It's that time of year again. In the build-up to the Mobile World Congress starting the first week of March in Barcelona, Spain, rumors and updates are running rampant about the Samsung Galaxy S6 and that other premium Android brand that follows the same development cycle with an early summer release date: the HTC One M9. Here's what we know so far.

Firstly, it looks like the new HTC One will have the next logical model number "M9" attached to the Taiwanese company's 2015 premium flagship (barring any major, unexpected shift in marketing strategy). The rumor mill has its code name being the HTC Hima, but don't count on that moniker sticking around by the time it's unveiled at the start of the Mobile World Congress on March 1.

Rumored (Likely) Specs

By all accounts, it looks like fans shouldn't get their hopes up about the 2015 HTC One M9 being a revolutionary redesign or anything, as Samsung's Galaxy S6 has been long rumored to be.

Instead, the upcoming One M9 looks like an incremental update, with faster core hardware, Android Lollipop layered with HTC's updated Sense 7.0 user interface, and a basically similar look and design to what's come before. That is, unless the somewhat wild conspiratorial theories from HTCSource's optimistic spin on otherwise unexciting leaked specs and images is true -- that supposedly, HTC is pulling a J.J. Abrams, sending out false information and decoy cases to partners, to purposely conceal the "huge surprises" we'll see in the M9, come March 1.

The consensus, however, on rumored specs seems to be something like the following:

Screen: 5.0-inch Full HD 1080 x 1920p Super LCD3 with Gorilla Glass 4

Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 with two quad-cores at 1.5GHz and 2GHz, Adreno 430 GPU with 3GB RAM

Storage: 32 GB (64GB optional), with microSD expansion up to 128GB

OS: Android 5.0.1 Lollipop with Sense 7.0 UI

Speakers: Front-facing stereo speakers

Connectivity: LTE Cat. 6, VoLTE, and Carrier Aggregation support, Bluetooth 4.1, NFC, IR blaster, GPS, dual-band WiFi, and that good old HTC quirk: FM radio

Battery: 2840 mAh, non-removable with Quick Charge 2.0

The Camera Controversy

One spec not listed is the camera. That's because there's been some disagreement in the rumor mill over whether HTC plans to continue with its dual-sensor Duo Camera -- a feature in the HTC One M8 that allowed for fast focusing and fun tricks like variable-focus photos -- or whether it's dropping the design.

Several leaked images appear to show the HTC One M9 with one lonely camera sensor in the back, a rear camera that is almost certainly going to be 20-megapixels (with a 4 "Ultrapixel" front-facer), as reported by Bloomberg.

It would be disappointing to see HTC drop one of the features that made the One unique, but the question of cost versus actual use (or demand) for such a quirky feature must be staring HTC in the face, as it did Amazon with its neat-trick-but-who-actually-cares 3D screen feature for the Fire Phone.

Release Date, Price, and Availability

The release date for the HTC One M9 will likely come around the same time as previous iterations, likely by mid-April 2015 in the U.S. if not before.

Going by the same track record, it's likely to cost around $200 for the basic model on-contract, and AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are all probably going to carry it.

For fans of the HTC One M8 Windows Edition, however, there are some indications that an HTC One M9 running Windows may be available sooner than last year.

Finally, Bloomberg reported that HTC will be launching a smartwatch linked with Under Armour's fitness brand at the same time, so maybe HTC still has some surprises up its sleeves.