Android fans looking forward to HTC's next flagship device have a new image to ogle this weekend, as a render that purportedly shows the front and rear of the M7 has made its way online. The shot comes to us from HTC Source, which claims to have been told by two "trusted sources" that this is indeed the M7. The handset depicted in this new image looks a bit like a mashup of the DROID DNA (something that we've heard before) and Windows Phone 8X, with a large camera and flash and speaker grill on its backside along with HTC and Beats logos. Around front is an earpiece along with another HTC logo, and on the bottom of the face is a trio of capacitive Android navigation keys.

This new image is fairly different than the purported M7 render that showed up just a few days ago, though that shot was said to have come from an animation contained in some early firmware, and it was suggested that the final M7 design could differ from the look we saw then. This new M7 does seem to line up with an alleged photo of the device from earlier in January that showed a similar earpiece and HTC logo on its face. One thing that seems strange about this M7 is its Back, Recent Apps and Home capacitive button layout, which is different than the Back, Home and Recent Apps order that HTC has been using lately.

The rumored specs of the HTC M7 include a 4.7-inch 1080p display and 2-megapixel camera on its face, 13-megapixel shooter around back, 2GB RAM, 32GB storage and a quad-core processor. It's also said that the M7 will come to market with Jelly Bean and a new version of HTC's Sense skin, possibly Sense 5. Interestingly, HTC Source claims that the basic look of the M7 will be "globally recognizable" and that there will be only minor changes that occur with carrier-specific models. The M7 definitely sounds like it's got the makings of a flagship Android smartphone, so now we'll just have to wait and see if these rumors hold true. The good news is that with a late February MWC debut reportedly in the cards, our wait may not be long.

UPDATE: The accuracy of this render is now up in the air. Pocketnow's sources that claim to have seen actual images of the front of the M7 say that this isn't an HTC-made render, but they do claim that the front of the device in the image above does line up with the actual M7. That includes the layout of the capacitive navigation buttons, meaning that HTC might indeed be planning to move its Home button to the far right. The back of the phone in the render is said to be incorrect. As always, nothing's official until HTC says it is, so for now this is still very much a rumor. With MWC kicking off on Feb. 25, though, it may only be another month before we get a look at the real deal. How many of you are looking forward to HTC's new flagship?

Via HTC Source, Pocketnow