When Taiwanese tech company HTC launched its latest flagship smartphone, the HTC One M9, during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 early this month, many got excited with its striking new design, great stereo sound, and storage expandability, which cannot be found on the flagship smartphones of both Apple and Samsung.
However upon close scrutiny with the previous flagship smartphone of the Taiwanese tech firm, the HTC One M9 actually offered little improvements from the widely-commended HTC One M8.
It was very much like the shades of Samsung when it released Samsung Galaxy S5 in March last year that hardly offered anything new from the Samsung Galaxy S4 the year before. Everyone knows the result of what Samsung did and the Korean tech company paid dearly for it in terms of three consecutive quarters of declining smartphone sales last year.
But the case of HTC One M9 is different. Reports have it that HTC slowed down on major improvements to its latest flagship smartphone from the HTC One M8 because the Taiwanese tech company is reportedly planning to roll out a phablet sibling to the HTC One M9 later this year.
While HTC has yet to confirm or deny this initial report, the chance of this possibly being true is high notwithstanding that it has become common among major smartphone makers these days to release two flagships since Apple did it with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus last September.
Also during the MWC 2015 in Barcelona, Spain early this month, Samsung has also launched its two current flagship smartphones – the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge.
HTC may be planning to join the bandwagon but production for the bigger sibling of the HTC One M9 got delayed so the device was not able to launch with the latest flagship smartphone of the Taiwanese tech company.
Distinctive features
The Register notes that despite little improvements from the HTC One M8, the HTC One M9 has actually maintained the refined user experience by limiting clutter and bloatwares that have been typical of most devices from Samsung and Sony.
The HTC One M9 and the HTC One M8 actually look exactly the same from a quick glance that it would take an expert to really tell them apart just by looking at the front of both smartphones.
The designs are pretty much the same although users have nothing to complain about since it is actually a good design. Except for some minor improvements in processing speed brought about by the Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor, the rest of the excellent features found on the HTC One M8 have been migrated and adapted to the HTC One M9.
The smartphone still features the distinctive top-and-tail stereo front speakers that deliver superb sound quality for a smartphone, due to its BoomSound. The device also supports Dolby Audio too. The battery life of the HTC One M9 is also the same as that of HTC One M8 although it drains rather quickly if users browse the web.