HTC One M8S brings a lower price to last year's best phone

It's the HTC One M8S, but not any smaller in size

Just because the HTC One M9 is launching this month doesn't mean the company behind it is done with the critically acclaimed HTC One M8.

HTC announced that it's repackaging last year's best phone as the HTC One M8S throughout Europe, and it comes with a cheaper price.

The best HTC One M8 deals

In the UK, it'll cost £379.99 SIM-free. That's significantly cheaper than HTC One M8's price of £549.99 ($499), which is how much it currently costs off-contract on the official HTC website.

The best HTC One M9 deals

The best part is that it'll come with the same premium-feeling metal design, same single-hand-friendly dimensions and have Android 5.0 Lollipop pre-installed to boot.

There's no word on a UK release date, and HTC hasn't greenlit a US version of smartphone yet, but we'll have more details once it gets closer to launch.

Slightly different specs

So what has changed from last year's phone to make this price drop possible? HTC One M8S uses a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor instead of the Snapdragon 801.

Snapdragon 615 is the same 64-bit octacore chip used by the Alcatel Onetouch Idol 3, Oppo R5 and HTC's own HTC One Desire 820. It runs a respectable 1.7GHz on its eight cores.

The HTC One M8S camera specs include a 13-megapixel duo camera with a 5-megapixel snapper up front. It has the same 5-inch 1080p display, but is limited to 16GB of internal storage. Fear not, up to 128GB can be added via a micro SD.

Although it's not as flashy as the new Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, it still retains much of what we liked about the attractive HTC One M8 last year at an equally attractive price.