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A flurry of leaks hint at an upgraded 5-inch HTC One coming in early 2014

Leaked photos and leaked specs point to a beefed-up version of the HTC flagship coming down the line in early January.

HTC hasn't made any official announcements regarding its follow-up plans for the damn decent HTC One phone. However, a flurry of leaks point to a yet-unnamed successor that will hit stores sometime early in 2014.

A number of purported leaked images of HTC's next-generation flagship, codenamed M8 (M7 was the original One's pre-release codename) have been making their way around the Chinese techblogosphere this week.

The usually reliable tweet leaker, @evleaks, thought-coughed that the new HTC phone will be boast a 5-inch display, 1080p handset, and be KitKat powered via a Snapdragon 800 processor:

If true, these specs would be a genuine bump-up from the current One's 4.7-inch display and Snapdragon 600 processor running on Android Jelly Bean ( though HTC has promised a forthcoming KitKat upgrade for existing phones).

Additionally, without naming sources, the Chinese site ePrice has also added in that the phone will boast 3GB of RAM, compared to 2GB for the current One. The post--once again, without naming any sources--says the phone should be released sometime in early January.

HTC's year

Despite launching one of the best Android phones available, HTC managed to have a disappointing year. Despite some initial strong sales of the One, there were several missteps (for example, the unnecessarily Facebooky HTC First was an unqualified failure  despite a mountain of hype preceding it).

The Taiwanese manufacturer has attempted to turn things around with the introduction of the One Max and One mini, both part of a less aggressive version of rival Samsung's throw-ev-er-y- thing-at-the-wall strategy of product incarnations.

Hang in there, HTC. New year, new start, and hopefully a new One.