That's what we've got in the One M9. It's still a ways off from fulfilling the vision that HTC's design wonks have in mind, but in most ways it's a very thoughtful refinement of what made the One series so special. Your pleas and complaints haven't gone unheard. Thing is, when the One M9 does try new things -- be they software features or hardware changes -- it doesn't always stick the landing.
84
HTC
One M9
Pros
- Great performance
- Top-tier build quality
- Sense 7 is lightweight and thoughtful
- Quick charging works well
Cons
- Main camera is lackluster
- Screen isn't as vivid as last year's model
- BoomSound speakers lack some oomph
- Battery life is sometimes hit-or-miss
Summary
HTC's 2015 flagship was designed to feel more premium than previous
models, but it runs the risk of feeling dated two years on. It's sturdy
and plenty powerful with its Snapdragon 810 chipset, but the M9's
20-megapixel camera doesn't seem any better than the UltraPixel shooter
HTC ditched, and the occasional software quirk raises eyebrows.
Hardware
It's impossible not to compare the M9 to the Ones that came before it, which leads to some simple shorthand for HTC's design work this year: Put simply, it's almost like the M7 and M8 had a baby. Where the M8 was polished and curvaceous like a river stone -- a choice that meant the thing slid around more than some liked -- the M9 channels more of the original One M7's angularity. HTC's newest flagship feels intensely familiar as a result, but that's not to say that everything HTC did was for the best.
Anyway, more on that later. Let's start with the broad strokes. The M9's sloping back would look almost identical to its predecessors were it not for some major camera changes: Last year's Duo Camera UltraPixel setup has been replaced with a single, squarish, sapphire-covered pod that hosts a more traditional 20-megapixel shooter. None of that changes how comfortably the M9 settles into the hand, thankfully. You'll find the nano-SIM and microSD card slots (the latter of which takes cards up to a whopping 2TB) nestled into the left and right edges, respectively, just where they were last year. The lengthy volume rocker that ran down the previous phone's side has been split into two discrete buttons, though, and the sleep/wake key has been moved below it and was given a neat spiral pattern so you can tell the difference without looking.
Come to think of it, it's that kind of minute change that seems emblematic of the M9's overall aesthetic. In most ways, we're still dealing with the same One DNA we always have, just peppered with a handful of modifications meant to make the whole thing feel more premium. Consider the color, for one: My review unit is the same two-toned, rose-gold-and-silver affair I first played with back in Spain at MWC, and it's still just as polarizing as it was a few weeks ago. I've grown inordinately fond of the color combination, though others who saw it were less than impressed by the company flinging itself onto a gold-hued bandwagon. Thankfully, you'll be able to pick up full-on silver or gunmetal models shortly too.
Yep, that's right, "mostly." The biggest physical offender is hard to miss: The gold edge that runs around the M9's sides terminates in a pronounced ridge that feels completely out of place. Some will mind it less than others -- it does make the M9's body feel less slippery than the M8's -- but a colleague summed up my feelings best when he said it was like having the edge of a butter knife pressed into your palm. Possible butterfinger moments aside, the beauty of the M8's curves was that it made the physicality of the phone sort of fade into the background. Not so this time. At least that edge won't catch on your pockets when you whip your phone out.
All told, it'd be easy to snipe at HTC for playing it too safe this year. I had to fight the temptation to do so myself. Like it or not, HTC's design chiefs have a clear sense of what they want their flagships to look and feel like and they seem more than happy to chip away in a single direction year after year. That's just great for their sense of artistry, but we'll see if people actually flock to a phone that doesn't look like a dramatic improvement over the ones that came before.
Display and sound
The M9's LCD is altogether much cooler than the M8's, which makes for crisper, more neutral whites at the expense of slightly less impactful blacks. I spend more time than I'd like to admit poking around on Instagram every day, but the difference couldn't have been any clearer than there -- colors were much punchier on the M8's screen, while the flower, puppy, graffiti and food pictures Instagram is notorious for came across as less saturated and, dare I say, neutered on the M9. Your mileage may vary (I've always preferred the slight oversaturation of AMOLED screens), but a certain dose of pop that made some photos come alive on last year's model is gone here, and I'm frankly bummed because of it.
That doesn't mean the M9 is necessarily worse, just that it seems to be tuned a little differently. HTC has Dolby Audio running in the background to help give those speakers some more oomph, and I can't help but wonder if that extra software isn't to blame -- too bad there's no way to turn it off. If you're feeling really picky, you can toggle between Music and Theater modes in the settings, but I honestly couldn't make out the difference either way.
Software
Sense 7's look is pretty vanilla (and pretty Material Design-y) right out of the box. A clock widget stares back at you like it always has; BlinkFeed lives to the left of the home screen; and your app launcher is set up vertically with a customizable grid. Typical. The first new addition you'll see is the Sense Home widget, and its raison d'etre is simple -- it wants to show you apps you actually want when you're at home, work or just out somewhere. Once you've defined your home and work locations, it does a solid job of remembering what apps you tend to use where, even if it does take a while for your preferences to stick. Thankfully, you can just drag and drop your most-used apps right into the folder
It's actually a pretty great idea, but a feature like this is only really worth a damn if it knows what you like. Alas, the suggestions BlinkFeed has offered up so far haven't been earthshakers -- they just point out highly rated eateries near you, and there doesn't seem to be a way to connect it to your Yelp account to give it a sense of your tastes. Missed opportunity, HTC. If you're anything like me, though, you'll be so used to unlocking a dark screen with a swipe up that the in-your-face recommendations might go completely unnoticed anyway.
I haven't enjoyed a Sense-ified build this much in years, but it sure isn't perfect. For me, the biggest immediate sin is the keyboard, or more specifically, its auto-corrections. They're terrible. I'm normally willing to cut these international units some extra slack on this front, but even with the input language set to United States English, the auto-corrections and assumptions it made led to countless errors that seem puzzling in their stupidity. Is "Im" so frequently used that the keyboard never tries to swap in an "I'm" instead? "Thjng" was never, ever successfully corrected, even though I clearly meant "thing". Having an Enter key right below Backspace also meant malformed messages went out almost as frequently as proper ones. Thankfully, the Google Keyboard is just a few quick taps away in the Play Store.
The Sense Home widget also recommends new apps to you in a special folder by default. It's easy enough to ditch completely, but it rubs me the wrong way for two reasons. First, HTC hasn't ruled out the possibility of sponsored suggestions, and I don't really want HTC's financial partnerships getting in the way of my carefully cultivated home screen. Second, and more important, some of these suggestions are just awful. For some reason, about a week into testing, it suggested I download an app for the Turkish equivalent of Seamless and an apparently Korean-made app that links to YouTube videos of Billboard Top 100 songs. Just... what? I'm willing to chalk this up as some quirk inherent to international models, but man, is this just silly.
Camera
In bright, consistent light, the M9 fires off detailed photos with nicely reproduced colors -- they can be a little washed out compared to the M8, though, and the cooler screen on the M9 doesn't help them look any better. Here's the rub: You'd expect this thing to be uniformly better than the UltraPixel shooter HTC's been pushing, but that's just not always the case. I'm not just talking about low-light situations where the UltraPixel camera truly shines, either. Sometimes the M9 comes through with crisper details; other times the M8 seems to do a better job. Sometimes the M9 has richer, more accurately exposed colors; sometimes it doesn't. You get where I'm going with this. It's such a mixed bag that I'm honestly surprised HTC gave in to the simplicity of advertising a camera based on its megapixel count at all. When the company dropped the news, I think we were all hoping the company's megapixel gamble would pay off in spades. Well, not so much. At least the UltraPixel selfie camera still works the way you'd expect. The lens is wide enough to capture most of your crew come Groufie time and, as usual, it excels in darker climes like bars and clubs (though you might come out looking a little pink for your liking).
On the plus side, HTC's Camera app is still one of the more in-depth we've seen ship on a smartphone, and it's easy enough to dismiss gritty technical bits like exposure control, ISO and white balance if you'd rather not bother. Oh, a quick heads-up to all those serious mobile photographers -- the M9 technically supports shooting RAW photos, but good luck getting that to work without a little dedicated developer support. Swiping to the left and right still lets you hop among Panorama, Selfie and standard Photo modes, and they're actually labeled this time too! It's all about the little things sometimes. Delve deep enough into the settings and you'll discover that HTC has finally put together a phone that can shoot video in 4K, though it'll only record 6 minutes of super high-def footage in a go. Sadly, most of my test recordings suffered from the same washed-out look that the M9's photos had trouble with during most of my weeks testing.
Performance and battery life
Now about that elephant in the room. Yes, the M9 can get almost uncomfortably warm if you make it a point to push it hard -- I noticed it mostly during my repeated benchmark testing, which most average users will never, ever have to worry about. The M9's all-metal chassis still gets warm during more normal hardware-intensive tasks like bashing zombies in the face in Dead Trigger 2, but considerably less so than during benchmarks and never to the point where I was worried about hurting myself. By now, it's more than clear that the 810 isn't a particularly cool customer, and HTC gets some props for trying to mitigate the issue before the M9's official launch. That said, the company's approach to thermal throttling seems to have had an effect on the numbers the phone put up -- the One M9 and the G Flex2 were just about neck and neck throughout the whole process, save for a few tests where the M9 scored consistently lower.
| HTC One M9 | LG G Flex2 | Samsung Galaxy Note Edge | iPhone 6 Plus | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AndEBench Pro | 7,404 | 7,167 | 8,886 | N/A |
| Vellamo 3.0 | 2,874 | 4,684 | 1,882 | N/A |
| 3DMark IS Unlimited | 21,409 | 22,207 | 19,912 | 17,902 |
| SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms) | 706 | 667 | 788 | 388 |
| GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps) | 22 | 21 | 18.4 | 18.2 |
| CF-Bench | 53,579 | 68,426 | 40,143 | N/A |
| SunSpider: Lower scores are better. | ||||
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