It's been rumoured for a while that HTC has been readying a new flagship handset, one that might even have a touch-enabled frame for easier browsing, but now we have the first press image.

The phone will allegedly launch this month, April, according to plenty of sources and Evan Blass, otherwise known as evleaks on Twitter, has posted a pic showing the front and rear of what he claims to be the HTC U.

The HTC U is thought to be the final name for the flagship phone, which has also gone by the codename "Ocean" in recent times.

It is claimed to come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. 5.5-inch QHD display (2560 x 1440), Sense 9 and Android 7.1 Nougat.

The cameras are said to be 12-megapixels around the back and 16-megapixels on the front, which sounds like an odd way round, but the rear camera will sport the larger 1.55μm pixels for better light capture.

Internal storage will come in two flavours: 64GB and 128GB. A microSD card slot will be available for expansion.

The official unveiling of the HTC U will be in the next couple of weeks. The phone is rumoured to go on sale in May.