A stunning design with oodles of power inside – but has HTC forgotten about the basics again?
The HTC One M9 is a phone that embodies the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mantra. Taking all the best bits from last year’s all-conquering One M8, HTC clearly reckons what people want is the same thing again… only better. Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, slipping in 3GB of RAM, tossing away the misunderstood Ultrapixel camera and even raising the size of the battery to boot. On paper at least, this is a phone with the power to rule the world again.
Weight and Upgrades
The weight is comfortable, despite being nearly 25% weightier than an iPhone 6, and sits in the palm very well. HTC reckons this is a lovely fusion of the One M7 and M8, and you can see the design language from both seeping in throughout the phone. However, it seems that HTC’s gone big on the design, and not that much else. The raising of the camera to 20.7MP sounds like a great idea, and has improved the snapping prowess, but is distinctly middle of the road when it comes to the output. The BoomSound speakers have had an overhaul as well, now imbued with a boatload of Dolby smarts to give you a virtual surround sound experience when chopping onions for cooking.
Best Bits
The camera is where HTC has plugged in the biggest upgrade, ditching the 4MP Ultrapixel sensor as it simply couldn’t convince the phone buying public that fewer pixels was a good thing, despite the fact you could finally take a good picture when the sun went down.
At 20.7MP, it’s gone too far though; while the pictures look sharp and clean, they’re a lot darker and have a narrower field of view – meaning you get less of the picture in per snap. HTC is one of the few brands to let you have full manual control over your photos though, so if you’re annoyed at the white balance or exposure it’s a few simple tweaks to get your perfect picture.
Camera fans will be pleased to hear that the One M9 can even shoot in RAW, so you’ll be able to pull those photos onto the PC to get a really clear run at editing (useful if the high price of the One M9 has prevented you from forking out for a proper DSLR). The phone can shoot in 4K and record the usual slow motion movies as well – however, these seem like more of an afterthought and don’t really add a huge amount to the mix.
We’re still waiting for a company to explain why we need Ultra HD recording on phones, but it seems something the likes of HTC are unable to resist. Something we’ve always been slightly narked with HTC about is battery life – the company keeps making the power packs bigger but was always unable to make its phones last through the day.
With the One M8 it finally reversed that trend, getting well into the second 24 hours before needing a charge – so when we found the One M9 has seemingly gone backwards in battery life, we were a little confused.
However, given it’s got one of the most advanced processors on the market, a battery that’s almost as big as the iPhone 6 Plus and a company that’s been at this smartphone game for a couple of decades, we simply expected better.