HTC One M9 Review

Does the HTC One M9 have the chops to do battle with the Samsung Galaxy S6, iPhone 6 and LG G4 in 2015’s insanely competitive market?

Rating: 

3

Typical Price: 

£580.00

Pros: 

Great build quality; Sense 7 is perhaps the best Android overlay of them all; Powerful performance; Decent size and weight; SD-support

Cons: 

As nice as the design is, we'd like to have seen more –– it feels very 2014 after seeing the Galaxy S6 EDGE; Display lags behind the competition; Camera needs work; Very high price point for what's on offer compared to Galaxy Note 4 and Google Nexus 6.

Verdict: 

Part of me loves it; the way it looks and feels in the hand and the ease and elegance it runs Android Lollipop. But there is another aspect to the HTC One M9 and it is one that all the gold and silver and metal and software tweaks cannot shine over. It is too incremental, and the improvements that are present (the camera, for instance) are so negligible in the grand scheme of things it’s very difficult to stomach the £580 price tag, which is a good deal more than Google’s Nexus 6 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

Once, in a time which now seems a very long time ago, HTC was one of the few companies which made the successful jump from being a Taiwanese phone maker producing devices on behalf of other brands, to a legitimate device maker in its own right. That alone made it a bit of a darling of the Android space, producing competetive handsets as an alternative to Samsung's offerings.

Aside from the ill-fated HTC Flyer tablet, the company could pretty much do no wrong, as it wowed consumers with the likes of the HTC One X and One S. Sure, HTC wasn't shifting devices in the same volume as Apple and Samsung, but it was doing well enough and was quite well regarded; things looked positive. Then the HTC One (M7) came along and things shifted up a gear. HTC was now making premium looking phones that gave Apple’s designers a run for their money.

Up next was the HTC One M8, the all-important and infinitely trickier “second album”. HTC made no bones about sticking to the design philosophy it had adapted for the birth of its One range of phones, and most were onboard with this –– if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The CPU was updated, there were some smallish tweaks to the shape and gait of the chassis, and that was about it… but most startlingly HTC, for whatever reason, DIDN’T ditch its grossly underpowered 4MP UltraPixel technology despite a veritable firestorm of criticism. Horror of horrors. 

Next came a bunch of redesigned iPhones, in the form of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which sold in frankly incomparable numbers (70+ million in three months, to be exact), who joined already very solid releases from LG, with its awesome G3, and the excellent –– but something of a handful –– Google Nexus 6. But it wasn’t until Q1 2015 that things really began to look a little dicey for HTC, as it appeared mobile’s sleeping dragon (Samsung) had awoken, ditched the hooch and was apparently back, firing on all cylinders with its seriously-well-received Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 EDGE, which completely dominated MWC from start to finish. 

Essentially, every man and his dog had come to 2014/15’s market place with a brand new, completely redesigned flagship handset. Even Apple managed it –– and that hardly ever happens. LG too is now building up to its big reveal inside Q2 and all of this could, I fear, put HTC in a potentially vulnerable position. All of the company’s competitors –– Apple, LG, Samsung, Google –– for the first time in as long as I can remember, seem to be really pushing the envelope with their handsets.

This hasn’t happened in a good long while, so one could argue it was a bit naive of HTC to think it could wade into this type of environment with a handset so very similar to last year’s model. It was exceedingly ballsy, sure, staring down such fierce competition, but will it pay off? Do consumers “like” the design of the M8 that much? Possibly. But if they don’t –– also a possibility –– the company stands to lose A LOT of ground in Q1/Q2 2015. Perhaps this is why HTC is already prepping a bigger and better model in the form of the HTC One M9+? 

And there is much ground to lose in 2015, too. Samsung is looking to increase its 10-quarter single digit margin slump back pre-2013 levels of profitability, and when you take into account the reviews, hype and 20+ million network orders thus far, it is starting to look very likely the Korean manufacturer will do just that. So, yes, HTC has a lot to prove with the M9. The competition is fiercer than ever and more and more folks are beginning to, once again, look to Samsung for innovation, a first for at least the past 18 months. 

Does the M8 have the chops to stand out from the crowd of throughly excellent Android handsets now readily available?

Reports as of May 22 suggest perhaps not, according to DigiTimes' anonymous sources HTC has reduced its orders for One M9 components by 30% "due to lower-than-expected sales." Said sources also alleged the company had experienced "flat" sales apparently due to consumers being dissatisfied with the overly familiar design; which is very similar to the previous-gen One M8. Meanwhile the competitiveness of the spec has also been brought into question by these sources, as well as the threat posed to HTC's sales by Chinese rivals such as Xiaomi and Oppo.

HTC itself has declined to comment.

HTC One M9 Review: Design

The HTC One M9 is a beautiful looking device, just like its forefathers. Encased in a premium-feeling, two-tone gold and silver chassis, the handset exudes class. It also feels great in the hand with its conservatively-sized 5in display and sleek angular body. And this is all excellent stuff, indeed. Par for the course, when you’re talking about a company like HTC. You do not expect anything less. But the one thing you simply cannot get around, in spite of all this, is just how familiar it is to behold –– the M9 is practically identical to the M8. 

HTC have made a few tweaks to the chassis and build materials, however, and the most obvious is the new camera unit on the back, which is now square. However, there are a few very notable tweaks. Firstly HTC has re-contoured the back and edges to be more ergonomic, and secondly there's a scratch-resistant coating to the phone's shell. A third change is purely aesthetic; HTC has taken cues from luxury watchmakers by using a two-tone metal design, every handset has its edging picked out in a complimentary colour. HTC also added in microSD support this time around as well, opening the possibility of expanding the handsets storage. Importantly, this is something you can no longer do on the Galaxy S6. 

The other BIGGY is the movement of the power/unlock key from the top of the device to the right hand side of the device. At first this seems like a great idea but for some reason HTC decided to place the volume rocker and power/unlock keys really close together AND make them from the same material and more or less the exact same size, which makes finding the unlock key rather tricky without looking first. 

You can double-tap the display to wake the M9 mercifully, but in order to do this you must first have the handset in motion (in your hand, for instance) or else it will not work and you’re back to fumbling along its sharp, metallic side for the elusive power/unlock key. Beyond this I cannot fault the industrial engineering and design that has gone into making this handset. HTC talks about it like it’s a piece of jewellery and when you look at the gold trim, sharp, machine-edged accents and the huge price tag, I guess it sort of makes sense.  

HTC has paid special attention to the One M9's audio. The front-facing BoomSound speakers with built-in amplifier have made a return together with some added enhancements in the form of Dolby Audio integration - this also extends to the 3.5mm audio jack for headphones and speakers; so you'll be getting high quality sound any way you slice it.

But this isn’t a piece of jewellery, nor is it a Porsche; it’s a phone and its job is to reach out to consumers, old and new, and make them want one. Taken at face value, I do think plenty of people will like the look of the HTC One M9; it is a very desirable looking piece of hardware, but so too was its predecessor the M8, and herein lies the elephant in the room. The hype around the HTC One M7 was justified in every regard; the handset was a game changer, both for HTC and the Android space at large. HTC got it right, bang on the money. The M8 was a refinement of the M7’s design, a more polished but somehow less eye-catching handset. And the M9 looks JUST like the M8, which is odd because anybody that’s being paying attention to HTC’s fortunes over the past couple of years knows it needs something BIG like the M7, not more incrementalism. 

Looks are great and, I admit, the M9 has them in spades, but a lot has changed in the past 12 months and a simple rehash of last year’s model with a new CPU and camera and not much else comes across as slightly presumptuous. HTC is better than this. And even if it isn’t couldn’t it just have reduced the cost of the device to something more representative like £400-£450?  

There is nothing worse than a technology company resting on its laurels. Samsung was dragged over the coals for years for this very reason and, only very recently, began to redeem itself with the excellent Galaxy Alpha, Galaxy Note 4 and Samsung Galaxy S6/Galaxy S6 EDGE. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the HTC One M9, nothing bad about it really. But it does look and feel very, well, last year when you pick it up and switch it on. 

Not enough has been changed or developed. 

HTC One M9 Review: Display 

Nowhere is this more evident than with the M9’s 5in Super LCD3 1080p display. Full HD panels are fine; really they are. But the quality of the panel itself has to be up to scratch and the one inside the HTC One M9 does not feel like a progression from the LCD panel used in last year’s HTC One M8. And in a world of handsets rocking similar specs at lower costs with better, QHD panels this is not something that plays in the HTC One M9’s favour. 

Being Full HD, though, the screen itself is more than adequate in terms of sharpness and resolution for everything you’re going to be doing with it –– videos, texting, web browsing, etc. It just doesn’t look quite as good doing it as the Nexus 6, Note 4, iPhone 6 Plus, LG G3 or Samsung Galaxy S6. Personally this isn’t a deal-breaker for me. This is still a 441ppi panel. Plus the M9 is a great looking, well proportioned handset which is a pretty big USP in and of itself these days.

I don’t have any huge reservations about the M9 not using a QHD panel, either. Quite the contrary in fact; this way HTC can produce a handset with a decent, Full HD quality panel without having to make it phablet simply to accommodate a battery large enough to power said QHD display. What I do have issue with is the small fact that A) the battery life does not appear to be any better than last year’s M8 model and B) the One M9 costs £100 more than the Nexus 6 and £80 more than the Galaxy Note 4 while the one thing you spend most time looking at –– the display –– just feels like a refit from last year’s model. 

That doesn’t feel like “progress” to me, if I’m honest. Nor would it persuade me away from Samsung, LG or Apple in 2015. All of whom work ceaselessly on their display technology to ensure absolute parity with current top-of-the-line market standards. For me, the verdict here simple: if you’re asking me to pay the best part of £600 (tier one pricing in mobile) for something, I want the one thing I spend most time looking at to be exceptional, not just good –– this goes for phones just as much as it does for tablets, HDTVs and everything else in between. 

HTC One M9 Review: Specs

Here's a full breakdown of the HTC One M9's specs. For the purpose of those interested, we've also included specs for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 EDGE in order to give you an idea of the differences between the two handsets. 

Processor	HTC One M9 Octacore (quad 2GHz and quad 1.5GHz), Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC	Samsung Galaxy S6 Octacore (quad 2.1GHz and quad 1.5GHz), Samsung Exynos SoC	Samsung Galaxy S6 EDGE Octacore (quad 2.1GHz and quad 1.5GHz), Samsung Exynos SoC
RAM	3GB	3GB LPDDR4	3GB LPDDR4
Screen size	5in	5.1in	5.1in
Screen resolution	1,080 x 1,920, 441ppi (Gorilla Glass 4)	1,440 x 2560, 576ppi (Gorilla Glass 4)	1,440 x 2560, 576ppi (Gorilla Glass 4)
Screen type	Super LCD3 (IPS)	Super AMOLED	Super AMOLED
Front camera	4MP	5MP	5MP
Rear camera	20.7MP (f/2.2)	16MP (f/1.9, phase detect autofocus, OIS)	16MP (f/1.9, phase detect autofocus, OIS)
Flash	Dual LED	Dual LED	Dual LED
GPS	Yes	Yes	Yes
Compass	Yes	Yes	Yes
Storage	32GB	64/128GB (UFS 2 flash)	32/64/128GB (UFS 2 flash)
Memory card slot (supplied)	MicroSD	No	No
Wi-Fi	802.11ac	802.11ac (2x2 MIMO)	802.11ac (2x2 MIMO)
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.1, A2DP, apt-X	Bluetooth 4.1 LE, A2DP, apt-X, ANT+	Bluetooth 4.1 LE, A2DP, apt-X, ANT+
NFC	Yes	Yes	Yes
Wireless data	4G	4G, Cat6 (300Mbits/sec download, 50Mbits/sec upload)	4G, Cat6 (300Mbits/sec download, 50Mbits/sec upload)
Size (WDH)	70 x 9.6 x 145mm	71 x 6.8 x 143mm	70 x 7 x 142mm
Weight	157g	138g	132g
Operating system	Android 5 Lollipop with Sense 7		Android 5 Lollipop
Battery size	2,840mAh	2,550mAh	2,600mAh

HTC One M9 Review: Camera 

A lot has been said about HTC’s cameras over the years –– most of it bad. But this year saw the company swallow its pride, admit UltraPixels were just marketing-speak for rubbish camera, and re-introduce proper imaging with proper megapixels inside its 2015 flagship. 

The HTC One M9 runs a 20.7MP camera backed up by one of the best camera applications in the business. There’s a ton of features as well as old favourites like Zoe opening up thousands of potential editing options. Images are easily shared and, as we’ve come to expect from HTC, the layout, menus and options with the camera application itself are very straightforward and require essentially no time to master. 

So what about image quality? Unfortunately it ain’t great –– and there’s no Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS). But it is A LOT better than last year’s model and, when you get it in the right setting, outside with plenty of light, for instance, you can capture some really decent shots. Low-light performance isn’t great; though, again, it is better than last year’s model, which seems to be the only benchmark HTC had in mind when it created this phone. 

A lot of the camera’s issues –– colour inconsistency, lack of detail, low-light performance and general inconsistency –– can, I believe, be remedied by software. The only thing that makes me question this is that before I began testing the M9 it was recalled for a software update to fix…. you guessed it, the camera. Still, once the company has more data to work with it will be in a better position to understand what exactly is causing the inconsistent performance of the imaging tech inside the M9. 

The camera does show true promise in the right environment and, lack of OIS aside, I do think HTC could make some pretty big improvements to the overall performance of the camera with a few, select software tweaks. Everything is there, it just doesn’t appear to be functioning at 100% efficiency. I don’t want to be too critical of this aspect, however, as we’ve seen handsets released with squiffy cameras in the past only to be remedied by a software patch a few weeks later - this even happened to Sony. 

HTC Software Patch Update Incoming To Fix Camera

As you've no doubt just read above, the HTC One M9's camera leaves a little to be desired, but we've attributed that to a software-side problem that could be fixed with an update. It seems we were correct in that assessment as HTC has now confirmed it will be issuing a software update to combat the squiffy camera performance.

Following complaints from user on Twitter, HTC USA president Jason Mackenzie posted a response on the social network. "Camera to see improvement w/ sw update coming tomorrow or 17th (next Fri) depending on carrier version," he said, in a Tweet on April 9. This of course means that initially the software update may only be rolling out in the US between today (April 10) and April 17, with it arriving sooner or later depending on which network you're with. However, nothing has been said yet about a rollout outside the US. One is sure to be coming, but there's a question mark hanging over precisely when - we would suspect in the next couple of weeks.

This update has now landed on a few handsets and the results, according to Phandroid, are pretty damn impressive. Every single image snapped by the HTC One M9 with the new software installed is sharper, more detailed and tighter in every regard. The update has yet to hit our HTC One M9, but we will update this review with new images as soon as it does. 

“Regardless of these minor inconsistencies, I think it’s fairly obvious to tell that this M9 camera update boasts huge improvements,” Phandroid writes. “I wouldn’t say that this catapults the M9’s camera from terrible to outrageously awesome, but those who decided against the M9 primarily due to the camera should consider giving it a second look.”

HTC Adds Support For RAW Files

HTC has now released another software update for the One M9 to improve camera capabilities. This time the updated camera app adds in support for RAW image files. Essentially this is a boon for more fastidious shutterbugs who can really fine tune shots in this format.

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