The popular HTC One S should be very familiar by this point for most. Since being first announced in Barcelona, Spain we all know it has that new and impressive 1.5 GHz dual-core S4 processor from Qualcomm and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Today however, the company launched a different version in Taiwan with a 1.7 GHz dual-core instead.

The HTC One S and the AT&T One X both sport Qualcomm’s newest dual-core MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 chip, but for Taiwan they decided to go with the older MSM8260 S3 (think HTC Sensation, EVO 3D) clocked at 1.7GHz with the Adreno 220 GPU instead of their newer, faster, more efficient silicon. So while the phone gets a huge boost to 1.7 GHz, it’s still the older processor.

The image above shows the 1.7 GHz speeds. When asked about the choice to use the older chip an HTC spokesman said the phone would provide users the same experience. In our findings the new S4 is amazing with battery life, so I’m not sure I fully agree there. Other than the processor under the hood the phone remains unchanged with the same 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED display, impressive 8 megapixel camera and the newest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Could we start to see HTC release non-flagship devices with the older S3 cranked up to blazing fast speeds to beat the competition? I think we might. That or they really do have a shortage of S4 processors.

[via PocketDroid]