HTC’s One M9 has been in a strange spot ever since it came out. On one hand, it’s not a bad device by itself, objectively – it actually ranks quite highly on the Android market overall and has various good features that make it worth giving it a try. On the other, it also suffered from being the successor to a phone that had the reputation of being the best Android power user device on the market, and many people were expecting similar, if not better performance from the One M9.
It’s not that the phone was bad by itself, but it would have been quite the feat for anyone – even HTC themselves – to jump over the bar that they set with the release of the One M8, which is why everyone approached the new device so critically. In the end though, once the dust settled and people realized what they had in their hands, opinions about the M9 shifted to a more positive overall tone as most fans agreed that the new phone wasn’t actually bad.
And now it’s been reported that the company is preparing to announce an upgrade for the device, called the One M9 Plus. No specific details are known about the new phone yet – though there are plenty of rumors for sure – but it’s definitely managed to grab the attention of fans and people are discussing the device quite actively on social media.
Along with the HTC One M9+, the company is also supposedly going to announce the Butterfly 3. Again, no specific details are known about that announcement either, but some people have been pointing out a potentially worrying part of the upcoming announcement. At least for those who plan on getting the new devices outside of Asia.
From the sounds of it, the announcement will be made only for the Asian market, at least initially – this is based on rumors coming allegedly from within the company, as well as observations on the previous announcements made by HTC. This means that fans outside of Asia will likely have to wait a few weeks – or months – before they get a chance to check out the One M9+, if a worldwide release is even planned at all.
And that could be a problem for the company if it’s true, because on one hand the rumors about the M9+ have already generated a lot of hype and it’s clear that many people are interested in the device. Delaying its release might annoy many of those fans and reflect negatively on the success of HTC in the long run. On the other hand, the market is changing very fast right now and HTC might find themselves in a completely different situation a few months from now if they’re planning to release the new device then. It might turn out that they are facing even greater competition from all sides by that time, making the One M9+ irrelevant.
Hopefully that won’t be the case, as even though we don’t know the official specifications of the One M9+ yet, we do know that HTC still have some pretty ingenious engineers working for them, and the company can undoubtedly come up with a solid phone that offers a lot of value to the market, as long as they put their minds to it and pull off their marketing correctly. The company still has a pretty active following of fans as well.