The highly anticipates iPhone like HTC device the HTC One A9 finally debuts with high-end specs.
Taiwanese company introduces its second hero handset of the year in the One A9. This 5-inch smartphone will be among the first to ship with the latest Android Marshmallow software on board, and it will be available to buy unlocked for an attractive price of $399.99.
It’s also the most blatant and highest-profile iPhone ripoff since Samsung’s original Galaxy S.
Having spent the past two years cultivating a signature aluminum unibody look with its One series, HTC has now abandoned much of that heritage in favor of some unabashed iPhone cloning.
BoomSound stereo speakers on the front, replaced by a capacitive home button with an integrated fingerprint reader.
The One A9 has a 2,150mAh battery, a Snapdragon 617 processor, and a 1080p display, but it makes the absolute most of them. Performance is delightfully fluid and quick, which for me has been a revelation having recently suffered through Sony’s flawed and stuttery Xperia software.
There’s a new 13-megapixel sensor residing behind an f/2.0 lens and a sapphire cover. Optical image stabilization finally makes its return to the One series, having been absent since the M7 in 2013. HTC refuses to call this its best camera ever, but I can already tell you that it is. The biggest letdown of the One M9 has been rectified.
There’s no option for 4K video recording, but you can shoot 1080p from both the rear camera and the one on the front, which is the same UltraPixel camera that was featured on the back of the HTC One M8 and the front of the M9. That gives HTC’s new smartphone a truly excellent selfie camera.
Unlike Galaxy S series or Apple’s iPhones, the home button on HTC’s One A9 can’t be pressed in and offers only vibration feedback. That makes it feel odd at first, but once you adapt, it’s just as swift as the others and satisfyingly quick and accurate.
The best place to buy the HTC One A9 will indisputably be the United States. HTC is pricing the SIM-unlocked handset at $399.99 with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Along with that, buyers will get six free months of unlimited Google Play Music and HTC’s Uh Oh Protection, which allows for one free replacement should your phone break or you decide to switch carriers at any point in the first 12 months. The One A9 will be available on all US carriers, with one variant covering AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint, and a separate set of bands supported for Verizon. Outside of the US, though, pricing skyrockets, with the UK cost of £429.99 translating to an eye-watering $665. Worse yet, the One A9 in the UK comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, compounding the issue.
All variants of the One A9 across the world will include a microSD card slot as well as 100GB of free Google Drive storage (except for China, where the phone won’t include Google Mobile Services).
