The past few years have been difficult for HTC. Executives have
departed amid weak financials, and outside of their flagship offerings,
the company has struggled to sell their smartphones up against strong
Asian competition. Last year, HTC turned to lifestyle products to drive
up their revenue, but the only product released so far, the Re action camera, perhaps wasn’t as good as they were hoping.
Nevertheless 2015 is shaping up to be a positive year for HTC. One of the coolest products announced in the year so far, the Vive virtual reality headset was developed by HTC in partnership with Valve, and I’m seriously excited for its release towards the end of the year.
As expected, the company has also launched a refined version of their well-regarded flagship Android smartphone. The One M9 could be the winner the company needs.
If you confuse the brand new HTC One M9 for last year’s M8, you’re not alone: the metal unibody design of the M9 is remarkably similar to what we saw in the previous generation. Many of the device’s features will also seem familiar, including the 5.0-inch 1080p Super LCD 3 display, BoomSound speaker array, and heavily-customized Android software.
The areas that have been improved are less obvious than in previous updates. The biggest one concerns the camera, with HTC deciding to relegate the mediocre Ultrapixel camera, seen on the back of the M8, to the front of the M9. The Duo Camera has also been removed, replaced by a 20-megapixel shooter that hopefully addresses the one major issue with the last-gen One. Internally, HTC is packing the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, which should be a decent performance boost with the added bonus of 64-bit support.
However, the competition hasn’t stayed stagnant. In particular, the past six months have seen better displays, longer battery life, improved cameras, as well as a greater focus on design. HTC will need to have pulled out all the stops to deliver a compelling smartphone at the start of 2015.
Luckily, I can start off this review by talking about one aspect of the HTC One M9 that I love: the design. HTC continues to absolutely nail the all-metal smartphone body, and that’s no exception with this new smartphone.
HTC began producing metal smartphones with the beautiful HTC One, which featured a matte metal back and polycarbonate edges, although the device itself wasn’t the most ergonomic. The company addressed this concern with the shiny HTC One M8, adding more metal to the body and curving it to perfection. Unfortunately it could be a bit slippery, and the power button wasn't ideally positioned.
The One M9 is the most refined metal body HTC has produced to date, with each shell taking 300 minutes to machine from raw materials. The metal shell no longer warps fully around the sides; instead, the body is noticeably split into two parts. The first part is the curved back shell, which somewhat folds around the sides and includes all the ports and buttons. The second is the piece that includes the display, which appears to sit into the back shell in a design that’s less seamless than we saw in the M8.
While I prefer the look of the M8’s seamless body, the choice to engineer a seam into the body actually reduces the slipperiness significantly. Combined with increased sharpness to the edges, the M9 is very easy to grip: great news for the frequent phone droppers out there. I wouldn’t say it feels as nice to hold as the M8, though it’s certainly a really solid, tough, and well-built handset.
HTC has also updated the metal body’s finish. The company is very proud of the two-tone design, which sees the shiny back panel given a lightly brushed finish, while the edges have a “mirrored” (aka. cleanly polished) finish. The front panel is also different, using matte metal reminiscent of the original One, combined with Gorilla Glass to protect the display.
The two-toned design also refers to the color of the metal. The One M9 is the first smartphone to feature a single piece of metal with two distinct colors: silver for the back section, and gold around the edges. Although the gold is more of a copper color in my review unit, this combination of complementary colors looks fantastic. Factoring in the premium finish HTC has applied to the metal, and the One M9 is one of the most attractive smartphones I’ve ever used.
For people who’d rather have a single-color smartphone, HTC offers an entirely gold model, and an entirely gunmetal grey model which should be familiar to those with a grey M8. It’s surprising that HTC has only released one two-tone M9 considering how attractive it looks, and it’s equally surprising there’s no all-silver model.
Perhaps the most relevant functional change HTC has introduced to the One design is the power button location. The top-edge button has finally been removed in favour of a perfectly-positioned right-side button, positioned below two distinct volume buttons. All three buttons are solid, clicky and responsive, though they don’t travel very far.
The top edge still includes a long strip of black plastic, which conceals the infrared LED that can be used to control TVs and other home theatre equipment. On the opposite edge is where you’ll find the microUSB charging port and 3.5mm audio jack. The only other features around the edges are the microSD card slot (a must-have for many) on the right side above the volume rocker, and the nano-SIM slot on the left.
Like with the HTC One M7 and M8, there are two polycarbonate strips that break up the solid metal back panel, and this is to ensure functional wireless connectivity. The regulatory logos at the bottom of the panel disrupt the otherwise minimalist panel, though this is hardly a significant concern.
On the front of the M9, HTC’s signature BoomSound speaker array is seen above and below the 5.0-inch display. HTC’s use of dual front-facing speakers is still the best speaker implementation we’ve seen on a smartphone, and the M9’s iteration is loud, powerful and reasonable quality considering the small drivers. Hidden in the top speaker grill is an usual notification LED.
Unfortunately HTC still hasn’t managed to decrease the overall size of the One through slimming down the top and bottom bezels. The large black strip that only features the HTC logo is still there on the One M9, and I’d really like to see this removed entirely to reduce the height of the handset. The width is fine, so the M9 is easy to hold, but reducing the height would make the phone feel more compact.
As it stands, the HTC One M9 display clocks in at 441 pixels per inch, a very respectable pixel density for a flagship device. As I’ve said countless times before, 1080p panels of this size look extremely crisp, displaying great detail in imagery and native-res videos, and delivering sharp text that’s easily readable even with thin fonts.
The Super LCD 3 display HTC has used in the One M9 seems largely unchanged from the M8 in terms of quality. I wouldn’t say this is the best looking display I’ve seen in a current-gen flagship – the latest panels used in Apple, Samsung and Sony smartphones are superb – but it’s still right up there. Color saturation seems great, and although contrast isn’t as high as the best LCDs or AMOLEDs out there, photos and apps can still look pretty darn good.
Accuracy from this panel seems a little iffy, with color banding affecting blues and reds in some areas of the spectrum. I’d like to see HTC focus a little more on display accuracy, or provide users with a way to adjust the color profile of the display. On the positive side, white balance is great, with no noticeable tone to either end of the temperature spectrum, while black levels are reasonably good.
Despite some issues on the accuracy side, the One M9 display is one of the easiest panels to view outdoors. Thanks to high peak brightness and a good combination of polarization filters, I really had no problems viewing the display in any conditions. Even at night, the brightness can ramp right down to very low levels, which prevents your retinas from getting burned out. One downside to the increased sunlight viewability is a small amount of contrast shift at acute viewing angles, although as this is an IPS display, viewing angles in general are still good.
Like with the One M8, you can turn on the display and unlock the device by simply swiping up on the touchscreen, provided you don’t have any lockscreen security enabled. However HTC has disabled the other two unlock methods (swipe right/left to unlock to apps/BlinkFeed) by default, which you can re-enable in the display settings. I never found the two secondary swipe-to-unlock features to be all that useful, although the unlock-to-camera feature can be handy if you’re a frequent camera user.
The touchscreen itself is extremely responsive, which is great for gaming and keyboard usage. HTC has also implemented a glove mode, which like similar modes on competing smartphones, increases the sensitivity of the touchscreen so you can use it through cloth. However I’d recommend only turning it on when necessary, as it increases the power usage of the display, in turn reducing battery life.
Like with the M8, the M9 uses on-screen navigation buttons instead of dedicated capacitive buttons, reducing the screen real estate in most applications to around 4.7 inches. For the first time, HTC is allowing you to modify the order and number of navigation buttons, similar to what LG has provided since the LG G2. You’ll need to keep the standard buttons – Back, Home and Recent Apps – though you can re-order these and add in a fourth button if you so choose. Other buttons can pull down the notification pane or quick settings pane, hide the navigation bar entirely, turn off the display, or enable/disable auto rotation.
Most of the features that are found in Android 5.0 are seen in the HTC One M9 with its Sense skin. The card-based interface for notifications both in the drop-down pane and on the lockscreen is essentially untouched, which is great to see. The improved quick settings panel is also found in the One M9’s software, although it’s only a minor upgrade over what HTC used in past versions of Sense.
HTC has blended parts of Material Design into their latest Sense interface, although it’s still mostly based on the style that they established in the past two Sense iterations. While this heavy skin does modify most of the Android UI, the design flavour HTC has adopted integrates reasonably well with Google’s design. It doesn’t quite deliver a perfectly seamless transition between HTC and Google apps, and the Material Design looks and feels more modern, but I actually don’t mind the Android 5.0 version of Sense.
Sense 7.0 also retains a number of features HTC introduced with either the original One or the One M8. BlinkFeed is still located in a panel to the left of the homescreens, delivering the latest news based on feeds that you select. I like having a selection of news from various sources right on my homescreen for browsing and reading throughout the day, but I can understand why you wouldn’t, so I’m glad HTC allows you to disable the panel. As far as I can tell, BlinkFeed has remained virtually unchanged from Sense 6.0.
Most of the standard included applications will seem very familiar to those who have used the past two Ones. Many of these apps are colourful, easy to use and functional, though I haven’t see any introduce new or innovative features. Nearly everything HTC has included in previous versions can still be found in Sense 7.0, such as the automatic slideshow creator in the Gallery app, and the awesome visualizer in the Music app to go hand in hand with BoomSound.
New to the HTC One M9 is a somewhat useful widget called Sense Home, which uses geolocation to detect when you’re at home, work, or out and about. In each of these locations, Sense Home will present a range of applications selected from what you’ve been using in these locations, and what HTC thinks you might need. For example, when you’re out and about, Sense Home will suggest Maps and Music, while at home it’ll suggest YouTube and the Play Store.
Sense Home is pretty effective in selecting applications for you, especially as it includes apps you frequently use. However, if you’re like me and constantly checking Twitter no matter where you are, it can end up just suggesting Twitter in every location.
The Gallery app has also received new functionality thanks to a service called Cloudex, which pulls your photos from cloud services and puts them in the Gallery. This isn’t a new feature for smartphones in general, but HTC’s setup utility in the form of a dedicated app makes the whole integration process very easy. Cloudex currently supports Google Photos, Facebook, Flickr and Dropbox, though unfortunately there’s no OneDrive support.
Another aspect of Sense 7.0 worth highlighting is HTC’s new theming feature, found within the personalization section of the settings. In what is the most complete smartphone theming utility baked in to a phone OS, HTC allows you to choose from a range of themes that completely change the colors used in stock applications, app icons, wallpapers and more. There’s a few included by default, and you can also download more through a theme store.
But the best part of this theming feature is that it can create an entire theme from just a wallpaper. By analysing the image, it picks out colors to use through the rest of the OS, creating a matching and coherent experience. It’s definitely worth giving a try if you like having everything matching across your OS.
HTC hasn’t significantly changed the keyboard: it remains the same, large-keyed version with average usability. I’d like to see the company improve the prediction engine in their stock keyboard, because sometimes it produces some real shockers, but it’s otherwise alright.
The Snapdragon 810 is the first high-end SoC from Qualcomm in several years to use ARM designed CPU cores, rather than custom in-house cores from their Krait line. This is because Qualcomm was keen to get in on the 64-bit action, and although they hold an ARMv8 license that allows them to produce custom 64-bit ARM cores, their designs weren’t quite ready for release in time for the Snapdragon 810 moving to a sampling phase.
As such, the Snapdragon 810 features a CPU design similar to other high-end ARMv8 SoCs: 4+4 big.LITTLE, featuring four ARM Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 1.96 GHz, and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.56 GHz. Thanks to Global Task Scheduling, the Snapdragon 810 can act as a true eight-core processor, with a CCI-400 interconnect providing cache coherency between the two clusters of cores.
If you’re not familiar with ARM big.LITTLE designs, the smaller cores (in this case the A53s) are included for low-power, high-efficiency tasks. When more power is required for high-performance tasks, the second cluster of cores (the A57s) will either be exclusively used, or used in tandem with the A53s, depending on how multi-threaded the task is. While the A57s are faster than the A53s clock for clock – and in the case of the Snapdragon 810, clocked higher as well – they use significantly more energy, making them less suitable for low-performance tasks.
This is a completely different design to what Qualcomm has used in the past. In the Snapdragon 805, the previous-gen flagship, Qualcomm opted for a straight quad-core CPU cluster from their in-house ARMv7 Krait 450 line, clocked at 2.65 GHz. Although the clock speeds across the cores in the Snapdragon 810 are lower, the performance overall should be higher thanks to greater performance per clock in the latest ARMv8 designs, and the inclusion of more cores.
We can expect to see Qualcomm’s in-house ARMv8 design, Kyro, in the upcoming Snapdragon 820.
The GPU in the Snapdragon 810 is the usual custom Adreno design from Qualcomm, this time the Adreno 430. As usual, Qualcomm hasn’t released many details on the Adreno 430, although they claim a performance improvement of 30% over the Adreno 420 in shader-heavy workloads. Clock speeds should be the same as the previous GPU, at 600 MHz.
Qualcomm has also upgraded the DSP to a Hexagon V56 at 800 MHz, which is used for low power tasks such as sensor management and audio decoding. The Snapdragon 810 comes with 4K HEVC/H.265 encoding and decoding support for the first time, as well as an upgraded dual ISP setup supporting 1.2 GP/s of bandwidth.
Memory support is listed as dual-channel 32-bit LPDDR4-1600, providing 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth. Although this is the same bandwidth memory as the Snapdragon 805, the move to LPDDR4 brings a 20% reduction in power. The One M9 comes with 3 GB of RAM to go with 32 GB of internal storage, of which around 21 GB is usable out of the box. There’s also microSDHC card support in case you feel 32 GB of storage is a little tight on a modern flagship.
The Snapdragon 810 supports LTE Category 9 with Carrier Aggregation, which is overkill for today’s mobile networks, but does support up to 450 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps up. There’s also the usual array of other connectivity features, including dual-band (2.4 and 5.0 GHz) Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, and A-GPS+GLONASS. The Snapdragon 810 can support Wi-Fi 802.11ad, though it’s not enabled in the One M9 as it requires extra chips; however the M9 does come with NFC and infrared.
As for LTE support, there is one variant of the One M9 (that I know of), which supports FDD bands 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20 and 28, as well as TDD bands 38, 40 and 41. Combined with HSPA+ support on the 850, 900, 1900 and 2100 MHz, this variant supports most networks across Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific, with limited support for the Americas. I suspect a second variant will be produced to cover this region.
There’s a couple of things to note here before I dig into the numbers in the benchmarks above. Firstly, results seemed to fluctuate more than normal while running our set of browser benchmarks in Chrome. I’m not sure why this is, but it didn’t seem to be related to temperature throttling or the SoC itself, as the Snapdragon 810-powered G Flex 2 I also have on hand didn’t exhibit the issue. Due to the fluctuating results, the in-browser benchmark numbers for the One M9 are an average of ten runs.
Secondly, I actually achieved greater system and CPU performance on average benchmarking the G Flex 2, despite both phones having the same SoC with the same clock speeds. I suspect this is due each company using a different performance governor in the OS, but it’s something I’ll explore further in my imminent review of the G Flex 2.
Anyway, the One M9’s implementation of the Snapdragon 810 either outperforms or matches the Samsung Exynos 5433 we saw in the Galaxy Note 4. As a refresher, the Exynos 5433 features the very same big.LITTLE octa-core as the Snapdragon 810, but clocked slightly lower on both core clusters. It’s not surprising to see the One M9 outperforming the Exynos Note 4 by a small margin, around 7% on average, which is slightly lower than the average difference in CPU clock speeds (15%).
As the Exynos 5433 outperforms the Snapdragon 805 in CPU-heavy tasks by 7%, it’s not surprising to see the Snapdragon 810 also outperform the Snapdragon 805, in all but Basemark OS II 2.0. The average margin comparing these two Qualcomm SoCs is 12% in favour of the Snapdragon 810. Compared to the One M8, the One M9 is 26% faster in CPU-bound tasks, which is a respectable gain on silicon released only a year ago.
So with the One M9, HTC has completely changed tune. The OmniVision OV4688 “Ultrapixel” 1/3” sensor has been relegated to the front selfie camera, and it still packs the very same 4-megapixel resolution, 2.0 micron pixels, and f/2.0 27mm lens. Like with the M8, this camera isn’t optically stabilized, but its large pixel size will help with selfies in all conditions.
The rear camera is a brand new CMOS sensor from Toshiba, the T4KA7, which is a 1/2.4” 20-megapixel sensor with 1.12-micron pixels. HTC has paired the sensor with an f/2.2 28mm lens, and again there’s no OIS, so this camera isn’t well suited to low light photography from a spec sheet perspective. However, unlike with the previous Ultrapixel setup, this camera is finally capable of 4K video recording.
Before I take a look at the quality of this camera, it’s important to note that HTC rolled out a major operating system update a couple of days before this review went live. The update, version 1.32.710.14, delivered widespread camera processing upgrades, and all the photos you’ll see below were captured after I installed this update. You might have seen some camera samples around the web that were taken before this update, and they are noticeably worse than what is delivered in final, retail models.
So how good is the camera? Well, it’s a definite improvement over the One M8 camera from a number of standpoints. However, HTC still hasn’t quite nailed it, leaving the One M9 camera behind the best of the best in the flagship space.
The most obvious upgrade comes in terms of resolution. The One M9 camera has five times the pixels of the One M8, which makes photos much sharper when downscaling to standard resolutions like 1080p or 1440p. There’s also more room for cropping, and now that the camera is larger than 8-megapixels, it can shoot 4K video as well. The lens and post processing algorithms can make images look soft, though this is only really noticeable when viewing full resolution crops.
Quality on the whole has also improved, especially in good conditions. The One M9 has fantastic camera metering, almost always nailing white balance and color tone, regardless of the conditions. This leads to generally great accuracy, although saturation isn’t as good as what you get from the best smartphone cameras. In that sense, the One M9 delivers results similar in quality to the Xperia Z3: not always wowing with vibrant colors, but capable of a great shot from time to time.
The Toshiba sensor in the One M9 is slightly behind the Exmor RS sensor in the Xperia Z3 when it comes to contrast and, to a less extent, dynamic range. This leads to some images that look lightly washed out, especially wide shots on sunny days, while shadows are occasionally a minor concern. These problems are less noticeable when using the great HDR mode, which could only be improved if it implemented real-time HDR technology.
The two main issues with the One M8 camera – indoor performance, and cloudy day shots – have been addressed with the One M9. While the M9 doesn’t produce the best images in these conditions, and I feel OIS would help in improving the quality of these shots, it’s a definite upgrade on previous HTC smartphones. Again, color accuracy and white balance tends to be great here, though I’d like a higher level of saturation.
Low light performance is interesting, as it’s the one area where the One M9 camera is a definite downgrade on the M8. This isn’t surprising, as the Ultrapixel camera was well suited to night time photos. The One M9’s camera is very susceptible to grain and processing artefacts in low light, which is a product of HTC opting for fast shutter speeds to keep images sharp, while color quality is similar to other conditions. Night mode improves the situation somewhat, as it slows down the shutter to let in more light, although this can introduce blur.
Thanks to the relocation of the 4-megapixel Ultrapixel camera to the front, the selfie camera on the HTC One M9 is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s not as good as the rear camera during the day or in mild indoor conditions, but at night, the 2.0-micron pixels in the selfie cam see it destroy the rear camera (and most other selfie cameras) in terms of picture quality.
Selfies taken on the One M9 are typically bright, reasonably detailed and sharp thanks to the sensor that is geared towards better low light performance. If you like to take selfies while out at a bar or inside a nightclub, the One M9 is the smartphone for you.
The HTC One M9’s camera application is very easy to use, although it does default to a 16:9 aspect ratio; switching to 10:7 allows you to use the full area of the sensor. The app uses hybrid spot metering, which has been significantly improved upon since the last HTC flagship, resisting the urge to blow out exposure when focusing on particularly light or dark areas. It’s very effective, and combined with a fast capture speed, taking photos is a breeze. One area that isn’t as strong is focus speed, though it is very accurate.
Alongside the main shooting mode, HTC gives you a panorama mode; split capture mode, which allows you to take photos using both the front and back cameras simultaneously; and photo booth, which captures four images in a grid. The final feature, bokeh mode, attempts to replicate the M8’s Duo Camera by simulating bokeh through the capture of multiple images at different focus points. It works reasonably well, though not as well as the Duo Camera did.
HTC has once again included a manual shooting mode, which can be found in the standard camera mode next to HDR. In this mode, you can manually set the ISO, white balance, shutter speed, exposure and focus, giving you great control over how images appear. This can be an especially useful mode if you are shooting using a tripod and at night.
All post processing features, including filters, have moved into the gallery, rather than having a special mode in the camera app that applies them to the camera output live. The filters aren’t too exciting, however the new FX Photo Editor certainly is. In this app, you can apply a whole range of cool effects to photos, including double exposure, interesting prismatic and shape effects, face fusion and more. Some of these were first seen in the One M8’s gallery, but many of them are new and definitely worth playing with.
As for video recording, the front camera can capture at 1080p, while the rear can do up to 2160p30 (Ultra HD) for the first time. When capturing 4K video, you’re limited to six minutes of footage with a bitrate of 42 Mbps, with an added two channels of 64 kbps audio, which actually sounds crisp and clear. Without OIS, videos captured by the M9 can be very shaky, although actual quality is respectable and the camera does a great job of metering and focusing quickly.
The One M9 can also record “Fast FullHD”, aka 1080p60, at 21 Mbps, although frame rates in this video mode can go as low as 40 FPS if lighting isn’t good enough. Slow motion video is also possible with the One M9, capturing 720p120 footage at 11.5 Mbps and playing it back at 30 FPS for motion four times slower than real life. In dark conditions, the M9 captures 720p100 and sets playback to 25 FPS. All videos are recorded using H.264 with a Baseline profile.
The Snapdragon 810 is the first SoC from Qualcomm to be produced on a 20nm HPm node, which is a more efficient node than 28nm, used for the company’s previous flagship chips. The increased performance of the 810 will negate some of the gains from the node shift, though we should still see lower power consumption in low intensity tasks including standby, as well as when using non-performance SoC blocks such as the media codec and wireless radios.
The specifications suggest that the battery life of the One M9 should be similar to that of the One M8, and in my day to day usage this seemed to be true. Battery life was good without being astonishing: on one particularly intensive day, using the phone reasonably frequently on LTE networks, it lasted until I got home in the late evening with a small percentage of charge remaining. The best phones out there would leave me with a bit more headroom, though I never felt the One M9 had inadequate battery life.
Nevertheless 2015 is shaping up to be a positive year for HTC. One of the coolest products announced in the year so far, the Vive virtual reality headset was developed by HTC in partnership with Valve, and I’m seriously excited for its release towards the end of the year.
As expected, the company has also launched a refined version of their well-regarded flagship Android smartphone. The One M9 could be the winner the company needs.
If you confuse the brand new HTC One M9 for last year’s M8, you’re not alone: the metal unibody design of the M9 is remarkably similar to what we saw in the previous generation. Many of the device’s features will also seem familiar, including the 5.0-inch 1080p Super LCD 3 display, BoomSound speaker array, and heavily-customized Android software.
The areas that have been improved are less obvious than in previous updates. The biggest one concerns the camera, with HTC deciding to relegate the mediocre Ultrapixel camera, seen on the back of the M8, to the front of the M9. The Duo Camera has also been removed, replaced by a 20-megapixel shooter that hopefully addresses the one major issue with the last-gen One. Internally, HTC is packing the latest and greatest Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, which should be a decent performance boost with the added bonus of 64-bit support.
However, the competition hasn’t stayed stagnant. In particular, the past six months have seen better displays, longer battery life, improved cameras, as well as a greater focus on design. HTC will need to have pulled out all the stops to deliver a compelling smartphone at the start of 2015.
Luckily, I can start off this review by talking about one aspect of the HTC One M9 that I love: the design. HTC continues to absolutely nail the all-metal smartphone body, and that’s no exception with this new smartphone.
HTC began producing metal smartphones with the beautiful HTC One, which featured a matte metal back and polycarbonate edges, although the device itself wasn’t the most ergonomic. The company addressed this concern with the shiny HTC One M8, adding more metal to the body and curving it to perfection. Unfortunately it could be a bit slippery, and the power button wasn't ideally positioned.
The One M9 is the most refined metal body HTC has produced to date, with each shell taking 300 minutes to machine from raw materials. The metal shell no longer warps fully around the sides; instead, the body is noticeably split into two parts. The first part is the curved back shell, which somewhat folds around the sides and includes all the ports and buttons. The second is the piece that includes the display, which appears to sit into the back shell in a design that’s less seamless than we saw in the M8.
While I prefer the look of the M8’s seamless body, the choice to engineer a seam into the body actually reduces the slipperiness significantly. Combined with increased sharpness to the edges, the M9 is very easy to grip: great news for the frequent phone droppers out there. I wouldn’t say it feels as nice to hold as the M8, though it’s certainly a really solid, tough, and well-built handset.
HTC has also updated the metal body’s finish. The company is very proud of the two-tone design, which sees the shiny back panel given a lightly brushed finish, while the edges have a “mirrored” (aka. cleanly polished) finish. The front panel is also different, using matte metal reminiscent of the original One, combined with Gorilla Glass to protect the display.
The two-toned design also refers to the color of the metal. The One M9 is the first smartphone to feature a single piece of metal with two distinct colors: silver for the back section, and gold around the edges. Although the gold is more of a copper color in my review unit, this combination of complementary colors looks fantastic. Factoring in the premium finish HTC has applied to the metal, and the One M9 is one of the most attractive smartphones I’ve ever used.
For people who’d rather have a single-color smartphone, HTC offers an entirely gold model, and an entirely gunmetal grey model which should be familiar to those with a grey M8. It’s surprising that HTC has only released one two-tone M9 considering how attractive it looks, and it’s equally surprising there’s no all-silver model.
Perhaps the most relevant functional change HTC has introduced to the One design is the power button location. The top-edge button has finally been removed in favour of a perfectly-positioned right-side button, positioned below two distinct volume buttons. All three buttons are solid, clicky and responsive, though they don’t travel very far.
The top edge still includes a long strip of black plastic, which conceals the infrared LED that can be used to control TVs and other home theatre equipment. On the opposite edge is where you’ll find the microUSB charging port and 3.5mm audio jack. The only other features around the edges are the microSD card slot (a must-have for many) on the right side above the volume rocker, and the nano-SIM slot on the left.
Like with the HTC One M7 and M8, there are two polycarbonate strips that break up the solid metal back panel, and this is to ensure functional wireless connectivity. The regulatory logos at the bottom of the panel disrupt the otherwise minimalist panel, though this is hardly a significant concern.
On the front of the M9, HTC’s signature BoomSound speaker array is seen above and below the 5.0-inch display. HTC’s use of dual front-facing speakers is still the best speaker implementation we’ve seen on a smartphone, and the M9’s iteration is loud, powerful and reasonable quality considering the small drivers. Hidden in the top speaker grill is an usual notification LED.
Unfortunately HTC still hasn’t managed to decrease the overall size of the One through slimming down the top and bottom bezels. The large black strip that only features the HTC logo is still there on the One M9, and I’d really like to see this removed entirely to reduce the height of the handset. The width is fine, so the M9 is easy to hold, but reducing the height would make the phone feel more compact.
Display
The HTC One M9 brings no surprises to the table in terms of its display. From a spec sheet perspective, the panel used in the M9 is identical to the one used in the M8: a 5.0-inch TFT IPS LCD “Super LCD 3” display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Despite the inclusion of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 810 SoC, HTC has resisted the urge to upgrade the display resolution to 1440p, which has a minimal effect on overall picture quality.As it stands, the HTC One M9 display clocks in at 441 pixels per inch, a very respectable pixel density for a flagship device. As I’ve said countless times before, 1080p panels of this size look extremely crisp, displaying great detail in imagery and native-res videos, and delivering sharp text that’s easily readable even with thin fonts.
The Super LCD 3 display HTC has used in the One M9 seems largely unchanged from the M8 in terms of quality. I wouldn’t say this is the best looking display I’ve seen in a current-gen flagship – the latest panels used in Apple, Samsung and Sony smartphones are superb – but it’s still right up there. Color saturation seems great, and although contrast isn’t as high as the best LCDs or AMOLEDs out there, photos and apps can still look pretty darn good.
Accuracy from this panel seems a little iffy, with color banding affecting blues and reds in some areas of the spectrum. I’d like to see HTC focus a little more on display accuracy, or provide users with a way to adjust the color profile of the display. On the positive side, white balance is great, with no noticeable tone to either end of the temperature spectrum, while black levels are reasonably good.
Despite some issues on the accuracy side, the One M9 display is one of the easiest panels to view outdoors. Thanks to high peak brightness and a good combination of polarization filters, I really had no problems viewing the display in any conditions. Even at night, the brightness can ramp right down to very low levels, which prevents your retinas from getting burned out. One downside to the increased sunlight viewability is a small amount of contrast shift at acute viewing angles, although as this is an IPS display, viewing angles in general are still good.
Like with the One M8, you can turn on the display and unlock the device by simply swiping up on the touchscreen, provided you don’t have any lockscreen security enabled. However HTC has disabled the other two unlock methods (swipe right/left to unlock to apps/BlinkFeed) by default, which you can re-enable in the display settings. I never found the two secondary swipe-to-unlock features to be all that useful, although the unlock-to-camera feature can be handy if you’re a frequent camera user.
The touchscreen itself is extremely responsive, which is great for gaming and keyboard usage. HTC has also implemented a glove mode, which like similar modes on competing smartphones, increases the sensitivity of the touchscreen so you can use it through cloth. However I’d recommend only turning it on when necessary, as it increases the power usage of the display, in turn reducing battery life.
Like with the M8, the M9 uses on-screen navigation buttons instead of dedicated capacitive buttons, reducing the screen real estate in most applications to around 4.7 inches. For the first time, HTC is allowing you to modify the order and number of navigation buttons, similar to what LG has provided since the LG G2. You’ll need to keep the standard buttons – Back, Home and Recent Apps – though you can re-order these and add in a fourth button if you so choose. Other buttons can pull down the notification pane or quick settings pane, hide the navigation bar entirely, turn off the display, or enable/disable auto rotation.
Software: Android 5.0 + Sense 7.0
Now that we’re nearly five months out from the launch of Android 5.0, we’re starting to see some phones launch with the operating system installed out of the box. The HTC One M9 is loaded with Android 5.0.2 and Sense 7.0 from the word go, so it’s not quite running the latest version of Android (Android 5.1), but at least we’re getting many of the major improvements Google shipped with Lollipop.Most of the features that are found in Android 5.0 are seen in the HTC One M9 with its Sense skin. The card-based interface for notifications both in the drop-down pane and on the lockscreen is essentially untouched, which is great to see. The improved quick settings panel is also found in the One M9’s software, although it’s only a minor upgrade over what HTC used in past versions of Sense.
HTC has blended parts of Material Design into their latest Sense interface, although it’s still mostly based on the style that they established in the past two Sense iterations. While this heavy skin does modify most of the Android UI, the design flavour HTC has adopted integrates reasonably well with Google’s design. It doesn’t quite deliver a perfectly seamless transition between HTC and Google apps, and the Material Design looks and feels more modern, but I actually don’t mind the Android 5.0 version of Sense.
Sense 7.0 also retains a number of features HTC introduced with either the original One or the One M8. BlinkFeed is still located in a panel to the left of the homescreens, delivering the latest news based on feeds that you select. I like having a selection of news from various sources right on my homescreen for browsing and reading throughout the day, but I can understand why you wouldn’t, so I’m glad HTC allows you to disable the panel. As far as I can tell, BlinkFeed has remained virtually unchanged from Sense 6.0.
Most of the standard included applications will seem very familiar to those who have used the past two Ones. Many of these apps are colourful, easy to use and functional, though I haven’t see any introduce new or innovative features. Nearly everything HTC has included in previous versions can still be found in Sense 7.0, such as the automatic slideshow creator in the Gallery app, and the awesome visualizer in the Music app to go hand in hand with BoomSound.
New to the HTC One M9 is a somewhat useful widget called Sense Home, which uses geolocation to detect when you’re at home, work, or out and about. In each of these locations, Sense Home will present a range of applications selected from what you’ve been using in these locations, and what HTC thinks you might need. For example, when you’re out and about, Sense Home will suggest Maps and Music, while at home it’ll suggest YouTube and the Play Store.
Sense Home is pretty effective in selecting applications for you, especially as it includes apps you frequently use. However, if you’re like me and constantly checking Twitter no matter where you are, it can end up just suggesting Twitter in every location.
The Gallery app has also received new functionality thanks to a service called Cloudex, which pulls your photos from cloud services and puts them in the Gallery. This isn’t a new feature for smartphones in general, but HTC’s setup utility in the form of a dedicated app makes the whole integration process very easy. Cloudex currently supports Google Photos, Facebook, Flickr and Dropbox, though unfortunately there’s no OneDrive support.
Another aspect of Sense 7.0 worth highlighting is HTC’s new theming feature, found within the personalization section of the settings. In what is the most complete smartphone theming utility baked in to a phone OS, HTC allows you to choose from a range of themes that completely change the colors used in stock applications, app icons, wallpapers and more. There’s a few included by default, and you can also download more through a theme store.
But the best part of this theming feature is that it can create an entire theme from just a wallpaper. By analysing the image, it picks out colors to use through the rest of the OS, creating a matching and coherent experience. It’s definitely worth giving a try if you like having everything matching across your OS.
HTC hasn’t significantly changed the keyboard: it remains the same, large-keyed version with average usability. I’d like to see the company improve the prediction engine in their stock keyboard, because sometimes it produces some real shockers, but it’s otherwise alright.
Hardware Overview: Meet the Snapdragon 810
The main new piece of hardware we’re seeing in the One M9 is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 SoC, which is currently their highest-end chip on the market. There were a few mumblings before the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 that suggested the Snapdragon 810 is a hot SoC, causing thermal issues for Samsung’s latest design, although it hasn’t seemed to phase HTC with its metal-bodied flagship.The Snapdragon 810 is the first high-end SoC from Qualcomm in several years to use ARM designed CPU cores, rather than custom in-house cores from their Krait line. This is because Qualcomm was keen to get in on the 64-bit action, and although they hold an ARMv8 license that allows them to produce custom 64-bit ARM cores, their designs weren’t quite ready for release in time for the Snapdragon 810 moving to a sampling phase.
As such, the Snapdragon 810 features a CPU design similar to other high-end ARMv8 SoCs: 4+4 big.LITTLE, featuring four ARM Cortex-A57 cores clocked at 1.96 GHz, and four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.56 GHz. Thanks to Global Task Scheduling, the Snapdragon 810 can act as a true eight-core processor, with a CCI-400 interconnect providing cache coherency between the two clusters of cores.
If you’re not familiar with ARM big.LITTLE designs, the smaller cores (in this case the A53s) are included for low-power, high-efficiency tasks. When more power is required for high-performance tasks, the second cluster of cores (the A57s) will either be exclusively used, or used in tandem with the A53s, depending on how multi-threaded the task is. While the A57s are faster than the A53s clock for clock – and in the case of the Snapdragon 810, clocked higher as well – they use significantly more energy, making them less suitable for low-performance tasks.
This is a completely different design to what Qualcomm has used in the past. In the Snapdragon 805, the previous-gen flagship, Qualcomm opted for a straight quad-core CPU cluster from their in-house ARMv7 Krait 450 line, clocked at 2.65 GHz. Although the clock speeds across the cores in the Snapdragon 810 are lower, the performance overall should be higher thanks to greater performance per clock in the latest ARMv8 designs, and the inclusion of more cores.
We can expect to see Qualcomm’s in-house ARMv8 design, Kyro, in the upcoming Snapdragon 820.
The GPU in the Snapdragon 810 is the usual custom Adreno design from Qualcomm, this time the Adreno 430. As usual, Qualcomm hasn’t released many details on the Adreno 430, although they claim a performance improvement of 30% over the Adreno 420 in shader-heavy workloads. Clock speeds should be the same as the previous GPU, at 600 MHz.
Qualcomm has also upgraded the DSP to a Hexagon V56 at 800 MHz, which is used for low power tasks such as sensor management and audio decoding. The Snapdragon 810 comes with 4K HEVC/H.265 encoding and decoding support for the first time, as well as an upgraded dual ISP setup supporting 1.2 GP/s of bandwidth.
Memory support is listed as dual-channel 32-bit LPDDR4-1600, providing 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth. Although this is the same bandwidth memory as the Snapdragon 805, the move to LPDDR4 brings a 20% reduction in power. The One M9 comes with 3 GB of RAM to go with 32 GB of internal storage, of which around 21 GB is usable out of the box. There’s also microSDHC card support in case you feel 32 GB of storage is a little tight on a modern flagship.
The Snapdragon 810 supports LTE Category 9 with Carrier Aggregation, which is overkill for today’s mobile networks, but does support up to 450 Mbps downstream and 50 Mbps up. There’s also the usual array of other connectivity features, including dual-band (2.4 and 5.0 GHz) Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, and A-GPS+GLONASS. The Snapdragon 810 can support Wi-Fi 802.11ad, though it’s not enabled in the One M9 as it requires extra chips; however the M9 does come with NFC and infrared.
As for LTE support, there is one variant of the One M9 (that I know of), which supports FDD bands 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20 and 28, as well as TDD bands 38, 40 and 41. Combined with HSPA+ support on the 850, 900, 1900 and 2100 MHz, this variant supports most networks across Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific, with limited support for the Americas. I suspect a second variant will be produced to cover this region.
CPU Performance
The Snapdragon 810 is undoubtedly a fast SoC. The HTC One M9 is a very speedy device around the OS and in apps, though I wouldn’t say it’s significantly faster than the already-fast Snapdragon 801 we saw in the One M8. Loading apps and multi-tasking feels extremely quick on this device, and there is loads of power for gaming on the 1080p display, so there shouldn’t be any complaints on the performance side.There’s a couple of things to note here before I dig into the numbers in the benchmarks above. Firstly, results seemed to fluctuate more than normal while running our set of browser benchmarks in Chrome. I’m not sure why this is, but it didn’t seem to be related to temperature throttling or the SoC itself, as the Snapdragon 810-powered G Flex 2 I also have on hand didn’t exhibit the issue. Due to the fluctuating results, the in-browser benchmark numbers for the One M9 are an average of ten runs.
Secondly, I actually achieved greater system and CPU performance on average benchmarking the G Flex 2, despite both phones having the same SoC with the same clock speeds. I suspect this is due each company using a different performance governor in the OS, but it’s something I’ll explore further in my imminent review of the G Flex 2.
Anyway, the One M9’s implementation of the Snapdragon 810 either outperforms or matches the Samsung Exynos 5433 we saw in the Galaxy Note 4. As a refresher, the Exynos 5433 features the very same big.LITTLE octa-core as the Snapdragon 810, but clocked slightly lower on both core clusters. It’s not surprising to see the One M9 outperforming the Exynos Note 4 by a small margin, around 7% on average, which is slightly lower than the average difference in CPU clock speeds (15%).
As the Exynos 5433 outperforms the Snapdragon 805 in CPU-heavy tasks by 7%, it’s not surprising to see the Snapdragon 810 also outperform the Snapdragon 805, in all but Basemark OS II 2.0. The average margin comparing these two Qualcomm SoCs is 12% in favour of the Snapdragon 810. Compared to the One M8, the One M9 is 26% faster in CPU-bound tasks, which is a respectable gain on silicon released only a year ago.
Main Camera Quality
The camera is one of the most important aspects of a smartphone, and in the past few years, HTC hasn’t nailed it. The Ultrapixel camera used in the One and One M8 was an interesting idea that had its merits, but up against excellent sensors used in Apple and Samsung devices, it just wasn’t good enough for a flagship handset.So with the One M9, HTC has completely changed tune. The OmniVision OV4688 “Ultrapixel” 1/3” sensor has been relegated to the front selfie camera, and it still packs the very same 4-megapixel resolution, 2.0 micron pixels, and f/2.0 27mm lens. Like with the M8, this camera isn’t optically stabilized, but its large pixel size will help with selfies in all conditions.
The rear camera is a brand new CMOS sensor from Toshiba, the T4KA7, which is a 1/2.4” 20-megapixel sensor with 1.12-micron pixels. HTC has paired the sensor with an f/2.2 28mm lens, and again there’s no OIS, so this camera isn’t well suited to low light photography from a spec sheet perspective. However, unlike with the previous Ultrapixel setup, this camera is finally capable of 4K video recording.
Before I take a look at the quality of this camera, it’s important to note that HTC rolled out a major operating system update a couple of days before this review went live. The update, version 1.32.710.14, delivered widespread camera processing upgrades, and all the photos you’ll see below were captured after I installed this update. You might have seen some camera samples around the web that were taken before this update, and they are noticeably worse than what is delivered in final, retail models.
So how good is the camera? Well, it’s a definite improvement over the One M8 camera from a number of standpoints. However, HTC still hasn’t quite nailed it, leaving the One M9 camera behind the best of the best in the flagship space.
The most obvious upgrade comes in terms of resolution. The One M9 camera has five times the pixels of the One M8, which makes photos much sharper when downscaling to standard resolutions like 1080p or 1440p. There’s also more room for cropping, and now that the camera is larger than 8-megapixels, it can shoot 4K video as well. The lens and post processing algorithms can make images look soft, though this is only really noticeable when viewing full resolution crops.
Quality on the whole has also improved, especially in good conditions. The One M9 has fantastic camera metering, almost always nailing white balance and color tone, regardless of the conditions. This leads to generally great accuracy, although saturation isn’t as good as what you get from the best smartphone cameras. In that sense, the One M9 delivers results similar in quality to the Xperia Z3: not always wowing with vibrant colors, but capable of a great shot from time to time.
The Toshiba sensor in the One M9 is slightly behind the Exmor RS sensor in the Xperia Z3 when it comes to contrast and, to a less extent, dynamic range. This leads to some images that look lightly washed out, especially wide shots on sunny days, while shadows are occasionally a minor concern. These problems are less noticeable when using the great HDR mode, which could only be improved if it implemented real-time HDR technology.
The two main issues with the One M8 camera – indoor performance, and cloudy day shots – have been addressed with the One M9. While the M9 doesn’t produce the best images in these conditions, and I feel OIS would help in improving the quality of these shots, it’s a definite upgrade on previous HTC smartphones. Again, color accuracy and white balance tends to be great here, though I’d like a higher level of saturation.
Low light performance is interesting, as it’s the one area where the One M9 camera is a definite downgrade on the M8. This isn’t surprising, as the Ultrapixel camera was well suited to night time photos. The One M9’s camera is very susceptible to grain and processing artefacts in low light, which is a product of HTC opting for fast shutter speeds to keep images sharp, while color quality is similar to other conditions. Night mode improves the situation somewhat, as it slows down the shutter to let in more light, although this can introduce blur.
Selfie Camera, Video Quality and Camera Features
Manufacturers have been placing an increased focus on selfie cameras in flagship phones over the past few generations, but typically these improvements see megapixel counts raised without moving away from small sensors with small pixels. This leads to poor low light performance, which is crucial for a selfie camera as often selfies are taken in poor lighting, especially at night. HTC’s Ultrapixel technology is the perfect solution to this problem.Thanks to the relocation of the 4-megapixel Ultrapixel camera to the front, the selfie camera on the HTC One M9 is one of the best I’ve seen. It’s not as good as the rear camera during the day or in mild indoor conditions, but at night, the 2.0-micron pixels in the selfie cam see it destroy the rear camera (and most other selfie cameras) in terms of picture quality.
Selfies taken on the One M9 are typically bright, reasonably detailed and sharp thanks to the sensor that is geared towards better low light performance. If you like to take selfies while out at a bar or inside a nightclub, the One M9 is the smartphone for you.
The HTC One M9’s camera application is very easy to use, although it does default to a 16:9 aspect ratio; switching to 10:7 allows you to use the full area of the sensor. The app uses hybrid spot metering, which has been significantly improved upon since the last HTC flagship, resisting the urge to blow out exposure when focusing on particularly light or dark areas. It’s very effective, and combined with a fast capture speed, taking photos is a breeze. One area that isn’t as strong is focus speed, though it is very accurate.
Alongside the main shooting mode, HTC gives you a panorama mode; split capture mode, which allows you to take photos using both the front and back cameras simultaneously; and photo booth, which captures four images in a grid. The final feature, bokeh mode, attempts to replicate the M8’s Duo Camera by simulating bokeh through the capture of multiple images at different focus points. It works reasonably well, though not as well as the Duo Camera did.
HTC has once again included a manual shooting mode, which can be found in the standard camera mode next to HDR. In this mode, you can manually set the ISO, white balance, shutter speed, exposure and focus, giving you great control over how images appear. This can be an especially useful mode if you are shooting using a tripod and at night.
All post processing features, including filters, have moved into the gallery, rather than having a special mode in the camera app that applies them to the camera output live. The filters aren’t too exciting, however the new FX Photo Editor certainly is. In this app, you can apply a whole range of cool effects to photos, including double exposure, interesting prismatic and shape effects, face fusion and more. Some of these were first seen in the One M8’s gallery, but many of them are new and definitely worth playing with.
As for video recording, the front camera can capture at 1080p, while the rear can do up to 2160p30 (Ultra HD) for the first time. When capturing 4K video, you’re limited to six minutes of footage with a bitrate of 42 Mbps, with an added two channels of 64 kbps audio, which actually sounds crisp and clear. Without OIS, videos captured by the M9 can be very shaky, although actual quality is respectable and the camera does a great job of metering and focusing quickly.
The One M9 can also record “Fast FullHD”, aka 1080p60, at 21 Mbps, although frame rates in this video mode can go as low as 40 FPS if lighting isn’t good enough. Slow motion video is also possible with the One M9, capturing 720p120 footage at 11.5 Mbps and playing it back at 30 FPS for motion four times slower than real life. In dark conditions, the M9 captures 720p100 and sets playback to 25 FPS. All videos are recorded using H.264 with a Baseline profile.
Battery Life
Inside the HTC One M9 is a non-removable lithium-ion battery with a capacity of 10.8 Wh (2,840 mAh, 3.8 V), which is a 10% increase in size compared to the One M8. I suspect this is to compensate for the extra power the Snapdragon 810 can consume at peak, as the display size remains the same for both smartphones.The Snapdragon 810 is the first SoC from Qualcomm to be produced on a 20nm HPm node, which is a more efficient node than 28nm, used for the company’s previous flagship chips. The increased performance of the 810 will negate some of the gains from the node shift, though we should still see lower power consumption in low intensity tasks including standby, as well as when using non-performance SoC blocks such as the media codec and wireless radios.
The specifications suggest that the battery life of the One M9 should be similar to that of the One M8, and in my day to day usage this seemed to be true. Battery life was good without being astonishing: on one particularly intensive day, using the phone reasonably frequently on LTE networks, it lasted until I got home in the late evening with a small percentage of charge remaining. The best phones out there would leave me with a bit more headroom, though I never felt the One M9 had inadequate battery life.
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