Leaked photos of possible HTC M7 surface, new Home button placement included

HTC's upcoming M7 smartphone has been the focus of a lot of rumors and speculation lately, and there have even been a couple of renders that've surfaced claiming to offer early peeks at the phone. Now some photos showing an HTC-branded handset in the wild have been posted by Android Police, and according to the site, this could very well be the M7 in the flesh plastic. The front of the handset features an HTC logo and front-facing camera up top, and on the bottom is a set of three capacitive navigation buttons. Just as Pocketnow's source claimed earlier today, the device's Home button made its way over to the right side of the phone.

Around back, we can see a camera with a flash on its left side, which the opposite of recent HTC devices like the DROID DNA and One X that had their flash on the right of the camera. There's also HTC and Beats logos along with a speaker grille on the phone's backside. Something that's missing is a set of FCC and other regulatory icons, though that could just mean that we're looking at an unfinished, prototype piece of hardware. 

The software on this handset is said to be HTC Sense 5, which has previously been rumored to be coming with the M7. This new version of Sense includes some new icons along with a new, clean-looking clock widget that's fairly different than the one HTC has been known for in the past. The screenshot of the mystery phone's About screen lists both the Android and Sense versions as "Protected."

The handset shown in these photos looks quite a bit different than the first purported HTC M7 render that showed up earlier this month. The source of that first render noted that the image was grabbed from some early firmware, though, and that the lack of any HTC branding, buttons and other details suggested that the final M7 could sport a new design at its official introduction. The look of this mystery phone seems to borrow some elements from the DROID DNA, something that a previous rumor suggested that the M7 would have. We won't know whether or not the device in these images is the real deal until an HTC exec is standing on stage with the actual M7, but this handset does seem to have a bit of an HTC vibe to it. What do you all make of this phone? Do you think you could adjust to using an Android device with a Home button on the right of its face?

Via Android Police