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htc-one-a9

HTC released the 1 M9 earlier this year to lukewarm reviews and lackluster sales. The company'southward revenue has tanked and its greatest asset is now the cash it holds in reserve. That'due south ordinarily a very bad sign for a company, just HTC has a plan. In hopes of turning things around, HTC has announced a new device that isn't part of the premium Thousand line or the upkeep Desire series. The HTC One A9 is a midrange Android device with a very familiar expect.

You won't see a single article covering this phone that doesn't address the obvious similarity to an iPhone 6, and then let's get that out of the way. Yep, it looks a lot similar a iPhone. It has the same overall shape and rounded metallic frame, and the plastic antenna strips are in roughly the same place too. On the front is a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display and below information technology a fingerprint sensor. For years 1 of HTC'southward hallmark features has been the front-facing Boomsound speakers, but now those are gone. Instead there's just one speaker on the bottom, just HTC says the A9 has a built-in digital audio converter (DAC) that converts 16-bit audio to 24-bit high-resolution sound.

one a9

There were some bloggers and HTC fans who insisted in the run up to the A9'south declaration that this was going to be a flagship device, just looking at the internals, that's definitely not the instance. The Snapdragon 810 in the M9 was a mess because of poor heat management, but many OEMs address that by going with the Snapdragon 808. Not HTC — the midrange A9 is packing a Snapdragon 617.

The Snapdragon 617 is an octa-core ARM chip with viii Cortex-A53 CPUs, an Adreno 405 GPU, and integrated true cat vii LTE. The flake is a slightly newer version of the Snapdragon 615, which has powered numerous $200-250 phones over the concluding year. Still, the HTC One A9 costs a lot more than at $399 in the US (more than internationally). Those A53 cores are basically the Picayune half of the big.Piffling in chips similar the 810 and 808. The problem with Qualcomm's latest 600 series chips is that they tend to eat besides much power when active, unless they're downclocked, in which case they're likewise slow.

There are two versions of the A9 — one with 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, and some other with 32GB of storage and 3GB of RAM. The 32/3GB version is the one that's being sold in the U.s.a. for $399. Both versions of the phone also accept a rather small 2150mAh bombardment, which is not-removable.

The HTC Ane A9 will piece of work on AT&T, T-Mobile, and Dart, simply in that location'southward too an unlocked version. That'south what you ought to get when buying direct from HTC because information technology comes with an impressive update guarantee. HTC says the unlocked A9 will get new system updates no more than fifteen days subsequently Nexus phones. That would be great if HTC could pull it off, and the phone already ships with Marshmallow. It'south a new version of Sense, but it doesn't expect much different. That'southward probably fine, though. Sense is great as far as OEM Android skins go.

According to HTC, the $399 cost is a temporary bargain. Information technology volition go upwardly later, which seems like a bad thought to me. As it is, the A9 is already at a disadvantage compared with other phones in that price range like the Nexus 5X and 2015 Moto X Pure. If the cost goes up, this phone is even less likely to save HTC.