The One S's use of a PenTile display makes it more energy efficient and thinner than equivalent LCD screens, giving it better battery life than the One X.

In North America, the One S and One X are usually not sold by the same carrier, for instance T-Mobile and Telus offer the One S, while AT&T and Rogers sell the One X.

The reason HTC gave was that since there are two distinct versions of this phone with two different SoCs and since Qualcomm ended support for it, they said it would be expensive to make the update and as to not confuse people, they canceled it.

Three capacitive buttons (back, home, and task switcher) are located on the front of the phone, below the display.

[7] The main camera has an eight megapixel, backside-illuminated sensor, an f/2.0 autofocus lens, and a single LED flash with five brightness levels.

[6] The internal battery is accessible when the phone is opened up by removing top and bottom snap on covers, 6 screws, snap on metal body frame, and small patch of adhesive holding down the battery to the circuit board.

[17] A FAQ was created in November for people questioning Jelly Bean on their HTC Device.

The One S C2 has a mostly stable CM 11 build thanks to bilal_liberty and SultanXDA on XDA with Android 5.0 possibly in the works [20] On July 3, 2013, a petition was created by XDA member DylRicho (although cited as Dylan Richards on the petition page)[21] to campaign against HTC's recent decision to axe the device from further updates.

Furthermore, Richards pointed out that various videos had gone live on YouTube, showing the One S running Android 4.2.2 and HTC Sense 5.0 with "no performance loss from the upgrade."

[36] The updated message includes an email response from an HTC official, whereby they acknowledge the frustrations of One S users, and that the company understands perfectly.

A final decision has not yet been made as to whether the handset will receive updates or not, with HTC urging concerned users to follow its Facebook and Twitter pages for news on the situation.

[37] The HTC J is a Japanese smartphone with many of the same specifications as the One S, but has a larger 1810 mAh battery, microSD slot, and runs on WiMAX.

The One S Special Edition is a variant of the One S available only in Taiwan The scheduled release date for the UK and USA was March 2013.

The Special Edition includes larger internal storage (64 GB, compared to 16 GB previously) and a white body; in all other respects it is identical to the standard Snapdragon S4-powered One S.[39] In the United States, T-Mobile is the exclusive carrier of the HTC One S. In Canada, Videotron Mobile indicated that the HTC One S is "coming soon".