HTC announces yet another 2015 flagship, the One ME

HTC almost seems like it’s satirizing itself at this point. The company has announced another variant of the HTC One that’s slated for China later this year, adding to the flooded flagship market that the company is trying to tackle this year.

Originally we got the One M9, which was a little boring, but stuck to HTC’s simple, yet sophisticated standards. Then, the One M9+ was announced. It featured an actual upgrade to last year’s M8, with a higher resolution screen, fingerprint scanner, etc. It probably wasn’t great that HTC announced it right on the heels of the regular M9, and it definitely didn’t help that the M9+ isn’t available globally.

And that’s where HTC lost it.

The company also released the One E9+, which is basically an M9+ with a bigger screen and plastic body, which is again not available outside of select markets. And then today, the company has announced the brand new HTC One ME, which is basically the M9+ with a plastic body. Kind of like the E9+. Except plastic. But wait, what was the difference between the M9+ and E9+? Oh, right, the Duo Camera. So the ME is basically a mix-up between the M9+ and E9+, giving you the option to pick up a 20 megapixel camera and plastic shell. If you’re confused reading this, I’m sure you can tell how confusing it will be for consumers when they have three or four options for what basically amounts to the exact same phone.

As far as specs are concerned, it’s a great device. You’ll get 32 GB of internal storage, a quad HD screen, a MediaTek Helio X10 octa-core CPU, and 3 GB of RAM. Solid hardware, but it’s barely different from the handful of other devices we’ve seen over the last few months.

To make this worse, we haven’t even seen any Mini variants of these devices yet, and it’s only been three months since the M9 was originally announced. At this pace, HTC is announcing a new flagship device roughly every three or four weeks, which is almost the exact same situation that nearly bankrupted the company in the first place.

One flagship device per year is too little for most manufacturers, and that makes sense. It’s hard to keep up momentum and keep your devices updated when you’re flooding the market with new phones every month. But even the bigger, successful companies like Samsung, LG, and Apple at least space their devices out.

HTC did really well with the launch of the original HTC One M7, finding an identity that worked for them and put them back on track to financial stability. Sure, we had a few other devices along the way, like the Droid DNA and the Butterfly, but for the most part the company stuck to one flagship device and made it work. Things got a little shaky with the M8, as we saw the Desire Eye and a few other devices last year, but again, the focus was on the M8 all year, and HTC posted one of their best years in a while.

That seems like it’s pretty much going out the window at this point. Good luck, HTC.

source: HTC

via: Android Authority

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