There are a lot of significant changes from the M8,and that includes the weird removal of the dual rear camera on the M8. This is not welcome AT ALL ,as the M9 cannot take badass DOF photos like the M8 could. The new sensor is,sorry to say,crappy and I don't like it. Boomsound has come again ,and other phone speakers have to take 2nd place as the first place is reserved for these babies. The battery is not too awesome,but it'll do for most users as it easily got me 3.5 hours of SOT which is okay
Before I start the review,here's a quick flashback of the M8 and the new M9.
Now that that's over,to the full review:
DESIGN
Classic HTC design with the squarish camera behind the full metal frame with flash and Laser AF modules next to it. The speakers occupy the front space,with an ultrapixel FFC. The capacitive buttons take up the front bottom space,and just above the screen is the light sensor and earpiece/speaker. The top speaker is interrupted briefly on the left by the camera and the side bezels are aiight. The USB port sits idle on the bottom of the phone. The phone is not the slimmest around,measuring in at 9.6mm thick,and not the lightest either at 157g. The design is all metal and glass and no creaks or noises whatsoever when bent. The power button and volume rockers are on the right,and the phone just looks great. Subtle HTC brandings occupy the rear position,just like Mi phones and the all metal build is seamless. All in all,the design is top notch and hard to beat,even now. I'll give out some photos now:
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| Sim tray is on the left. |
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| Not too much change in slimness over its predecessor |
DISPLAY
It is a 5" 1080p display with a pixel density of 441ppi. This means that the display is bright and crisp,and text and images viewed in it seem to pop off the display. It looks soooo amazing. The display can get pretty bright outside,though most of the crispiness is lost outdoors in the sun. It's not an AMOLED,so blacks are not as amazing as AMOLED,but they DO get pretty black and not grey like some IPS counterparts. Also,its viewing angles are great.
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| Can you see the pixels? |
PERFORMANCE
As you might have noticed,I didn't jump to the camera section because the camera isn't so great. But performance is. It runs a dated(now) Snapdragon 810 chip with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Not top of the line specs today,but remember that this phone rocked in 2016 when it was released. It obtained 52852 in AnTuTu benchmark and 960 in the single core Geekbench 4 test ,3840 in the multi core test,which is good and places it in the top charts for last year.
CAMERA
20MP sounds great right? Well,it would have been great,if HTC used a regular Sony sensor and not an unknown Panasonic Sensor. This sensor not only makes photos washed out,there's just this lackluster effect on the camera that deals a devastating blow to picture taking. Dynamic range is bad,color reproduction is off course,and night shots are questionable. This camera just down cast me for the rest of the day after first using it. Bad move HTC,bad move.
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The flash does get very bright,but not a saviour to the camera.
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| I assure you,the leaves were dark green. But it's a great photo. |
Other photos:
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| I won't lie this one is great. |
BATTERY LIFE
Okay. By now,you probably know not to buy this phone for its camera. But here's a reason why you should buy it. The battery life. It has a 2840mAh battery and I always got at least 4hrs of SOT with mobile data on,brightness 70% and speakers full when watching any video. The screen was hardly off all day. One time,I watched a 2hr long movie on max brightness with 50% and ended the movie with 35%. Battery life is not Infinix Note 3 amazing,but it'll hold its own. HTC also included some battery saving features,and they work all right.
CONNECTIVITY
It has Bluetooth 4.1,WiFi and pegging on to 4G was not a problem. The only flaw is that it doesn't support 4G only mode,but head over to Geek.ng to learn a hack to fix this.
AUDIO(It's pretty damn awesome!!!)
Max volume produced absolutely NO distortions in audio quality. I don't know if these speakers were meant for real speakers,because they do get really loud. If that's not enough,you can still plug in your HiFi headphones,cause it has a DAC that supports this.
WRAP UP
Great phone for the price. So should you buy this phone? Meh....on a scale of 1-10,I'd say 6.5. If you want something flagship grade with badass audio and you sontvwant to pay a fortune you can look here.
As at the time of writing this review,some resellers offer the phone for N60000. Not too bad. Oh,and the software is HYC's own Sense UI on Android Lollipop. So..... yeah. That's all. Here's a quick rundown of the specs,should I have forgotten anything.
| DISPLAY |
|---|
| Type | Super LCD3 capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors |
| Size | 5.0 inches (~68.4% screen-to-body ratio) |
| Resolution | 1080 x 1920 pixels (~441 ppi pixel density) |
| Multitouch | Yes |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass 3 |
| - HTC Sense UI 7.0 |
| PLATFORM |
|---|
| OS | Android 5.0 (Lollipop), upgradable to 7.0 (Nougat) |
| Chipset | Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 |
| CPU | Octa-core (4x1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A57) |
| GPU | Adreno 430 |
| CAMERA |
|---|
| Primary | 20 MP, f/2.2, 28mm, autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash, check quality |
| Features | 1/2.4" sensor size, 1.2 µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, HDR, panorama |
| Video | 2160p@30fps, 1080p@60fps, 720p@120fps, HDR, stereo sound rec., check quality |
| Secondary | 4 MP, f/2.0, 27mm, 1/3" sensor size, 2µm pixel size, 1080p@30fps, HDR |
| SOUND |
|---|
| Alert types | Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones |
| Loudspeaker | Yes, with stereo speakers |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes |
| - 24-bit/192kHz audio
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic |
| COMMS |
|---|
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot |
| Bluetooth | 4.1, A2DP, aptX |
| GPS | Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS |
| NFC | Yes |
| Infrared port | Yes |
| Radio | Stereo FM radio, RDS |
| USB | microUSB 2.0 (MHL 3.0 TV-out), USB Host |
| FEATURES |
|---|
| Sensors | Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass |
| Messaging | SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email |
| Browser | HTML5 |
| Java | No |
| - Fast battery charging (Quick Charge 2.0)
- Google Drive (100 GB cloud storage)
- XviD/MP4/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV/FLAC player
- Document editor
- Photo/video editor |
| BATTERY |
|---|
| Non-removable Li-Po 2840 mAh battery |
| Stand-by | Up to 391 h (2G) / Up to 402 h (3G) |
| Talk time | Up to 25 h 20 min (2G) / Up to 21 h 50 min (3G) |
Source: GSM arena.
Thanks for stopping by and please ,keep it Tycoontech friends.
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