HTC One out in UK on 15 March, £500 price tag likely

HTC's freshly unveiled HTC One smart phone will be out in the UK in a number of weeks, slated to hit shops on 15 March.

The Taiwanese phone-maker's newest smart phone, which has a 4.7-inch 1080p display and a 9mm metal chassis, will be lining the shelves of British brick-and-mortar shops in less than a month, HTC has confirmed to CNET.

The One will be available through every single operator in the UK and Ireland and every single phone retailer, I was told, so you should be able to get your mitts on 2013's first major mobile wherever you like to shop, or whichever network you're allied with.

You'll pay a hefty price for this slab of smart phone, however. With a quad-core processor, high-resolution screen and lots of other hardware gubbins, the One will be the preserve of those with plenty of cash to splash.

When asked in a briefing I attended, HTC said the One's pricing would be comparable to that of the One X when it was released in 2012. The One X (released at roughly the same time last year) cost £500 SIM-free, so expect an unlocked HTC One to bear a similar price tag.

The HTC One is running Android version 4.1.2. That's not the latest version of Jelly Bean, so let's hope an update is forthcoming. In the meantime phone fans will want to get to grips with the new Sense 5 interface, which includes Blinkfeed -- a Flipboard-style home screen mosaic of news stories and social updates.

The HTC One also has a 4-megapixel 'Ultrapixel' camera. The firm has made much of the bigger pixels that a lower-megapixel sensor allows for, claiming the phone will excel when it comes to low-light performance.

You can read my full hands-on preview here.

Is the One the one, or are you holding out to see what Samsung has up its sleeves? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.