T-Mobile HTC One S Re-Issued For Free (And In Its True Form)
The original HTC One S has finally made its way to T-Mobile from overseas, replacing the paint-covered Blue edition that's been in stores since the launch. The international coverings for this machine are the same as we'd seen in the international edition of the machine here in Matte Black with Micro Arc Oxidation. This process, for those of you that weren't around when the HTC One series was introduced earlier this year, makes the device just about as rough-and-tumble as they come, ready to take on the world without any protection from a 3rd party case – no worries!
The HTC One S also works with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor and has a lovely 8-megapixel camera working with HTC's own ImageSense processor under the hood. This combined with the Snapdragon S4's dedicated architecture for image processing makes the HTC One S one of the most fabulous camera phones in the world. Once we get the device in for some hands-on time, we'll do some comparisons to the rest of the modern-day contenders as well.
We have an HTC One S T-Mobile review up from earlier this year and you can expect similar results for this edition coming this week. Some differences here in the present are going to exist in the software department – any One S in the wild today with T-Mobile will have the upgrades present, but here with the MAO edition we'll have them right out of the box – hot stuff.
You can also take a peek at our original HTC One S review from April of this year to see what this device is like with MAO. As Chris Davies said of the finish back then: "HTC is offering two finishes for the casing, either a graduated metallic green or, as is the case with our review unit, a so-called micro arc oxidized shell that has been heat-treated so as to be scratch resistant. Scrape up the rear panel with your fingernail and the marks just rub straight off, though our previous experience with a One S prototype suggests keys can still leave some noticeable marks if used in earnest against the phone."
We'll see if all of that is still true here in this new edition. We're expecting essentially the same shell as that device back closer to the start of this year – stay tuned!