HTC’s next flagship smartphone – the HTC U – may have been leaked online, just days before the official launch.
A mysterious HTC smartphone has appeared on Geekbench, a mobile benchmarking site that tests the processor performance of smartphones. The handset is listed as 'HTC CBP’, a codename that doesn’t correspond to any existing HTC smartphone.
But the real giveaway is that the smartphone runs on an MSM8998 processor. We know that’s the model number for Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 system-on-a-chip, a processor that doesn’t currently appear in any HTC mobile. Importantly, the HTC U has been widely rumoured to carry the new chip.
In fact, the Snapdragon 835 is certain to appear inside the majority of this year’s most expensive smartphones, and has already debuted inside the latest Sony flagship – and Samsung’s new Galaxy S8. It’s much more efficient and powerful than last year’s Snapdragon 820 and Snapdragon 821 chips thanks to the improved 10nm manufacturing process it’s been built on. It’s pretty much the best processor you can get in a phone today – with the possible exception of Samsung’s equally impressive Exynos 8995.
So what else can we learn from this Geekbench leak? Well the test results, which were uploaded on April 29, reveal that the phone runs on Android 7.1.1. That’s Google’s latest mobile operating system version, although it’s hardly exciting news – a new phone should always run on the latest version.
We also learned that the phone will contain 4GB of memory. However, that’s par for the course for flagship smartphones, so it’s hardly exciting news.
Of course, we’re now also privy to benchmark scores too. The tested phone managed a 1912 single-core score and a 6137 multicore score – both respectable scores. But as this is almost certainly a pre-production model being tested, it’s important that we don’t read too much into the benchmarking data.
In any case, we don’t have long to wait until the HTC U is revealed. HTC has scheduled an event for May 16, 2017 in Taipei, Taiwan, where it plans to showcase the new phone. You’ll be able to catch the action from 7am in the UK, or 2am in New York time.
We don’t know too much about the phone just yet, but HTC has heavily teased that there will be a new “squeeze” control mechanism that may work like an extra button. We'll be reporting on the launch live as it happens, so stay tuned to TrustedReviews for the latest on all things HTC U.
