HTC One M9 Review Part 1

The new HTC One M9 is absolutely gorgeous, is the Taiwanese fi rm’s fl agship smartphone for Note: The software on our HTC One M9 review unit is not fi nal so we will be updating this review on 23 March with more details including benchmarks. Until then, this is a hands-on review of the phone. UK release date and price The HTC One M9 will hit the shops on 31 March 2015 and the offi cial price is £579, matching the Samsung Galaxy S6 which will arrive just after on 10 April. Unusually the iPhone 6 is now a cheaper option as it starts at £539, but the entry-level Apple phone has just 16GB of storage. The HTC’s price is acceptable, but more than was the HTC One M8 when it launched at £550.

 With the M9 being a similar phone, as we’ll explain, the older generation looks like a bit of a bargain at the £350 mark saving you more than £200 – it could well drop even further once the M9 goes on sale. It’s similar to the situation with the LG G2 and the LG G3 – if you’re happy to not have the latest handset, there are bargains to be had. If you don’t think you can aff ord the HTC One M9, the fi rm normally off ers a mini version, but there’s no sign of it yet. Don’t worry because HTC didn’t announce them together last year. For now we’ll have to focus on the full-size phone. Design and build As you can see from our photos, HTC hasn’t altered the design of the M9 much compared to the M8 or even the original HTC One.

It’s more a case of design evolution which the company likens to that of the Porsche 911. It might be easy to criticise HTC for having another similar looking smartphone but we can hardly blame it considering how nice the previous two generations are. If you look close enough, there are some changes, though. The M9 is made from a similar metal block to that of the M8 and uses the same curved shape and hairline fi nish while using angular features from the HTC One M7 (the original HTC One). The fi rm tells us the process takes 70 steps to complete. New features in the design include a scratchresistant coating, machine drilled buttons and a sapphire glass lens on the rear camera. The power button is now on the side instead of the top which we think is a much better place for it and it has a textured fi nish so you can feel the diff erence next to the smooth volume buttons. It’s still easy to get confused between them, though and the volume buttons might have been better placed on the left. Motion Gestures mean the power button isn’t needed half as much, though.

Colour options are similar, but HTC has employed a new two-tone look with the back and sides getting contrasting adonisation. Our sample’s rear cover has a silver fi nish, while the sides are gold. If this model doesn’t fl oat your boat then there will also be ‘gold on gold’ and ‘gun metal grey on grey’. All in all the HTC One M9 is a very desirable smartphone when held in the hand – easily one of the most desirable. It fi ts nicely and like the M8, is one of the only phones on the market to compete with the iPhone on build quality. It screams of good craftsmanship, but the stepped design might not be to everyone’s taste – at certain angles it looks like a case. We were hoping for a thinner and lighter design and although HTC tells us the device is slightly lighter than its predecessor we weighed them both at 158g, it’s also marginally thicker at 9.7mm compared to 9.6mm. It’s 10.4mm where the camera slightly sticks out.

 HTC’s original Dot View case was a winner and there’s a new version for the M9. It’s a pretty similar aff air and you can customise what is shown through the tiny holes in the front cover. The big diff erence is a clear back which partly wraps round the side so you can still admire the metal chassis. There’s nothing worse than buying a gorgeously made product then hiding it behind a case. Hardware and specs HTC has decided to stick with a 5in screen for the M9 and has also kept the resolution at full-HD (1080x1920). There’s no upgrade here so it might seem lower grade than Quad-HD devices such as the LG G3 but HTC tells us the higher resolution isn’t needed on a display this size and would mean a sacrifi ce in the battery department. 5in is a solid size, neither too big nor too small, but we can’t help but feel disappointed that HTC has done nothing here to upgrade.

We’ve seen Quad-HD on the LG G3 and now the Samsung Galaxy S6 and it’s simply better. The M9’s screen looks good but the aforementioned rivals look incredible. There are some other things which remain the same too, such as 32GB of internal storage (21GB available) and a microSD card slot capable of accepting up to 128GB cards. There is a 64GB model, but this has not been confi rmed for the UK. Wireless setup remains strong with 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX, NFC and an IR blaster. The One M9 also supports 4G LTE networks via a nano-SIM slot. If you were hoping for any new features like a fi ngerprint scanner or heartrate monitor then it’s bad news. What HTC has done instead is focus on improving existing hardware in the audio and photo departments. While the above remains the same compared to the M8, there are some hardware improvements.

Memory has been boosted by 50 percent to 3GB and there’s a new processor in the form of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 which is both octacore and 64-bit (quad-core 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 and quad-core 2GHz Cortex-A57). It comes with the Adreno 430 GPU and we really can’t fault the performance. It’s really only the camera app which doesn’t open instantly. We’re waiting for the fi nal software before we publish benchmark results. The BoomSound front facing stereo speakers are still a key feature and although HTC hasn’t added support for High-Res 24-bit audio (look to Sony for that), it has added Dolby Audio. A new audio feature is called HTC Connect and means a simple three fi nger swipe will send the audio to a connected speaker – a reverse gesture will bring it back. We tested this out with the Harmon/Kardon One, which will be exclusively bundled with the M9. It worked fi rst time, although with a slight delay.