HTC One M9: Another gorgeous flagship, but only modest upgrades

Overview

Two years ago, HTC blew us away with the original HTC One. At a time when every other Android manufacturer was busy making flimsy plastic handsets, the Taiwanese company released a full metal beauty that showed that Android phones could actually look and feel good too. Since then however, the competition has caught up. Sony's Xperia Z range has long since adopted a premium metal and glass look, and even Samsung has ditched its plastic ways with the exquisitely crafted Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. 

As for the latest HTC One M9? HTC seems to be following the rule, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The design closely resembles last year's HTC One M8, and it uses exactly the same screen too. What it does boast is a new camera, a new processor, and a larger battery, but is that enough to push the One M9 to the head of the flagship pack? With the HTC One M9 availability and pricing details just announced, it's time for us to weigh all of these factors and find out exactly where the new HTC flagship ranks.

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Design

HTC probably could have slapped an S onto the end of the HTC One M8 without raising too many eyebrows. The One M9 shares an almost identical design as its predecessor (and even its predecessor's predecessor), with just a few minor tweaks to differentiate it from last year's model.

First, and most noticeably, is the new two-tone design. Where the back of the One M8 curved all the way around to the screen, the M9 stops about halfway between the back and the front in a pronounced ridge. It makes the phone look a bit like it's sitting in a case. The design is most evident on the new gold-silver finish, which is gold on the edge and brushed silver on the back, but even the more muted gun-metal gray version is subtlely different on the front and back. According to HTC, the new chassis requires 300 minutes to manufacture – twice the amount of time required to make the original HTC One M7’s chassis.

HTC has also finally relocated the power button from the top edge to the right-hand side, below the volume buttons. It's more ergonomically friendly now, easier to reach, and more in-line with what everyone else is doing. As a nice upgrade, all the buttons on the M9 are now metal, and the power button even has a light circular etching on it so you can easily see and feel the difference between it and the volume buttons.

The rest of the HTC One M9 is almost exactly the same as the One M8, with a gently curved all-metal body, and inset plastic antenna lines. It's 0.26mm thicker than its predecessor, and about 1mm shorter and narrower, as well as 3g lighter, but all of these things are pretty much unnoticeable. Don't get us wrong, it's still a beautiful design with top-notch craftsmanship and finish, and its rounded rear makes it one of the most comfortable smartphones to grip (along with the similarly-curved Motorola Moto X) but it's hard to be blown away by something when it's the third time you've seen it.

As with its predecessors, the micro-USB and headphone port are at the bottom, and almost the entire top edge is covered with translucent black plastic, which hides an IR blaster in case you want to use the M9 as a TV remote. The Nano-SIM card slot can be found on the left edge, while the MicroSD slot is on the right edge, above the volume buttons.

The HTC One M9 will be available in four colors: Gunmetal Grey, Amber Gold, Gold-Pink and Gold-Silver (yes, HTC really likes gold).

Updated on 27/04/15, 10am: HTC has informed us that Singapore will only be receiving the Gold-Silver and Gunmetal Grey colors. No word yet on whether the other colors will be available at a later date.

Display & Audio

The HTC One M9 has a 5-inch display with a Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution (441 ppi), which is the exact same size and pixel count as its predecessor. Unsurprisingly, there's no visible difference in clarity between the two displays. Text looks sharp and crisp and the LCD3 display provides decent contrast and color reproduction too. Compared to the QHD Super AMOLED display on Samsung's Galaxy S6, contrast on the One M9 isn't quite as good, and its maximum brightness setting is a bit dimmer, but surprisingly, we couldn't spot any difference in clarity between the two phones. 

Audio has always been HTC's trump card, and once again the One M9's front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers delivered. This year's BoomSound speakers get Dolby audio surround sound (although One M8 users can also get this by upgrading to HTC Sense 7.0) and the result is rich, deep and loud audio. The small speakers have surprisingly good depth, and lots of mid-range detail, although as you might expect, the low-end is a little lacking (although it's still better than every other smartphone speaker out there).

UI Features

The One M9 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop with HTC's Sense 7.0 UI on top of it. If you're familiar with Sense UI from previous versions of the HTC One, you'll feel right at home with the HTC One M9 as there's not too much difference here. The homescreen sports a large clock widget and if you scroll to the left, you'll find HTC's BlinkFeed screen, which once again displays social media updates, news and app content.

One new feature is Sense Home, which displays eight apps (or app folders) on your homescreen depending on your location. For example, if you're at home, it might display Clash of Clans, Spotify and YouTube. Whereas, when you're at work, it will show your Calendar and Email. A third location is simply called "Out" and will display travel apps such as Google Maps. Sense Home learns your habits and re-arranges the apps appropriately, although you can also pin apps if you want them to be accessed all the time. It's quite similar to Nokia's Z Launcher app, which we saw on the N1 tablet.

The other big new addition to Sense 7 is Themes, something we've seen a lot of Android manufacturer's adopting. HTC's version includes the usual pre-loaded themes, as well as a store where you can download more. Where it gets interesting is the Create Theme option, which lets you construct a theme based on any picture you choose. The theme builder will analyze the picture and pick appropriate colors, icons and fonts to create a look that spans the whole phone. It's not perfect and you might have to manually adjust a few things yourself, but it's an interesting addition.

Benchmark Performance

The HTC One M9 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 64-bit octa-core processor with 3GB RAM. It's not the first smartphone with an 810 (that would be the LG G Flex 2) and we expect many more flagship smartphones in the coming months to boast similar setups. For this review, we'll see how the M9 does compared against Samsung's Galaxy S6, LG's G Flex 2, Apple's iPhone 6, and we'll also throw in last year's HTC One M8.

Before we start, let's address something that's become a concern for any Snapdragon 810-equipped smartphone. Yes, the One M9 got quite hot during our benchmarking process (and also while we were playing some games). The metal rear probably didn't help with that but it didn't seem to effect performance, which remained consistent throughout our testing. 

SunSpider Javascript

SunSpider Javascript helps measure the browsing performance of a device when processing Javascript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. The One M9 performed reasonably well here, although it was slower than both the Galaxy S6 and LG G Flex 2. Actual real world browsing experience was fairly snappy and lag free.

Quadrant

Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. The One M9 didn't perform as well as the similarly 810-equipped G Flex 2 here, although it was much better than last year's HTC One M8 (which we suspect may already have been benefiting from benchmark boosting). As expected, Samsung's Exynos 7420 processor remains way in front.

3DMark (2013)

Originally developed as a PC benchmarking tool, 3DMark is now expanded to support multiple platforms including Android OS. The Ice Storm benchmark is designed for smartphones, mobile devices and ARM architecture computers.

For an in-depth understanding of 3DMark for Android, do head over to our article, "3DMark - Android Device GPU Performance Review." In a nutshell, it is an OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark test that uses fixed off-screen rendering to run two graphics tests designed to stress the GPU performance of your device and a physics test to stress its CPU performance. The benchmark consists of three test portfolios:- Standard (720p resolution rendering), Extreme (1080p resolution rendering with higher quality textures and post-processing effects) and Unlimited (disabled v-sync, display scaling and other OS factors that make it ideal for chipset comparison).

As all recent flagship smartphones have been maxing out the scores on the Standard and Extreme tests, we will only be looking at the scores for Ice Storm Unlimited.

The HTC One M9 was slightly disappointing on this benchmark, as we expected it to surpass the Galaxy S6's Mali-T760 GPU like the G Flex 2 did. Nevertheless, benchmark performance was still quite good and it surpassed last year's HTC One M8 (which again, may already have been benefiting from benchmarking boosting).

Imaging

For the better part of two years, HTC has been championing a technology called UltraPixels, with the idea that instead of piling on the megapixels, you have a camera module with bigger pixels and larger photosites, which somehow leads to better quality pictures. Convinced? Probably not, and we're not even sure HTC still believes in UltraPixels, as they've been given the backseat in this year's HTC One M9, relegated to the 4-megapixel front-facing camera. Instead, on the back of the M9, you'll find a regular 20.7-megapixel f/2.2 shooter. 

Moreover, last year's Duo camera is gone, which means those gimmicky effects like focus change and background sketch effects are gone. You still have a Bokeh mode as one of the camera options, but its more basic than last year's uFocus, and basically just blurs the background. It's a bit hit or miss; you can get some decent enough pictures, but it doesn't do a great job at determining the exact edges of the object/person you're shooting.

HTC's default camera mode is actually one of the better ones we've seen, and offers an easy to use interface for adjusting exposure, ISO and white balance. There's also a mode select that lets you pre-select a range of scene options, including a manual mode that lets you adjust shutter speed and focus. As with most smartphones, you can use the volume key as a shutter release, although you'll have to set it up to do so. If you prefer, you can also set volume up/down to control zoom in/out. The camera will do burst mode shots at up to 20 at a time, but it's ridiculously slow between shots.

If you're keen on recording videos, the HTC One M9 can shoot in 4K, but it will only record for six minutes at a time.

Image quality on the M9 was fairly good and sharp throughout the image. However, we noted noise control was a tad aggressive, giving rise to splotchy areas as compared to another leading flagship smartphone like the Samsung Galaxy S6 that resolves this scene better.

Unfortunately, there's no optical image stabilization so it might take you a few attempts to get a non-blurry shot. We also noticed some slight barrel distortion at close-medium focal ranges (evident below).

Battery Life

HTC has somehow managed to cram a larger capacity 2,840mAh battery into the One M9, up from 2,600mAh on the One M8. This makes it one of the largest around, which is pretty impressive considering its 5-inch display. As with previous versions of the HTC One, the battery is sealed and non-removable.

Our standard battery test for mobile phones includes the following parameters:

• Looping a 800 x 480-pixel video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

Disappointingly, despite the increase in battery capacity and the supposedly more efficient Snapdragon 810 processor, the M9 fared worse than last year's M8, lasting just short of eight hours. In fact, the only phone that performed worse here was the Samsung Galaxy S6, which has a QHD resolution display.

Like Samsung's Galaxy S6, the HTC One M9 is equipped with fast battery charging. HTC is using Qualcomm's QuickCharge 2.0 technology, which will get you to about 60 percent in just 30 minutes. Unfortunately (unlike the S6), the HTC One M9's fast charging requires a special charger, which isn't included in the box and won't even be sold in stores in Singapore. You'll have to pick one up online. Since we're  unable to personally test that aspect on the HTC One M9, do check out the effectiveness of Qualcom's QuickCharge 2.0 in our recent review of the Motorola Nexus 6 review where we've some details and notes of it in action.

Portability

We measure the portability of a device by calculating its battery life to (weight x volume) ratio. Despite its slightly reduced size and weight, the One M9 actually fared a point worse than last year's M8 due to its shorter battery life.

Conclusion

Make no mistake, the HTC One M9 is a good phone, boasting a combination of luxurious looks and premium materials with a comfortable and ergonomic shape, an excellent display and the best audio available on a smartphone. It's also one of the few flagship smartphones left these days with expandable storage. But for all its good points, there's just nothing particularly exciting about it.

Two years ago, HTC was breaking new ground and leading the way with the HTC One, but now it's HTC's competitors that are doing the innovating. Say what you will about Samsung and LG's curved displays, or LG's back button design, at least they're trying something new and exciting. The HTC One's feature set hasn't really grown in two years, and even the Duo camera, one of last year's big features, is gone this year. Things like a fingerprint scanner (currently only available on the phablet-sized HTC One Max) or even a heart-rate monitor would be welcome additions.

Additionally, areas which HTC have focused on, like the camera and battery life, arguably the two most important features of any smartphone, didn't really impress us, and the M9 isn't even a definite upgrade over last year's model in either of these categories. As a result, we wouldn't recommend current owners of the HTC One M8 to upgrade just yet.

Ultimately, despite the lack of innovation or any major upgrades, the One M9 is still a good phone, but it leaves a very big question hanging over HTC's head. Where does it go from here?

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