HTC announces the miniature variant of its flagship Android phone

As it was last year, so it is in 2014. HTC’s flagship Android phone, the One, is getting a downsized variant in the form of the One mini 2. The new handset looks and feels very much like its more expensive sibling, however just like the 2013 mini, it eschews a number of features and design elements. The One mini 2 uses the same aluminum back as the One, but combines it with a plastic border around the screen. There’s no UltraPixel camera this time around, with HTC instead using a 13-megapixel sensor that seems to take some pretty decent pictures.

HTC is making good on its pledge to expand its range of mid-tier smartphones with the launch today of a new handset called the HTC One Mini 2. It’s the strategy the current senior management is hoping can revive the phone maker’s fortunes in the fiercely competitive Android space. The company posted a quarterly loss of $62 million in its Q1 – the second loss-making quarter in the past three quarters for HTC. Even Android kingpin Samsung is having a tougher time of late in the phone space, with slowing growth. Meanwhile a plethora of fast-paced Chinese companies are nibbling marketshare and gunning to go global — including Lenovo (which is in the process of acquiring Motorola) and Xiaomi, which will take its devices to 10 new markets this year. All this means there’s not going to be any let up in the competitive landscape for HTC. So it really needs to step up its game to produce handsets that both win fans and fly off the shelves in quantity — hence its current focus on adding more affordable, mass market appeal handsets to its portfolio.