HTC, the Taiwanese tech giant took the wraps off One A9 long time back but the device was available for purchase only recently carrying a price tag of INR 29,990 exclusively from online retailer Snapdeal. HTC has a lot riding on this smartphone and it is their Android version of iPhone, from the looks it appears to be at least. Lets find out what is so special about this smartphone and how much water does this holds!
HTC One A9 Quick Specifications
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[stbpro id=”info”]Also See: HTC One A9 FAQ Pros, Cons, User Queries and Answers[/stbpro]
HTC One A9 Hands On Review [Video]
Design And Build Quality
HTC is credited with designing some of the best looking phones on the planet and continuing the trend HTC made One A9. It has already been said a million times before for this smartphone that it resembles iPhone 6 in its entirety so much that it has been called android version of iPhone 6. Like other members of HTC One family A9 too flaunts a full metal design and a more compact build unlike other HTC smartphones. Visually it looks astounding and extremely appealing.
Rounded corners and a panel of 2.5D curved glass at the front adds to the elegance of this phone and it feels super awesome while holding and is not slippery at all. It looks premium and feels premium despite the design. In short it is quite a looker and there is no way you can dislike this smartphone.
Coming to the placements it has Volume rocker and Power key placed on the right side of the panel with a nice feel to them.
The 3.5 mm earphone jack is placed on the bottom of the phone along with micro USB port in the middle and speaker grill. This phone lacks the HTC’s trademark Boomsound speakers.
On the other side there is a hybrid sim tray that doubles up as micro SD card holder and a normal sim tray to support dual sim functionality.
Display
HTC One A9 flaunts a 5 inches Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) AMOLED display with a pixel density of 441 PPI and looks truly astounding. It is the first time HTC is using AMOLED display for any of its phones and this really makes this phone special. Viewing angles are excellent with good contrast levels. The phone maintains ample brightness levels even in sunny conditions which makes it one of the best displays available in market right now. Though you should not compare it with 2K or Quad HD displays out there.
HTC One A9 Photo Gallery
User Interface
HTC One A9 gets the taste of latest flavor of Android i.e it runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box with HTC’s Sense UI 7 on top of it. According to HTC this phone will get every software update pushed by Google to its Nexus devices within 15 days which sounds promising. The user interface is nice and fluid and rocking every Marshmallow feature which makes the experience much more delightful. It comes with usual HTC goodies like Blinkfeed launcher and Sense Home widgets. Sense UI 7 is an absolute deal breaker for this phone.
[stbpro id=”info”]Also See: 7 Hidden Features Of HTC One A9[/stbpro]
Fingerprint Sensor
HTC One A9 comes equipped with a fingerprint reader on the front and unlocks the smartphone in a matter of seconds without breaking a sweat. All you need to do is to pull the phone out from the pocket the fingerprint reader will wake the device up and leaving the thumb down will unlock it further which we are experiencing for the first time in an HTC phone and it really feels good.
Camera
HTC One A9 packs a 13 MP shooter with added protection from Sapphire cover lens. The camera lens is equipped with BSI sensor and Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) with an aperture of f/2.0. It clicks truly spell bounding photos with a resolution of 4128 x 3096 pixels and is capable of recording 1080p videos. A Dual Tone LED flash helps in capturing perfect photos with good amount of details even in low lighting conditions.
On the front there is a 4 MP ultra-pixel camera that is capable of recording 1080p videos and photos with good color reproduction. Seems like ultra-pixel caera is going to stay with more HTC phones to come in near future.
[stbpro id=”grey”]Also See: HTC One A9 Camera Review[/stbpro]
HTC One A9 Camera Samples
HTC One A9 Performance
Under the metallic frame of One A9 there lies a quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor clocking 1.5 GHz coupled with 2 GB RAM and 3 GB RAM depending on the variant. This phone offers snappy and smooth performance without any lags. The multi -tasking was buttery smooth and we did not experience any lags or jitters while we pushed the phone to its limits for both the variants.
Overall One A9 is a phone that is bound to perform. It is not the best we have seen but still it is easily one of the best performers in the market right now in this price range.
Benchmark Scores
Antutu (64-bit) – 36994
Quadrant- 27691
Nenamark- 59.2 fps
Battery
HTC One A9 comes equipped with a tiny battery of meager 2150 mAh capacity which does not match the bigger 3000 mAh batteries which is the standard these days. We don’t know why HTC did this but it is a really bad move on their part compromising with the battery capacity.
But HTC has really played it well as this phone supports Quick Charge 3.0 which speeds up the charging process and spare you from being the wall hugger by quickly charging up the phone.
Despite the battery size this smartphone holds up power really well for which it must be thankful to Android Marshmallow’s Doze feature which improves battery life by managing the background processes. If you are a moderate user then this battery will be able to pull though the day but if you are a heavy or power user then you have to struggle to get a day’s battery backup. A graphic hungry game can easily drain your smartphone much faster and you might need to charge it once in a while.
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[stbpro id=”info”]Also See: HTC ONe A9 Gaming and Battery Test and Review[/stbpro]
Conclusion
HTC One A9 is without any doubt one of the best smartphone in upper mid-range segment that you can buy right now. If you wanted a phone as good looking as iPhone 6 along with Android Marshmallow experience then One A9 is the phone for for you. The only thing that stops it from topping the charts is the price which is sorts of too much as phones with better specifications are priced much lower. But it can be a good option for those who are willing to spend some extra cash taking into consideration the brand value of HTC and timely updates HTC has promised for this handset. Undoubtedly HTC has made a good phone which looks good and performs good.
