HTC unveils holiday flagship and the first in a new product line, the HTC One A9

[Shawn Knight]

If you thought Samsung’s latest wave of smartphones looked a lot like the iPhone 6, wait until you get a load of HTC’s new handset.

The HTC One A9 is powered by Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 617 Soc (four Cortex-A53 cores @ 1.5GHz and four more Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.2GHz) alongside Adreno 405 graphics, up to 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (expandable via microSD card slot) depending on which model you get.

Other noteworthy specifications include a 5-inch AMOLED display operating at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture and optical image stabilization, a 4-megapixel front-facing shooter with f/2.0 aperture, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1.

The handset packs a 2,150mAh battery and ships with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box with HTC’s Sense overlay.

From the back, the HTC One A9 looks almost identical to the iPhone 6 save for the camera / flash placement and the actual branding. HTC said this wasn’t intentional and that their new flagship is the first in a new product lineup for the company.

As Ars Technica explains, the new A series line will be one in which design is put front and center while the existing M series will continue to serve as the company’s technological leader.

The HTC One A9 will be available in silver, gray and red starting at $399.99 sans contract which includes six months of unlimited Google Play Music as well as HTC’s Uh Oh protection plan. It’s available to pre-order as of writing and should begin shipping early next month.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/62491-htc-unveils-holiday-flagship-first-new-product-line.html

 

[Jeff Schmidt]

So HTC is riding on this phone to help save the company. LOL. Better start writing the eulogy for the company. They need to create something different/better than a mid tier phone that will get lost with the hundreds of others that are available now.

Competition kills lazy companies. And it looks like HTC won't be around much longer.

 

[Nobina]

Couldn't they just put the HTC logo on top?

 

[VitalyT]

Couldn't they just put the HTC logo on top?

Looks like they've got huge gaps to fill in front

 

[Mr Mister]

I always admired HTC designs but this shameful.

 

[lripplinger]

I love my HTC M8. But this new one looks like a frick'n iPhone. I fear HTC will be out of business soon, and it will only speed up as Apple sues them for the look of the phone.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

It doesn't look or sound too bad from where I'm sitting. Very midrange so things like Boomsound and QHD are irrelevant here. It's price will decree to a large extent whether it succeeds or fails.
I remember reading or seeing that Apple and HTC have an open agreement to copy each others styling to a certain degree without any repercussions.

 

[Badvok]

Yeah, that front camera to the left of the short speaker grill, the round home button, the rear camera in the top left corner, the low-resolution IPS LCD screen, make it look just like the iphone - oh, hang on a second ...

Or was Shawn simply referring to the fact that it is a rounded rectangular shape with a screen on the front like most smartphones these days.