HTC Outs August 19th Launch: One W8 Windows Phone?

HTC will hold an event on August 19th in New York City, where the recently rumored Windows Phone version of the HTC One M8 may well make its official debut. Invitations to the launch were sent out this morning, and come amid speculation over the past few days of a "One (W8) for Windows" handset that would build on the metal-bodied Android flagship.

According to leaked specifications for the rumored Windows Phone, HTC would run Microsoft's platform on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chipset running as fast as 3GHz. That'll be paired with 2GB of memory and either 16GB or 32GB of storage, plus a microSD card slot.

The display is expected to be the same 5-inch, Full HD panel as the One M8, and there'll be HTC's well-esteemed BoomSound speaker system too.

What will be interesting to see is how HTC handles the Duo Camera system that helps differentiate the One M8 from its Android rivals. There, two cameras are included on the back of the phone, one adding depth information to the main UltraPixel camera.

With that data, HTC's custom apps can do things like selective refocusing and background blurring, as we found in our review of the handset.

Of course, the One W8 for Windows isn't the only HTC rumor we've seen recently, with speculation around a possible Android tablet – the company's first attempt at the form-factor since the ill-fated Jetstream – as well as a possible Android Wear smart watch.

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