I call that an upgrade.įor the most part though, the M9 and its predecessor are physically One and the same. It makes the M9 feel a little thick, but also far less likely to slip out of your hand and shatter on the sidewalk. The sides of the phone have been dulled slightly, so it doesn't curve as dramatically from the edge of the screen to the back. The power button is now located on the right side of the phone instead of on top it's much more reachable, but it's also really easy to confuse with the volume-down key, which is basically the same button positioned one inch higher.
Let's start with the device itself, which is a gentle refinement of the two previous One models. The One is still an excellent phone, but while its competition rushed ahead, HTC stayed too still. While it sounds promising, unfortunately once you use the M9, that all doesn't add up to much. The new One looks the same as the last, but it has a new high-res camera, a homescreen that adapts to where you are and what you're doing, and an incredible number of customization options. With the new One M9, which is available now on all four major US carriers for the same price as your average high-end smartphone, HTC took the latter approach. The company had two options: try to level up its design game yet again, or make a phone with new or exceptional features. Lovely hardware design isn't novel anymore. Honestly, so do lower-end brands like Alcatel, Blu, and OnePlus. HTC built a big lead in design chops a couple of years ago, but the rest of the market has caught up fast: Samsung, Motorola, and Apple all make beautiful, big, high-resolution phones now. The One X, the One, and the One (M8) all stood as paragons of smartphone design. All the way back in 2012-an eternity ago, in smartphone years-it was building beautiful phones while everyone else was still shipping boring black slabs. HTC, though, figured it out before almost anyone. Over the last 12 months, that idea has gone from new and strange-"so, like, Chanel is going to make smartphones?"-to blindingly obvious. Fashion is technology technology is fashion.