Despite the slow production rates of HTC One, HTC is still very much committed to using the metal process it developed, for building the future HTC phones. This process was touted to be one of the reasons of the delay in the manufacture of HTC One. This played a huge role in HTC’s poor performance through the first half of 2013.
Justin Huang, senior manager of design and innovation at HTC Lab, opines, “We now have the process working very well and at scale. While each single handset is technically in the build process for two hours, 700 handsets are produced at a time in a ‘box’ and there are in turn many boxes being produced at a time. Now that it has been worked through the first time, we will continually use this process for future phones and designs.”
Huang’s mention of future designs suggests we should expect more metal designs from HTC in future. The use of a plastic casing with technical specifications in HTC Butterfly S must not be a sign of a step back from the HTC One’s metal design.
Upcoming HTC handsets such as the HTC One Mini and Max and a red HTC One are, reportedly, the adaptations to the unibody build process.