HTC One M9

Everybody knows nobody takes pride both in their flagship phones and the mid range devices more than HTC. Welcome guys this is Santhosh kumar writing the complete review for you about the HTC One M9. This phone has been a hot topic since the release of it's predecessor HTC One M8, one of my favorites of 2014. The only disappointment was the camera which provided only 4 megapixels which is actually 4 ultrapixels. HTC reinvented the camera with their own ultra pixel technology. Ultra pixel is a camera technology for mobile phones that offers a great photo even at very poor lighting conditions. Click here to learn more about the ultrapixel. With no further delay let's get started.

1. BUILD QUALITY:

The build quality from a HTC one family has always been a enjoyable factor both in terms of the design and the sturdy feeling and this phone is no word changer for that. Comparing this build with the one of M8, the M9 has improved a little on reducing the slippery design that the users were so caring about in M8. Props to HTC in improving the build quality further more.

The gold color is my personal preference of HTC One M9. This beautiful beast has a nice dual tone finish which provides a stand alone flagship feel when held in hands. The back provides a better grip than HTC one M8. Here in this case only the sides are glossy finished hence a good grip for the brushed gold look back of the phone. One handed usability is very good with this device. The flash lights are also dual tone.

2. DESIGN:

The ergonomics of the phone are very very good for my likings. The phone feels pretty good and sturdy with the compact 5 inch display. (my hands are really large). My hands are so large that I can use a 6 inch device with single hand. I can reach the four corners of the phone without slipping the phone down the hands. If you are planning to buy the phone go to the nearest show room and use the demo device and feel it for yourself.

For a five inch device his phone looks a little big because of the boom sound speakers. The sense UI is also updated to sense 7. The boom sound speakers are now upgraded with Dolby functionality which enhances the audio output more louder and clear than the previous iterations. The physical dimensions are as follows:

144.6 x 69.7 x 9.6 mm. This is not the slimmest phone in the market, yet his phone feels good in hands and perfectly slips into your pockets. The button placements are also nicely done by HTC everything on the right side of the phone which I'm really not fan of. Because i got used to the design which has volume buttons on the left side and the power button on the right side of he phone. This aspect depends on your personal choice.

This phone has all the buttons lying on the right side and the sim card slot lying on the left side..

3. CAMERA:

Camera is a huge bump for the HTC One M9 from it's predecessor M8. Camera is something that 90% of the users of M8 were complaining about. HTC's new innovation of ultrapixel however provided the best photos at low lights and very poor lights, the pixel count was just 4. But I'm telling you guys "Mega pixels is myth". The photos were incomparable with other phones yet not so much to be prized. But nobody would believe the photos were taken by a 4 megapixel camera. Ultrapixel camera captures more light into one pixel than capturing light in large number of pixels.

But thankfully the camera on HTC One M9 is a huge bump from 4 mega pixel to 20.7 mega pixel and the photos are also so clear and top notch quality. The HDR mode takes descent photos capturing the details of the clouds in my photos.

20.7 mega pixel camera provides picture resolution of 5376 x 3752 pixels. The LED setup is dual and the flash is also dual toned. But mostly the photos at low lights taken with flash are not of that great quality. they are just bad. The video recording provides 2K video recording at 30 frames per second, FHD at 60 FPS and HD at 120 FPS. The front facing camera is now replaced with the ultrapixel camera which is a fair and wise move by HTC. Now selfies come out really great. Some might say that 1 ultrapixel equals to some amount of mega pixels. But they are not.

4.DISPLAY:

The display is a bit disappointment to me because i expected M9 with a quad HD display panel since a lot of flagships have started coming out with the quad HD displays which are more crisp which i enjoyed a lot with the galaxy note 4 and LG g3.

The HTC One M9 sports a 5 inch full HD display with a "super LCD 3" screen providing a screen to body ratio of ~68.4 and a pixel density of ~441 which is not the largest pixel count of a flagship from other OEMs. But I think they must be some of the price cutting elements from HTC. Because the hardware quality of HTC is supreme and incomparable with others including Apple's Iphones. Very well the screen is protected by the Gorilla glass 4 from corning.

5. COMMUNICATION & SENSORS:

On the communication side the M9 offers what a flagship must provide. From the Bluetooth to NFC. But on the contrary, the HTC One M9 does not provide all the sensors that a flagship offers from other OEMs like Samsung and LG. The USB is still 2.0 where as Samsung offers a full fledged USB 3.0 on it's flagship device. The finger print sensor is not there. Temperature sensor is not there. This might look like a comparison which I'm not supposed to make in a review. But i wanted to tell what are the features missing from a flagship where there is a heavy competition on the tech world. When the company says it's a flagship, they must be providing all the features that are missing from the current scenario. When a user buys a phone that highly priced, he must compare phones on the price range. So the sensors part is a big down side of HTC One M9. The list of communications and sensors are provided below.

Connectivity:

The call quality with the M9 is awesome. A phone doing it's job of calling is not a major tweak now a days with other OEMs. But I had a very good experience with the M9. The loudspeaker on calls is also outstanding.

Network : GSM, HSPA, LTE
WLAN : Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot.
Bluetooth: v4.1, A2DP, apt-X
RADIO : Stereo with RDS
NFC.
IR.

Sensors:

Accelerometer.

Gyroscope.

Proximity sensor.

Light sensor.

Compass.

6. FEATURES:

HTC Boom sound.

HTC sense UI v7.

Ultrapixel selfie.

Frequent updates.

32 GB in biult memory.

Memory expansion up to 128 GB.

7. UNDER THE HOOD:

Under the hood M9 provides the best in line of the top notch specifications. The Snapdragon 810 processor. That's MSM8994 dual quad-core CPU from Qualcom. Know that it's not a true octa-core setup. The CPU has two separate Quad core processors clocked at different frequencies. Quad core Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.5GHz and a quad core Cortex-A57 clocked at 2 GHz. This processor coupled with a 3GB of RAM provides a smooth usage of multitasking. Really the multitasking is very smooth. And the graphics processor is Adreno 430 which renders animations with no problems. Gaming on the M9 was a great experience.But the device heats up a lot. It touched around 110 degrees at gaming for about half an hour or more. For a gamer like me this is a disappointment since I won't stop gaming withing 3 hours. I couldn't hold the phone. I had to put the phone down.

Heating is a common issue with the recent smartphones. But i'm really not a fan of it. Some people think of buying it and use it like a more normal phone just using it for the social apps. I buy a phone for such a price and I use each and every facility and I even torture it some times. My Zen ultrafone 701 HD which is an Indian phone of price 8k does not heat up at all and the gaming was soooo better in that 1GB RAM phone. I usually play on that for more 4 hours on the week ends. That's a great phone meant for gamers. The operating system is stock android with little tweaks based on jelly bean version. Suprised!?..But it's true. Since I have used a phone that is low price for more performance, this HTC makes me feel like pay more, be in the limit and take good care of your phone. For me heating is huge issue. I would never buy a phone that reaches more than 40 or 43 degree Celsius.

For example the over heating Xiaomi Redmi 1S went more than 54 degree Celsius even when idle in the pocket, for which the company said that "the user needs to under clock the processor to "reduce" the heat". Come on OEMs we buy the phone for the performance and to keep it under the heat you want us to lower the performance??.

8. BATTERY:

The battery department is doing a good job in providing more number in the value of the battery but the usage is the same. The phone must be put on the charger at the end of the day. It might last longer for some people depending on the network they use like 3G or LTE. It depends on the usage of the user. For me with little gaming for 20 minutes and more music via headphones for 4 hours or so, the battery lasted a day until it ran out of juice to 0%. I also used camera for 57 shots without video recording. As a whole the battery life is Okayish. But definitely if I use in my style the phone's dead in couple of hours.

9. VERDICT:

HTC One M9 is for the people who want to show off and not care about the performance. Not caring in the sense with light usage of the phone. Most people have beast os beasts phone in their hands and use it like a phone that supports facebook and twitter with the octa core cpu. People who game in their mobile phones must not pick up this phone else you will have to keep it on a stand and use any controller to play.Camera people can give this phone a try. Because I personally like photos that are little over saturated. But soon HTC going to update the camera with RAW photo capturing api which sounds cool. Normal users cannot use the raw photos.