HTC One M9 and odds of M8
HTC One M9 is another new smartphone launched in 2015. Under the Taiwanese flagship it is officially priced at £579 making it £20 cheaper than its main rival Samsung Galaxy S6 which arrived on 10th April.
The Design
The HTC One M9 is made from a similar metal block to that of the M8 and uses the same curved shape and hairline finish while using angular features from the HTC One M7 (the original HTC One). New features in the design include a scratch-resistant coating, machine drilled buttons and a sapphire glass lens on the rear camera. The power button is on the side instead of the top and it has a textured finish so you can feel the difference next to the smooth volume buttons. Colour options are similar but HTC has employed a new two-tone look with the back and sides getting contrasting anodizing. Colors have shades of silver and gold; ‘gold on gold’ and ‘gun metal grey on grey’. The device is slightly lighter than its predecessor weighing at 158 g and is marginally thicker.
Specifications
HTC One M9 has a 5 inch screen and the resolution at Full HD (1080 x 1920) with no upgrades. Has 32 GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot capable of accepting up to 128 GB cards. Wireless is strong with 11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX, NFC and an IR blaster. The One M9 also supports 4G LTE networks via the nano-SIM slot if you have the right tariff.
Hardware
Memory has been boosted by 50 percent to 3 GB and there’s a new processor in the form of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 which is both octa-core and 64-bit (quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 and quad-core 2 GHz Cortex-A57). It comes with the Adreno 430 GPU and is the first phone with a Snapdragon 810 processor.
The BoomSound front facing stereo speakers are a key feature and HTC has added support for High-Res 24-bit audio putting the phone on a par with Sony’s top-end smartphones and tablets. It has also added Dolby Audio and the built-in speakers sound amazing offering the best experience you’ll find on a smartphone.
A new audio feature is called HTC Connect and means a simple three finger swipe will send the audio to a connected speaker – a reverse gesture will bring it back.
With BlackFire technology and some more speakers you’ll also be able to have a multi-room setup playing different tunes in different rooms or the same one on everything. Other M9 users will be able to hook into the system and queue their own tracks.
Camera
It has a 20 Mp rear camera with the dual-LED flash. There’s Camera, Selfie and Panorama but you can add more like Bokeh and Split Capture. The M9 does crop to 16:9 by default though, so you’ll need to head into the settings to get all those available pixels.
You can shoot in a regular mode, but quickly switch to others such as HDR, Night and Macro. If you’re feeling a little more adventurous, you can enter manual mode and start fiddling with the white balance, ISO, shutter speed and even focus.
On the video side it can record video in up to 4K resolution and uses a ‘dynamic exposure algorithm’ to mimic the human eye.
Battery
The new HTC One M9 comes with 2840 mAh battery is non-removable which the same is across most flagship smartphones.
Software
The HTC One M9 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop which is the latest version. The M9 introduces Sense 7.0 which means you get HTC’s style including icons and apps but there are also some new features.
HTC largely does things its own way with BlinkFeed to the left of the main home screen, a grid view recent apps menu and a vertically scrolling app menu. The stock dropdown notification bar is in use and you can customise which quick settings you want
The BlinkFeed panel can be removed, you can opt for the stock Lollipop card system for recent apps and you can’t make the app menu scroll horizontal you rearrange around, hide them and adjust the grid size.
There’s a new Themes app where you can download various user interface themes. However, you can edit details yourself such as icon styles and fonts. The software will also generate a theme for you based on a photo which is pretty cool.
Another new feature is called HTC Sense Home it’s not an app but the launcher with HTC now uses. The software is location aware so you can use a different lock- and home screens depending on where you are.
For example, when at work you’ll get icons for your email and calendar and these will automatically get replaced with a remote control app and Facebook when you get home. You can select what you want for each layout but suggestions will be made based on your habits.
Thus HTC One M9 is beautiful, well-crafted and powerful device. Share your experience!