In what was not at all a surprise, HTC announced its M9 smartphone today at Mobile World Congress. The HTC One M9 is the successor to the One M8 and thus is the new flagship device for the company.
It's built to be admired, and HTC waxed long about the phone's metal edges and curves, and its all-metal unibody design. Available in gunmetal black, gold, silver, and pink metallic finishes (some of them two-tone), the HTC One M9 was designed with a combination of the HTC One 7's unibody construction and the One 8's shape.
The 5-inch display is a Full HD affair. Under the hood, the One M9 sports an octacore Snapdragon 810 chip (4 x 2 GHz + 4 x 1.5 GHz) with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage (expandable to 128 GB with the microSD slot). The 4G LTE device offers a 20 MP rear-facing camera with autofocus and a BSI sensor; it has an f/2.2, 27.8 mm lens, and it supports 4K video recording. (Those candid one-minute spots of your kids just got seriously hi-res.)
The front camera, an HTC UltraPixel, can shoot in 1080p HD and has a BSI sensor and f/2.0, 26.8 mm lens.
Sensors include ambient light, proximity, accelerometer, compass, gyro, magnetic and a sensor hub. Connectivity options are copious; in addition to the predictable Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) with Bluetooth 4.1 with aptX, the One M9 supports DLNA, HDMI, MHL 2.0, CIR, micro-USB 2.0, NFC, and HTC Connect, which is a wireless media streaming feature.
The 2840 mAh battery promises up to 25.4 hours of talk time over 2G or 21.7 hours over 3G (none of which are particularly helpful metrics for determining real-world performance), and it can standby for up to 402 hours on 3G.
There are front-facing 5.1-channel surround Boom Sound speakers, too.
HTC was sure to emphasize its HTC Sense 7 UI, which boasts a new HTC EYE Experience photo editing app, fun value adds such as restaurant recommendations, a Home Widgets that shows apps based on location, and a Theme feature that generates themes on the fly from a photo, like Action launcher.
Global availability is coming mid-March.
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