HTC One M8 to allegedly have a Rs 59,999 price tag in India

After a string of rumours, HTC has finally pulled the wraps off the HTC One M8 last month. And while we know everything there is to know about the phone from a hardware and software point of view, the biggest question in the consumer's mind is the price, of course. We can't say much about it at the moment as the device hasn't been announced for India yet, but NDTV Gadgets has received a retail packaging that suggests a maximum retail pricing of Rs 59,999. The device is reportedly expected to be launched in India sometime this week. If this piece of news is to be believed, then it could be a very steep pricing for the M8, especially considering the Galaxy S5 is priced at Rs 51,500. When pitted against the Xperia Z2 and Galaxy S5, we had mentioned that the M8 could give HTC another shot at fame if the company can fix the pricing and availability woes it had with the original One. Having said that, the price doesn’t really justify M8’s specs sheet either. Nearly all reviews were critical of HTC’s choice of retaining the 4-megapixel or HTC Ultrapixel camera, which was panned last year for bad colour depth and terrible performance indoors. Though HTC has improved the colour reproduction and this time comes armed with ‘Duo Camera’, the consensus is that that’s still not enough to match the competition. The Duo Camera is seen as a novelty feature, something that can be easily emulated with the right software, such as the Google Lens Blur mode. Considering that the Xperia Z2 has a 20-megapixel camera, it has a 5-times higher resolution camera, while the Galaxy S5 has 4-times higher resolution camera, the HTC One M8 certainly seems at a disadvantage. HTC One M8 comes with the quintessential HTC One design and this time around there’s more metal than ever before in the construction. Some other specs of the device include 5-inch full HD display, 5-megapixel front-facing camera, 2600mAh battery, Android 4.4.2 KitKat with Sense 6 UI, 16GB/32GB storage, 2.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and 2GB of RAM. But despite all of this this, the price is a massive barrier.