Thought the HTC One M9 was a little similar to its predecessor, the HTC One M8? Well, HTC's latest phone goes one further — it's a direct repurposing of the 2014 flagship at a lower price point. The M8s appears almost identical to the M8, with the same 5-inch 1080p display and all-metal build, but it uses an eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor and swaps the 4-megapixel "UltraPixel" camera out for a more conventional 13-megapixel sensor. Unlike the M9, the M8s retains the secondary lens that enables focusing effects.

The M8s appears almost identical to the M8

The battery is 2840mAh, a slight bump on the M8's 2600mAh cell; there's 2GB of RAM; and the phone comes with 16GB of internal storage as standard alongside a microSD slot. It's slightly thicker than the original M8, coming in at 9.55mm thick versus the prior 9.4mm; both phones, however, weigh the same 160g. The M8s runs HTC's Sense 6.0 software atop Android 5.0 Lollipop, rather than the Sense Seven version introduced with the M9.

The M8s will be available in silver, gold, and gunmetal gray, and for now at least the release will be limited to Europe. Exact regions and release dates haven't yet been made clear, but the phone will sell for £379.99 ($564) SIM-free in the UK. The original M8 sold for around £530 upon release, though it's worth noting you can now pick it up for less than the M8s today. Which model you go for could come down to camera preference; if this 13-megapixel model is similar to the one found in other mid-range HTC phones, it may at least be less mercurial than its unreliable (if occasionally impressive) UltraPixel forebear.

No word on a US release, but we'll let you know if we hear anything.