Android worshippers sniffing out for the next flagship device may be interested in the new HTC flagship, One A9, announced earlier today in the U.S. For starter, it has a fresh design. Phew. Thankfully. For some reason, the attempt to ‘replicate’ Apple’s two-year-one-design concept with the M8/M9 doesn’t turn out quite well for HTC. But not to worry, the new A9 is rather fresh and attractive aesthetically, though it does look a little iPhone 6-ish. Still, it is a nice design. At least, it doesn’t seem to hurt our eyes – for now.
Attributing to the good look is a “super thin metal frame” construction paired to edge-to-edge Corning Gorilla Glass 4 over a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED display. Under the hood, surprisingly, it does go with the current crowd favorite 800 series Snapdragon. Instead, it gets a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 chip with a 64-bit octacore processor, which comprises of 4 core running at 1.5GHz and another four, at 1.2GHz. Two configurations are expected: a 16GB storage with 2GB RAM and a 32GB version that comes with 3GB RAM. Both of which will come with an external microSD card slot, supporting up to 2TB. That said, One A9 users shouldn’t have storage crunch, since with Android 6.0 (which the A9’s Sense will be based on), you can actually format the device to make the microSD as part of the internal storage.
Imaging on the One A9 is also an area HTC is particularly proud of. It gets a 13-megapixel BSI sensor main camera with Optical Image Stabilization, f2.0 lens with sapphire cover lens, and auto-focus. No 4K recording though; 1080p is the best it makes, but it does have hyper lapse feature and offers creative control with RAW capture in Pro mode. The front gets a fixed-focus UltraPixel camera with f2.0 and 1080p videoing.
On the audio reproduction department, A9 ditches the front-facing speakers, though BoomSound with Dolby Audio and DAC support for 192kHz/24-bit audio are still in the order. Personal audio also gets an upgrade with a “super high output headphone amp capable driving even the biggest headphones at high volume.” HTC claims One A9 is capable of pumping out hi-fi sounds with low harmonic distortion and with higher signal-to-noise ratio and better stereo separation.
Keeping the device juiced is a rather modest 2,150 mAh battery pack (non-removable, not surprisingly) with Quick Charge 2.0 support that offers up to 16 hours of talk time on 3G and up to 18 days of standby time. The rest of the features are pretty much standard to today’s smartphones, including dual-band wireless ac, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS with GLONASS and a bunch of sensors (fingerprint sensor, included). And no. USB Type-C is not on the checklist, unfortunately. Also, in case you are wondering about its footprint, the HTC One A9 measures 145.75 x 70.8 mm and is just 7.26mm thin. The HTC One A9 will hit the market, globally, in early November.
There is an unlocked version, which promised to get every Android update within 15 days of when Google pushes out to Nexus devices, too. To sweeten the deal, HTC will let you muck around the boot loader without messing up the warranty and get this: it will be shipped with “less preinstalled software” too. Clearly, HTC is all-out in enticing geeks to pick up the One A9 and maybe even luring music lovers in the process as it will come with six months free Google Music, right out-of-the-box. And finally, the unlocked edition will also be treated to HTC Uh-Oh protection plan.
While the ‘regular’ HTC One A9 will be available in November with an yet-to-be known sticker, the unlocked version is already open for pre-order in the U.S. through HTC website, priced at $399.99 a pop. Commercial/ads lovers may want to scroll down for the official promo video of the HTC One A9. Hint: no Robert there.
