What was being heralded as the M8 Ace has now been revealed to us as the HTC One E8. The E8 has debuted in China, as you can see from the official HTC China website, and it has a lot in common with the M8.
I spend a lot of time on mobile forums and checking out what people are saying. A lot of folks have no interest in a metal shell — it breaks easy, slips out of the hand, is heavier and so forth. They are all good valid points and in a world without pretentious people maybe they would make a better business decision. Fact of the matter is that they are being sold in aluminium because people associate it as more expensive and therefore it looks better. In terms of what is practical it makes as much sense as the glass back case of the iPhone 4S. I can’t tell you how many people needed to buy an OEM replacement because a drop from a low height resulted in a cracked iPhone.
The highlight here is HTC going backward and releasing a plastic version second after the more premium model first. For months, we have been reporting a premium S5 coming that would be aluminium and have better specs. It seems HTC had gone in the opposite direction when we assumed that they would also be bringing out a new M8 that had the Snapdragon 805 and Quad HD resolution. Don’t be too quick t right them off completely from doing that yet as these companies can surprise us at any minute. There is still a chance they bring out another smartphone that does have the hardware I just mentioned and sell it to the US instead of China. It’s an interesting story to follow.
There was a backlash from people writing reviews all over the web about how lackluster the 4 Ultrapixel rear-facing shooter was. Many were choosing to call it megapixel instead and suggested that it was just a gimmick. Furthermore, the camera was the one area that people said this smartphone lagged behind the competition. The Samsung Galaxy S5 had an impressive 16 megapixels in the rear snapper. I’ll mention in the specs below why that is important.
The “all new” HTC One E8 comes with a Snapdragon 801 system chip and a quad-core 2.5GHz processor. It is better than the original M8 that only had a 2.3GHz Snapdragon 801, but the difference is so minimal that you wouldn’t notice the extra performance. It is more of a fine tune than an obvious jump up. The camera comes with 13 megapixels on the back end, and that is coupled with a single LED flash. What’s even more impressive is the front-facing 5 MP camera. Normally we don’t see front-facing cameras with any more than a few megapixels. They are just for taking “selfies” with and avoiding the awkwardness of trying to take photos of yourself using the back of the camera because you can’t see the screen to know where you are aiming the lens. It’s an interesting subject because we know how important the role of the “selfie” is on society today with social media playing a huge part in our everyday lives. People like to look good so why not let them come in high pixel quality too? The current Galaxy S5 only has a 2.1 megapixel front-facing snapper.
To sum up, everything points to this handset being better than the original M8 except for the plastic shell. It is an interesting idea that the Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphones and tablets has come up with, and we’ll have to wait and find out what the world thinks. Like I already mentioned. There are people out there who prefer a plastic body on a smartphone because it is more practical. However, I would have thought that most people prefer a premium quality finish and, therefore, this device ends up looking confused with its own identity.