The HTC One A9 used to be a flagship device. The phone, released in 2015, is quite expensive and costs £470. The phone is now priced at around £200. This makes it even more attractive because it is faster than the Motorola Moto G6 and Honor 9 Lite and is much cheaper than the G6 Plus with similar chips. As a 2015 mobile phone, it does not have an extended 18:9 display or runs on the latest version of Google's operating system. However, if your budget is tight at $200, this phone is worth considering.
HTC One A9 - Design:
If the HTC logo on the back of the phone is not there, you may mistake the One A9 for another, because the clean lines and simple metal chassis are reminiscent of Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S. HTC told me that Apple's imitation of its metal design is very flattering - after all, it took a step toward metal smartphones - but this time, the imitators are more obvious. Still, the One A9 actually feels much more comfortable than the iPhone 6S, thanks to the ribbing on the back of the phone, so you can easily grab it with just one hand holding the phone. It is a bit thicker than the iPhone 6S and measures 146 x 71 x 7.3 mm. Although the 6S dwarf is in almost every respect, the One A9 is still only 143 grams.
It's a beautiful smartphone, with the eye-catching Deep Garnet model especially beautiful. However, this version is not available for launch (along with the Topaz Gold model). Instead, this came later (but hopefully before the end of the year, HTC promised) and will be exclusive to certain networks. For those who cannot wait that long, choose between the standard Carbon Gray and Opal Silver models, each with a black and white faceplate.
HTC One A9 - Display:
My review sample was in Carbon Gray, and I have to say that it's immediately more attractive than the M9, not least because of the 5 x 1920 x 1080 pixel AMOLED display. Again, the display of the M9 was a little disappointing when I tested it earlier this year because its color accuracy was just not as high as I expected. However, the A9's AMOLED panel corrects this immediately as it covers 100% of the sRGB color space and produces perfect 0.00cd / m2 blacks, so colors and text can really pop out of the screen without being oversaturated. The contrast ratio of infinity: 1 ensures a variety of details even with dark photos and images.
The only downside is that the colors are a bit warm, so that white looks a bit yellow, at least compared to the Super AMOLED screen of the Samsung Galaxy S6. This can be quite a common problem with AMOLED panels, but this is not particularly annoying with this particular handset, the screen's 347.19 cd/m2 peak brightness is also slightly lower when compared to its LCD-based competitors but this is not unusual for AMOLED displays.
HTC One A9 - Performance and battery life:
For the rest of the phone's specifications, the One A9 is powered by a 1.5GHz Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and 2GB of RAM. It's a shame that it does not use a Snapdragon 810 like the One M9, but it's still very fast. Expert Reviews' benchmark suite has significantly increased its speed over older Snapdragon 615 phones (including the HTC Desire 820 from HTC), with Geekbench 3 with 732 in the single-core test and 3,050 in the multicore test around 100 and up 800 points each faster. Android felt silky smooth and apps loaded very quickly.
However, if you consider that the phone costs $ 470 SIM at the time of signing, or about $ 32 per month, it seems a bit sluggish compared to other phones in this price range. For example, the Galaxy S6, which now costs just £ 400 for SIM devices or £ 28.50 a month for a contract, is one step ahead of the One A9, and the difference is evident in daily use. Apps open much faster and the entire operating system feels so much leaner, so the One A9 is slightly behind the curve.
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