecting Amazon’s shipping policies, they will tell you they do often supply shipments to 69 international countries, one of which represents the Great Southern Land. Now with that being said I will tell you to be tentatively optimistic that this HTC One M8 deal will be accessible for most of you.

If you want my opinion, this is a great deal considering how new the smartphone is. It was only first revealed to us and the rest of the world a matter of weeks ago. As soon as we get to around the mid-year mark when Samsung confirmed what our suspicions were all along and that is that a new Quad HD premium S5 was coming it could mean we see a new M8 from HTC also. We would not rule out HTC doing something similar even though this handset does have the brushed aluminium, or what HTC is calling gun metal, premium feels to it because the hardware inside including the Snapdragon 801 chipset was very much the same.

Unlike modern houses that are popping up everywhere that are gray and square blocks, this phone is gray and well-rounded. I am personally not a huge aficionado of round things, they make it feel a little too feminine for me, but I have to admit I thoroughly enjoy looking at the “All New One.”

The buttons are now positioned on the screen as part of the software and not having dedicated buttons down on the bottom of the screen. The new place is better because it makes the screen feel like it is taking up the real estate instead of a physical button itself wasting space down below. On the flip side, they still have left a dark gap that has the HTC logo on it around the same area. It is hard to imagine this is done for anything other than advertising their own brand name and from a consumers standpoint that is annoying. I would have fancied to see it with just a screen and save the printed logos for the back where I think they give extra graphical content and make it look cool anyway.

No matter what happens from here, it still looks like good value for the mere fact you have a cool new camera features to play with that lets you edit photos after you take them and not before them. The important opportunity here is that it will save lots of stress and not take the enjoyment out of taking a picture because you were always so worried what the image would turn out as. Now we have a chance to take the photos back home with us and alter them with the new software in the new camera lens package that you find on the rear-facing shell.