After much hype, numerous leaks and uncountable renders, the HTC One M9 is now official. The phone brings some new specs and some new features but from layman’s perspective the smartphone does look like its older brother HTC One M8. We do an early comparison between the two phones to find out how much of an upgrade is on offer..
Display
Yes, the foremost thing on a smartphone is a display and looking at the specs it is quite clear that HTC is stuck with the same old 5-inch Super LCD3 panel. From the looks of it, it seems that HTC One M8 and HTC one M9 have pretty much identical LCD displays. The LCD panel is top notch but the resolution could have been better like the 2K one on the Samsung Galaxy S6.
Design
The design of the HTC One M9 is again, pretty much the same as the HTC One M8. The unibody design of the smartphone is good as ever and this time around HTC has given the back of the smartphone a brushed metal look. HTC has also added a dual tone colour scheme in the mix, with a different colour rim to the rest of the phone.
SoC
The HTC One M9 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC which is an expected upgrade over last year’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 SoC used by the HTC One M8. The new SoC brings performance increase and also puts the new smartphone at par with its rivals.
Camera
After being criticised for using an unconventional camera as a primary camera in the One M8, HTC has returned back to basics and this time around is using a conventional 20.7MP camera with the One M9. The only niggle with the new camera could be that it lacks OIS, whereas all its rivals are expected to make it the new standard this year.
Front-facing Ultrapixel
The Ultra-pixel from the HTC One M8 has been moved to the front of the HTC One M9. This makes low light selfies a much easier task since the Ultra Pixel camera is a better performer in low light conditions.
Boom Sound Speakers
Boom Sound speakers are a much liked feature on flagship HTC phones and the feature evolves to yet another level with this new flagship. HTC has partnered with Dolby to give its customers a better audio experience with the HTC One M9.
Memory
On the memory front, the HTC One M9 comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. This is a considerable increase over the HTC One M8 which came with 2GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage. Like the HTC One M8, the HTC One M9 also features a microSD card slot with a storage capacity of upto 128GB.
OS
As expected from HTC, the HTC One M9 comes with Android Lollipop 5.0 out of the box with Sense 7 UI on top of it. As for HTC One M8, it will get the new Android Lollipop update later this year.