HTC recently announced its plans to increase focus on mid-range smartphones, and it wasn’t kidding. Hot on the heels of the company’s admission that it needed to address the mid-range market, details on a new handset dubbed Desire 8 have leaked, courtesy of My Drivers. The Desire 8 will reportedly sport dual SIM slots, and will have a 5.5-inch screen of unknown resolution (anything less than 720p will be a deal breaker.) A 13-megapixel camera on the back and a 5-megapixel front shooter will be in charge of the imaging department – Chinese mid-range smartphones often have the 13MP and 5MP camera combination, which makes me wonder if HTC is looking to take an existing no-name handset and rebranding it. That doesn’t mean the struggling Taiwanese manufacturer won’t be making a few changes of its own, as the phone’s image shows front-facing speakers, which are slowly but surely becoming a staple of HTC’s smartphones. However, it’s best not to put much stock on the leaked image, as the navigation buttons are conspicuously missing, possibly because we’re looking at an early render (or HTC is adopting on-screen buttons on all its smartphones.) It does have a considerably attractive design for a mid-range phone, so here’s hoping HTC doesn’t mess things up when it comes to price this time around, or it might just miss the mid-range boat once and for all, since we’re now living in a time when mid-range specs can be had at budget prices.
