However, HTC is neither completely out of the market nor is it on the verge of closing down. It is reported that the company is preparing a Nexus device to be launched in 2016. 2016 is expected to be a good year for HTC. The company launched One A9 in December last year. This was the company’s first phone apart from the Nexus range that runs on Android 6.0. Some features similar to Apple’s current iPhone have also been seen in HTC One A9. Today we will review this HTC phone and find out how well this phone lives up to our expectations.
Look and design
The HTC One A9 looks a lot like the iPhone 6s (Review). With a flat metal rear, thickness, unibody design, curved edges, antenna lines, protruding camera and speaker grille at the bottom, the phone looks similar to Apple’s flagship smartphone. However, the HTC One A9 is larger than the iPhone 6s and has the iconic HTC logo on the front and back. The rear camera of the phone is placed in the middle instead of the top left corner.
It is worth noting that the antenna lines, metallic unibody and curved edges were used by HTC much before the iPhone 6 and 6s were launched. Apart from this, its front part is different from the iPhone and it looks like HTC One M9+ (fingerprint sensor). There are definitely some similarities between iPhone and HTC One A9 but it would be wrong to say that HTC has completely copied the design of iPhone. Nor has the A9 been designed by looking at the success of Apple design.
Overall, we find the HTC One A9 to be a great looking smartphone. The phone is slim, sleek and beautiful in all the colour variants and is easy to use. The power and volume buttons are on the right side of the phone while the speaker grill, micro-USB port and 3.5mm socket are at the bottom. The SIM and microSD card slots are on the right side. The power button has a rough texture which makes it distinguishable from the volume buttons.
This HTC smartphone has a selfie camera, earpiece and proximity sensor on the top on the front. The fingerprint sensor is on the bottom. The phone has onscreen buttons instead of capacitive Android buttons. The fingerprint sensor can also be used as a home button, but you can disable it as per your convenience. The phone can be activated by motion launch gesture or by touching the fingerprint sensor. If you have activated the sensor, the phone gets unlocked by just touching the scanner. You can store up to five fingerprints in the phone, which you can use to unlock the phone and for support apps like 1Password.
HTC One A9 has a 5-inch full HD AMOLED panel. Corning Gorilla Glass protection is also provided. Being an AMOLED screen, you may feel some warmth in the color tone but this is not a problem. We feel that a little warmth is necessary for the screen to be good for the eyes. The colors pop and the blacks are deep which makes the display more dramatic and dynamic. Apart from all this, the sharpness of the display is excellent and with the full HD panel, the screen gives a great experience.
Specifications and software
The HTC One A9 is powered by a 1.5GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor. The 617 processor, which succeeds the 615 and 616, is designed to offer better performance and battery life, faster LTE speeds, better Wi-Fi capabilities and supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 technology. The HTC One A9 supports Quick Charge 2.0 technology but the charger that comes with it does not support this technology. However, we charged the battery with another Quick Charge 2.0 capable charger and found that the phone charged very quickly.
Along with this, the A9 smartphone has 3 GB RAM, 32 GB internal storage. Internal storage can be increased to 200 GB with the help of microSD card. The phone supports Wi-Fi 802.11n, 802.11ac and 4G connectivity on single nano SIM slot. The phone has a 2150 mAh battery. Bluetooth 4.1 and HTC BoomSound audio enhancement software are also inbuilt. The specifications of A9 are quite good which are mostly found in flagship smartphones.
The HTC One is the company’s first phone to run Android 6.0 after the Nexus 5X (Review) and Nexus 6P (Review). All the main features of Marshmallow work fine on the phone, including Doze mode, Now on Tap and app permissions.
HTC promised quick system updates at the time of launch and promised that the device will get the latest firmware update within 15 days. There was an OTA update to Android 6.0.1 at the time of our testing. Apart from a few issues and security updates, this HTC phone supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 technology.
HTC’s Sense UI has been given on the phone. Most of the things in the phone are according to Android. But this does not mean that this phone does not have a typical HTC feel. But if we talk about ease, then the phone has become better in both performance and work.
The biggest difference we noticed in this variant of the HTC is the quick settings menu. The notification shade and app switcher are similar to stock Android. Some HTC apps like HTC Backup, HTC Music, HTC Internet Browser and Scribble have been removed. Instead, the phone has a focus on Google apps like Google Drive, Chrome and Play Music. However, many signature apps like Calendar, Clock, Gallery, Camera and Weather and Sense Home are still present in the phone. This makes the HTC One A9 a better phone.
Camera
HTC One A9 has a 13 megapixel rear camera with dual tone LED flash. There is a 4 megapixel ‘Ultrapixel’ front camera. Full HD videos can be recorded from both the cameras. All modes like manual, hyperlapse, slow-motion video and panorama are also provided. Along with this, both the cameras come with HDR and optical image stabilization feature.
The camera app on the HTC One A9 is a little different from the camera app on many previous HTC smartphones but has always been easy and convenient to use. The flash, camera switcher and HDR buttons are easily accessible in the camera app while Panorama, Pro, Hyperlapse and slow-motion video can be enabled from a mode menu. Video recording is also a one-step process and various other settings such as photo and video resolution, geotagging, grid are also easily accessible. The camera app is easy to use and setting the motion launch gesture makes the camera quick to use from sleep mode.
The phone’s primary camera can take good pictures in all kinds of lighting. The colour reproduction of the pictures is excellent while the colours and brightness of the pictures are also perfect. The detail of the pictures is neither too good nor bad. However, the pictures taken in low light come with good detail.
Close up shots taken with the phone’s camera are good. The close up shots that come with detail are also excellent in sharpness. Video recording is also great and modes like hyperlapse and slow-motion can make video recording a fun experience. Good selfies can be taken with the phone’s front camera even in low light. Apart from all this, optical image stabilization does not require much effort to take good pictures.
Performance
HTC One A9 has Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and Adreno 405 GPU for graphics. The phone has 3 GB RAM. This HTC smartphone is fast to run and easy to use. Despite the metal body, the phone does not heat up too much during charging and this problem is not faced in the phone even while playing games or watching heavy videos.
During the benchmark test of the phone, we saw impressive figures.
HTC is known for front stereo speakers in its phones but the single speaker at the bottom of One A9 disappoints us. The speaker produces good sound but there is some problem. However, the phone has inbuilt BoomSound technology for volume and Dolby tuning is also provided.
The phone performs well on both 4G and Wi-Fi networks. While other devices face problems with network and Wi-Fi signals, we got a consistently good response from the HTC One A9. The voice quality of the phone is also excellent. The battery of the HTC One A9 lasted 9 hours and 35 minutes in our loop test, which can be said to be fine according to the size of the battery. The battery does not last the whole day on continuous heavy use and 4G connection.
Our verdict
HTC is mostly known for its flagship smartphone products in the M-series but the company has also launched some memorable phones in the affordable segment. With the One A9, HTC has introduced a new category below the flagship smartphone. The HTC One A9 may not be a show stopper but it is a well balanced phone with decent price and features.
The HTC One A9 looks good with a great screen, good performance, up-to-date software, a good fingerprint sensor and good cameras. The phone has all the basic features including great network and Wi-Fi capabilities, good audio call quality. The only real drawbacks of this smartphone are battery life and the audio from its single speaker. This phone with an iPhone-like design is available for Rs 29,990. At this price, HTC has provided all the necessary features to the user and this smartphone can give a tough competition to the Samsung Galaxy A5 (2016).
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