HTC UK creates Gramohorn II for HTC One’s BoomSound speakers

We’ve seen some crazy speaker ideas in our time but the Gramohorn II designed by Justin Wolter by commission of HTC UK is one of the cookiest. It’s a dock that features two horns (like on an old-timey gramophone, hence the name) that is designed specifically for the stereo BoomSound speakers on the HTC One.

 HTC UK is using the Gramohorn II to kick off its “Here’s To Creativity” campaign. Strange that there’s no room for the BoomBass speaker, but still it’s an interesting design piece, which goes well with the uniquely designed HTC One.

Anyway, there are two versions of the Gramohorn II – a plaster-based and a metal-based. The plaster one gives you a choice of 25 colors and it will set you back £999 ($1600/€1200)

. If you want to order one, you should throw in £20 for delivery to the UK and Ireland, £40 for Europe and £80 for the rest of the world. The lead time on the plaster Gramohorn II’s is 3-4 weeks, the lead time on the metal ones is 2-3 weeks.

In case you were wondering about the ‘II’ in the name, the original Gramohorn (also designed by Wolter) was a single horn for the iPhone.

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HTC M8 photos leak, alleged successor to the HTC One

The HTC M8 is allegedly the company's flagship smartphone for 2014 and today it has emerged in a trio of photos. While the quality of the shots could certainly be better, the images suggest HTC is keen on sticking with the design strategy it introduced with the HTC One.

As pictured, the HTC M8 boasts a cutout for a fingerprint scanner above the camera, though not as large as the one introduced on the HTC One Max.

Another notable change in the design department is the smartphone's profile. The HTC M8 looks to be a lot thinner than the HTC One, and with more rounded edges.

Under the hood, the HTC M8 is rumored to sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset likely running at 2.2GHz alongside 3GB of RAM. It's not yet clear what Android version the M8 is going to run, but rumors suggest the company's Sense UI version 6 is going to be included.

As for the display, rumor has it that it's between 5" and 5.2" with a resolution of 2K (2048 × 1080) pixels. Nothing of this is confirmed yet, so take it with a pinch of salt. We hope to hear more information regarding the HTC M8 soon.

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HTC working on a smartwatch with camera

The smartwatch arena is heating up with all the major manufacturers joining the bandwagon. After recent reports of a bizarre Nokia smartwatch prototype, we have rumours that HTC is planning to launch an Android smartphone.

According to a report published on the Bloomberg website, HTC is planning to release an Android smartwatch which will be ready for launch next year.

The report doesn’t name a source and says that the news comes from a person “familiar with the matter.”

Not much is revealed about the device. The report says that the smartwatch is definitely going to come with a camera for clicking photos much like the one seen on Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch.

There is no word on the pricing or the full feature list. The device is slated to hit shelves by the second half of 2014.

The smartwatch segment is showing signs of explosive growth in the future. Samsung managed to beat other companies to release the first mainstream smartwatch. The Galaxy Gear

features a 1.63 inch screen along with a 1.9 MP camera. Although it only has official support for apps curated for the device, it was recently hacked to run full Android apps.

HTC’s slipping market share has got the alarm bells ringing in the company. The HTC One failed to spur a reverse trend in the dismal sales record of HTC smartphones. Yesterday, the company’s CEO announced that he will be concentrating on the innovation and product development aspect of the organisation to hopefully engineer a turnaround.

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