Hasta La Gadget!

We often don’t see dual-SIM variants of flagship smartphones being released in the West, they’re usually released in markets such as India and China where substantial demand for these variants already exists. HTC One was launched earlier this year and despite the fact that it brought in raving reviews, the device didn’t exactly do wonders for the company in terms of generating revenue. HTC released dual-SIM variant of its flagship in both China and Russia now it has brought the variant over to the UK, a move that’s likely to make carrier partners a bit angry.

The reason why carrier partners may find fault with this move is because dual-SIM phones can’t be locked to one single carrier. That’s the entire premise of a device being able to run two SIMs, the user is free to switch networks. The dual-SIM HTC One is now available for pre-order through HTC UK’s website, it costs £494.99, exactly the same as an unlocked single-SIM HTC One. The dual-SIM variant does come with a microSD card slot, something that’s not present on the other variant. It also has a removable back cover but the battery is not user replaceable. The dual-SIM variant also lacks 4G LTE support. Its definitely a major shift for HTC to offer a dual-SIM variant of its flagship device in the UK, it remains to be seen if the company has any plans of doing the same over in the U.S.

Dual-SIM HTC One Goes On Sale In The UK original content from Ubergizmo.

Just days after it unveiled a second gold One, HTC is releasing another variant of its Android flagship in an attempt to boost sales in the UK. Today, the company announced the availability of the HTC One Dual SIM, which you may already know as HTC One 802w. Just like it’s Chinese counterpart, the device comes with a removable back for access to dual SIM slots and, more importantly, a microSD slot. That means you can switch between SIMs to receive calls and also fall back on up to 64GB of external storage, should you max-out the One’s 32GB of internal storage. The dual-SIM functionality does come at a price, however, as the latest One variant does not support LTE — otherwise the specs remain unchanged. If you can overlook that, the One Dual SIM is up for pre-order on HTC’s official store for £495 ($809), with it likely to head to a “number of networks and retailers” in the near future.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC

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Official HTC Store

Oh yes, things are really starting to kick off in the arcane world of smartphone benchmarking. First, there came clear evidence of phone makers manipulating scores in apps like AnTuTu and GFXBench, and now a more mainstream benchmarking company, Futuremark, has publicly delisted specific Samsung and HTC phones that it suspects of cheating. Futuremark says that the devices in question — including the Galaxy Note 3, HTC One and HTC One Mini — fail to adhere to the fairness policy, which requires that a device treats its 3DMark app just as it would treat any other app, with no tailor-made bursts of performance designed to achieve artificially high scores. Clearly, this bad behavior is just as endemic as we originally feared, so benchmark apps either need to toughen up, as Futuremark appears to be doing, or they need to find entirely new ways of measuring performance.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, HTC

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Via: HotHardware, The Register

Source: Futuremark

If you own a Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play edition, you can now put down your pitchfork and stop dripping with envy. Apparently, Android KitKat is also gracing not only the Sense-less version of HTC’s One today, but also the non-TouchWiz device. When the phone getting Android 4.4 in its purest form, you can look forward to all the features the updated platform promises, including a better camera app and longer battery life. The update should soon be available for download via Settings — if it’s yet to arrive, that is — those who own a version of the Galaxy S4 with all of Samsung’s software tweaks will have to sit tight a while longer.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, Google

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Source: Android (Google+)

HTC hasn’t said what major device it is going to release in 2014 but rumors have already been circulating. Codenamed the M8, it is believed that this device will be released in Q1, 2014. We have already seen allegedly leaked photos of the HTC M8 and have also heard about its specifications from the ever trustworthy Twitter leaker @evleaks. Additional specifications of the M8 have surfaced, thanks to a purported M8 appearing in AnTuTu benchmark results scoring just over 36,000. Those who know their AnTuTu scores know that the score is quite impressive.

This device is actually believed to be the successor to the popular HTC One. It is believed to have a 2.3GHz MSM8974 Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quadcore processor, 2GB RAM, Qualcomm Adreno 330 GPU, Ultrapixel camera, 16GB of onboard storage as well as Android 4.4 KitKat pre-installed. The M8 will apparently have a 5 inch full 1080p HD display as well. Sense 6.0 user interface is expected to be slapped on top of the Android 4.4 core OS. Pricing and availability information is not known at this point in time. HTC obviously hasn’t said anything as yet, we can’t expect it to prior to the official announcement. There haven’t been a lot of leaked pictures though, because we surely do remember that the HTC One Max pictures were leaking almost every single day, perhaps we might see more as the expected release timeframe draws near.

Purported HTC M8 Appears In AnTuTu Benchmark original content from Ubergizmo.