HTC One M9 phone is star of supposedly leaked hands-on video

A tech blogger's too-itchy trigger finger has revealed HTC's new flagship phone a day before the firm's press event at Mobile World Congress -- that is, if appearances are to be believed.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor

Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.

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Ed was a member of the CNET crew that won a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors for general excellence online. He's also edited pieces that've nabbed prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists and others.

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Edward Moyer

Feb. 28, 2015 1:57 p.m. PT

2 min read

Ohh: gold. But is this supposedly leaked video of HTC's flagship phone the real deal? Screenshot by CNET

If an apparently leaked video is indeed the real thing, HTC's flagship smartphone has added a little gold to its wardrobe.

The video, entitled "

M9 Hands on (Before MWC 2015)," showed up on YouTube today -- a day before HTC unofficially kicks off Barcelona's Mobile World Congress confab with a press event. The company plans to use the trade show as a coming out party for the new HTC. CNET will be live-blogging tomorrow's happening.

The video appears to be a clip shot under embargo, meaning HTC granted a media outlet access to the phone in exchange for the promise that footage wouldn't be published till an agreed-on time. It also appears the embargo somehow got broken -- again, if the clip is legit.

The footage shows a supposed One M9 that looks very similar to predecessors the One M7 and One M8 .

CNET's full coverage of Mobile World Congress

Like the M8, the purported M9 has an all-metal frame, but this time it has a "dual-finish," with the back being silver and the edges gold. (No word yet on whether some viewers see the phone as not silver and gold but as black and blue.)

Some buttons have been repositioned on the purported M9, and a big difference is that the M8's back-mounted dual-camera has allegedly been replaced with a single, 20-megapixel camera on the back, and a single, 4-megapixel "Ultrapixel" camera on the front. That jibes with an earlier rumor, though still another rumor had it that HTC was going to ditch its proprietary Ultrapixel technology this time out. You can check out our rumor roundup here .

Barcelona braces for Mobile World Congress 2015 (pictures)

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The video's narrator says that with the bigger, 20-megapixel camera on the back, HTC couldn't fit a second camera there, and that the smaller camera on the front should be good for shooting low-light, indoor selfies.

So, is this actually an

M9? We'll find out Sunday. Join us for our live blog. And check out all our Mobile World Congress coverage.

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