HTC One render leaked, lacks recent apps button

All eyes are on HTC as the company's event is looming ever-so-close. Well known-tipster @evleaks on Twitter has leaked a new render of HTC's upcoming flagship handset, the HTC One, which is rumoured to be the release name of the M7. The render shows a design drastically different from HTC's earlier offerings, while still maintaining some similarity to the recently-launched Butterfly.

The biggest thing to notice in the render is the complete absence of a recent apps button. Usually, Android is navigated through three buttons—back, home, and recent apps. While the back and home button are present as capacitive buttons, the recent apps button is nowhere to be seen. This may hint towards HTC altering its phone's controls to maybe open the recent apps page by a long-press of the back button. Maybe the company is doing something different and the HTC logo will also be a button.

The HTC One in all its rendered glory

This image also gives another look at Sense 5, and this time, there are a couple of other things to notice in the upcoming UI. There seems to be a couple of Facebook widgets on the screen, which are arranged much like the Windows Phone 8 UI. The widget may let you keep different widgets for different contacts, or maybe it is one highly stylised widget.

The area above and below the screen seem to be almost identical, with the only differences being that the top has the phone's ambient light and proximity sensors along with a front-facing camera. There are giant grills for the earpiece as well as for the microphone.

The leaked render seems wildly different from what we had seen before. Pictures that have been leaked earlier hinted to a design closer to that of the Butterfly, whereas this render looks like it is going for an entirely new look.

Last week, it was revealed that the HTC M7 will be launched on March 8 and will cost a whopping 650 Euro (approx. 47,000). If that pricing is also carried on for India, then expect the M7 to be the first Android phone to cross the Rs 50,000 barrier. The launch date and price was revealed by French Android community blog Fandroid, who had gotten hold of a local retailer's promotional poster.

The listing also confirms a few of the phone's specifications. As expected, the HTC M7 will boast a 4.7-inch Full HD display, Sense 5, 32GB of internal memory, 4G LTE, a 13-megapixel camera and an audio technology called Double HP techno Beats Audio.

We have heard about most of the specs a few times before, but the 13-megapixel camera mentioned is not in keeping with a recent rumour that HTC is ditching megapixels to go with a marketing term called ultrapixels—the stacked sensor and image processing technology in the HTC M7.

The listing also confirms the name of the device as M7, if you had any doubts about it despite HTC CEO Peter Chou yelling out the phone's name on stage at a recent company party.

The likely specifications of the phone are:

• 4.7-inch display with a 1080p resolution and pixel density of 468 ppi
• 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Wi-Fi hotspot
• GPS with A-GPS
• Bluetooth, Micro USB
• 13-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording and 2 megapixel front-facing camera
• 32GB of internal storage