Last Updated on April 12, 2017 by Mathew Diekhake
Within the last week, I noticed a Vogue Edition HTC smartphone but I didn’t take much notice of what it was about because it sounded for girls. Now and then the manufacturer can release special limited editions for niches like this, so I wasn’t surprised. However, as I’m reading today, I have just realized that they HTC One E8 that I wrote on yesterday is, in fact, that Vogue edition handset.
It’s with that news that I regret not writing on it a lot sooner because as I mentioned in the write-up on the E8, it has better specs with a plastic shell. That is an unusual combination, and I can’t wait to see how it fairs.
I have also learned that the release date for the HTC One E8 vogue Edition is June 3 and will come in several color and shade choices including white, black red and blue. The red version is pictured everywhere and very easy to see. The blue variant, on the other hand, has been very hard to find. It seems HTC are using the red bodied smartphone for all the promo pics as can be seen on the official Chinese website where it is expected to be unveiled first.
As is so often the case with Android mobiles, there is different information flooding around everywhere, and it is hard to make sense of it all. Some blogs are reporting this to be more on par with the original M7 in terms of looks and that it doesn’t have anything that separates itself from the M8. From what I’m hearing, there is better hardware inside this new plastic E8 when set against the M8 including a better camera and CPU.
Clearly the interesting part of this story is going to be how it fairs against the M8 that HTC just released a few months ago. Since there are mixed reports floating around nobody can know for sure until the guys launch it properly, and they tell us.
There’s no shortage of information on the M8 out there, and we know for a fact that it was greeted with warm reviews. The brushed metallic finish that they called gunmetal looks brilliant and it followed after its predecessor when it came to build quality. The M7 was known as the brick that was very well built and hard to break, and it did all of that while looking brilliant at the same time. Normally to build them like a tank you have to make them look like a tank, and that leaves an undesirable finish. That has not been the case, thus far, for the flagships coming from this manufacturer.
The original flagship from 2013 was a more plastic finish and the 2014 model was more of aluminium finish, and that is interesting when thinking about what is coming up in a few days time. Have HTC decided to go back to their roots and offer less of the gimmicky premium feel for something that is more practical? I’m personally not convinced that this is made to be considered underneath the M8 at all just because it is plastic.
One of the parts that were heavily criticized with the M7 was the big HTC logo printed on the front bezel that many felt as though it would have been the perfect placement for a Home button. They did something about that next time around and put on-screen software buttons in the M8, but it still came with a similar bezel-positioned logo underneath the software buttons and the speaker. It uses up real estate for no reason other than branding and arguably graphic design improvements. We do know that people didn’t react kindly to it, and this is a company the seemingly listens to the feedback and criticism. On that note will we see the logo gone completely from the front of the phone? It is hard to say right now since all the leaked photos are of the back cover where there is a logo printed smack bang in the middle of it.
It’s easy to think that this new smartphone is going to be less than that of it’s sister phone that was already released because we are familiar with companies releasing one flagship per year and we have already witnessed that in 2013 and 2014. However, this year things have been a little bit different because of the LG G3 that raised the bar to the Quad HD display. We have been hearing rumors since the start of the year that Samsung would be coming out with something to rival it even though the CEO continued to deny it. It was then that we heard of HTC also joining the party and planning to bring another handset out to compete with both LG and Samsung. SO it’s easy to write this off as just another handset, but is that all it’s designed to be?
Having the name Vogue Edition we certainly weren’t ever expecting big things and out minds were pointing to it just being another niche device for those into Vogue. But with reports such as a 13 megapixel camera. 2.5 GHz Snapdragon 801 SoC it’s possible we do get surprised with a QHD display inside putting it next to the G3 spec-wise.