HTC’s One M8S, against the pack

All too often, Android news sites talk about the latest greatest thing. We get caught up with Samsung’s latest flagship, followed by Sony’s, HTC’s and LG’s, in no particular order. Talking about the budget end of the market is also the done thing, but not too much time gets spent on what’s in between.

The HTC One M8S is that in-between in the case of HTC, and it caught us kind of by surprise. It arrived for a review a couple of weeks ago, but sadly it hasn’t had the full Ausdroid workthrough yet. In reality, it might not get a full review, because it shares so many similarities with the HTC One M8 from last year, and the HTC One M9 from this. Before jumping into a photographic comparison, which we’ll be working up in the next week or two, we wanted to run down the specs for you.

If you were to pick through the comparisons, you’d find that there’s not an awful lot between these three handsets, despite there being twelve months between the first iteration (M8) and the latest (M8S). Probably the most noticeable differences are in the processors; the HTC One (M9) is easily the most powerful, but the One (M8S) isn’t far behind, both running octa-core powerhouses with significant power behind them. Last year’s HTC One M8 has fallen a bit behind here.

Besides the processor, the only other real difference is the cameras. HTC’s One M8 featured the Ultra Pixel rear camera, which performed well in low-light, but not all that well otherwise. HTC all but dispensed with the Ultra Pixel camera in 2015, thought the One (M9) does have an ultra-pixel front-facing camera. In terms of rear cameras, both the 2015 models have gone for a more traditional setup. The One (M9) looks the goods on paper, with a 20MP camera and a reasonable aperture, though the One (M8S) isn’t far behind with a 13MP camera, and better f/2.0 aperture.

It is here that we will leave our comparison for the time being; clearly the deciding factor between the One (M9) and One (M8S) will be the camera and CPU performance, and we plan to perform a photographic comparison across the two handsets in coming weeks.

Why are we comparing these two? Simple; HTC’s One (M9) was not particularly well received — it had a high cost and lacked some of the pizazz of other 2015 flagship handsets. This is where the One M8S comes in; it does have slightly lesser specs, but it also comes in at a more affordable price-point.  When it comes to recommending handsets, we want to offer the best ‘bang for buck’ recommendation, and by comparing the two available HTC handsets, we hope to do just that for you!