There are several speculations about this case. The most believable one is that it is about price policy. Specifically, the model 8X in the U.S. sells for $200 for the 16 gigabyte version, and the 8-gigabyte version sells exclusively at AT&T, for only $100, if you sign a two-year contract. Given these prices it turns out that weaker model 8S would be sold for peanuts, or offered free with the signing of a contract, obviously HTC would not like that since they get less money that way.
HTC’s 8S has a 4 inch WVGA screen resolution of 480x800 pixels, a Snapdragon S4 SoC based on the Krait dual-core processor running at 1GHz, 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal flash memory and an SD card slot, which is absent from the higher model (Same thing is with the One X and One X+, really stupid thing for HTC to do). The 8S, according to its characteristics should be competition to Nokia's Lumia 820, but will it be able to compete without the sales from telecom operators is yet to be seen.
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