HTC One M9 Prime Camera Edition announced (but it's really just a renamed One M9s)

Knowing full well the gravity of its sliding financial situation, HTChas taken 2016 to task with a number of new handsets, including its recently released flagship, the HTC10. For those time when just a 9 will do however, the Taiwanese corporation has come to the rescue with just that: one nine that is a One [M]9. Except it’s a proper Prime. But it’s also just a renamed phone from last November.

Announced in Poland today, the HTCOne M9 Prime Camera Edition is, essentially, last year’s flagship with a new camera set-up but a lower-end SoC, and less RAM and on-board storage. Specifically speaking, this new device has a 13-megapixel rear camera with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), a MediaTek Helio X10 SoC, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage.

If this sounds like de ja vu, there is no need for concern: Indeed these are the same specs in the other One that HTCrecently announced, the HTCOne S9. The difference? Whereas the One S9 makes use of a brand new front face, the One M9 Prime Camera Edition is literally the same product that launched last year, design-wise. It’s as if HTChad leftover casings lying around and figured it would just put some of the One S9 internals in them.

If this still seems too familiar though, GSM Arena has discovered the panacea for the problem: this product is actually last November’s HTCOne M9s, simply re-branded for Europe.

For reference, the full spec-read out features a 5-inch FHD (1980 X 1020) Super LCD display with Gorilla Glass, a 2GHz Octa Core MediaTek Helio X10 SoC, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of on-board storage, a 13-megapixel rear camera, a 4-megapixel front camera, BoomSound speakers, a 2,840mAh battery, and Android Marshmallow.

At the moment, the phone is apparently only available in Poland on-contract with the carrier named Play, where it costs just 1 Zloty (about $0.26) when purchased in combination with a service plan with a price tag of 99.99 Zloty or higher (roughly $26). According to GSM Arena however, “the One M9 Prime Camera Edition is already listed on each of HTC’s country websites for Europe, clearly indicating that the company has planned wide availability for the device.”

So…it looks like this One is actually one of the Ones that released last year, but it will be sold as a new One with a different name this year, alongside another One that is new but still kind of like the last One. Here’s hoping that at least rival company OnePlus will come up with a 3 to add a new prime number into the markerplace.