Pictures of the back panel of the HTC 2014 flagship model codenamed ‘M8’ leak

The HTC One, launched early this year was known quite early on by it’s internal codename ‘M7’. At an end of year party last year, video was taken of HTC CEO Peter Chou on-stage at an event holding up the phone while scores of HTC staff yelled and chanted ‘M7, M7, M7’ and now it seems HTC have continued the naming convention with the M8 now on track for release next year as the successor to the well designed handset, and the fingerprint sensor from the One max may be showing up here too.

The back plate for the ‘M8’ has shown up overnight on Taiwanese site ePrice. The backplate which is Blue in the hots, shows a similar design to the HTC One in looks, but the fact that it has a removeable back cover is a huge step away from the one-piece machined aluminium block that is the HTC One.

The panel shows a hole at the top, which has begun speculation that the fingerprint sensor which was introduced on the over-size HTC One max will also be seen on next years model, although positioned above the camera almost on the top curve of the phone, similarly placed to the Motorola Atrix which had issues in ergonomics when reaching for the fingerprint sensor.

The ‘M8’ is rumoured to be announced around February, with specs in the higher end of the range such as a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU, paired with 3GB of RAM and a 5″-5.2″ screen. Software wise we can expect to see Sense 6 on-board with perhaps a new iteration or update to the Blinkfeed widget that has become hugely popular amongst some HTC phone owners.

HTC could well do with a successful phone, with the companies seemingly worsening financial status a well specced and feature filled phone launch paired with a saturated Robert Downey Jr led marketing campaign could be the way out, in the meantime we can expect to see a fair few lower end Desire based models cropping up to fill in their cash reserves.

Should HTC continue with the fingerprint sensor on their line of premium phones?