HTC's One M9 is official

booo

booo

BA BA BA BABANANA
Skilled
It's time for another One — HTC has unveiled its latest flagship handset. And, as reports and leaks had suggested, the 2015 One M9 looks a lot like last year's M8. The design has barely changed beyond a relocated power button here and some refined lines there, and the screen is still a 5-inch 1080p LCD, but the phone's internals have been overhauled completely.

The One M9 is powered by a Snapdragon 810 octa-core processor backed up by 3GB of RAM. The battery is 2840mAh, there's 32GB of storage (expandable with microSD cards), and the front-facing dual BoomSound speakers remain in place - this time with Dolby Audio tuning. The phone runs HTC's Sense Seven skin atop Android 5.0 Lollipop, which is apparently hefty enough to reduce the available storage to around 21GB out of the box. Joining the gunmetal gray and silver color options is a new two-tone gold and silver version.

The biggest change is reserved for the cameras

The biggest change, however, is reserved for the cameras. While the last two HTC One phones used 4-megapixel — sorry, UltraPixel — sensors that sacrificed resolution for low-light performance, the M9 goes completely the other direction with a new 20-megapixel camera that ditches the gimmicky depth-sensing second lens. This should at least mean that the M9 resolves more detail than its predecessors, but the smaller pixels probably won't hold up so well in the dark. UltraPixels haven't been exorcised completely, though; the front-facing camera now uses them in an attempt to improve nighttime selfies.

The One M9 appears to be an evolutionary upgrade, then, but that may not be a bad thing — much will rest on the performance of the new camera, and it'll be intriguing to see how the Snapdragon 810 holds up after Samsung apparently dumped the chip. As ever with phones, judgement should be reserved on this one until it's experienced first-hand.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/1/8119527/htc-one-m9-announcement
 
HTC has the best manual camera controls for fixed focal length on android. You will be able to delay shutter and get whatever low light you want. The previous one's supported raw. Uses a 20MP Toshiba sensor for the rear. Curious HTC went with the 20MP sensor, the 13MP seems to have more features like native HDR as well as colour noise reduction.

Good to see they dodged the 4k screen.

Only problem i see is 810. This thing is going to heat up a lot. Great for hand warming in the middle of winter in higher latitudes, not so great when you live in the tropics.
 
Last edited:
  • no one yet knows how bad is the heating issues with 810. need to see what the early reviewers say.
  • only 1080p.
  • No big change in construction. still no waterproof rating.
  • Rear camera with f/2.2 where as samsung is f/1.9 and iphone 6 is f/2.2 so depth of field would be similar to iphone. not sure about the low light perf as it depends on aperture and iso together. need to see how sensitive the htc phone's sensor is. so samsung will have better depth of field and better low light perf.
as ars technica describes it... "last year's design with higher specs"
On the camera front, I am waiting to see sony's z4 with the new image sensor coupled with zeiss lens.
 
manucitc said:
4k is still not main stream...
You misunderstand 2k with 4k...
Click to expand...
quad hd is what i meant :)

booo said:
no one yet knows how bad is the heating issues with 810. need to see what the early reviewers say.
Click to expand...
g flex 2 (!) with its just up to 4 hrs SOT because qualcom did not use their own GPU. The reference design heats up more. this is the only major doubt. We are told there will be updates...

only 1080p.
Click to expand...
smart for that screen size even 1080 is overkill.

What happens if you take a 400x400 pixel image and display on 720 p vs 1080p, it becomes smaller on the 1080p. More pixels means things look smaller. This is then translated into better looking because um the resolution is more.

No big change in construction. still no waterproof rating.
Click to expand...
it can handle a splash like its predecessors. i'm not sure waterproof is essential at all. they would lose some output of their speakers.

Rear camera with f/2.2 where as samsung is f/1.9 and iphone 6 is f/2.2 so depth of field would be similar to iphone. not sure about the low light perf as it depends on aperture and iso together. need to see how sensitive the htc phone's sensor is. so samsung will have better depth of field and better low light perf.
as ars technica describes it... "last year's design with higher specs"
Click to expand...
low light perf requires a customisable shutter which is present. extend it and you can drop iso and get a good image.

what is the difference between 1.9 and 2.2 ?

1.4 -2 and 2-2.8 is one f-stop.

1.9 -2.0 is 1/6th of an fstop and 2-2.2 is 0.25 of an f-stop so difference betwen 1.9 & 2.2 is 0.4 of an f-stop.

In real life if shutter is 1/100 then you would need 1/60 to get it with 2.2. In low light what takes 1/10 requires 1/7 with 2.2. Not such a big deal as 2.0-2.8.

dOF is the same somewhere around f11 in 35mm speak.

Wht some reviewers are saying that low light is not good is they cant get shots in auto. They don't know how to use manual. auto will get fixed eventually meanwhile those that tweak will get their shots. There is no excuse not to when the controls are present. Did i mention this thing does raw. so you can improve further.

On the camera front, I am waiting to see sony's z4 with the new image sensor coupled with zeiss lens.
Click to expand...
Would you buy a product from a company that says it wants to exit the business ?

Reviewers are saying this is a boring update not essential. You mean i don't have to sell the one i bought last year, wow what a relief. if you don't have a one then this should be the best of the ones (pending that 810 thing). Its v3 of the design. they tried to be different with the m8 and we can see they have reverted back to the m7.

z's got slammed for the same same boring design for the 4 generations. problem ? its a refinement.

same with samsung, s3,4,5. nice predictable design. now there is this s6 which loses replaceable battery AND sd card. Lost two quintesential samsung attributes. but this is ok because um it looks nicer now.

you can sell any piece of crap these days if you make it look pretty. this is how superficial people are.
 
Last edited:
^if I have to buy a phone, my usage pattern is mostly work related and playing games. decent camera is okay but I hardly use phone camera. So keeping these things in mind, nexus 6, droid turbo, s6 edge are in line. m8 is already out.

and btw, I prefer vanilla os over customised. hence the motorola phones are above s6 edge and z4. so, lg htc are already out. need to check z4 and the winning factor for z4 would be the battery life and water proof. because I could use some rugged phones.

btw, sony makes their sensors and known for bravia tech. Samsung is known for their amoled screens and exynos processors. LG also makes screens. HTC doesnt have any native tech of their own.
 
booo said:
^if I have to buy a phone, my usage pattern is mostly work related and playing games. decent camera is okay but I hardly use phone camera. So keeping these things in mind, nexus 6, droid turbo, s6 edge are in line. m8 is already out.
Click to expand...
because you reached a point where you can specialise. which camera which lens, what subject. a lot of people have not got there yet. My point was if people were considering this device to be sceptical of what reviewers say about its camera ability.

Another point these damn reviewers harp on about is the lack of OIS. In all the devices that came out in the last year there is only one device that can be shown to have a working OIS and that is the iphone 6+. The test is simple. take a 1/4s handheld shot. No korean will do this. They use some other magic to boost gain, most likely software. If you imporve your hand hold you can exceed 1/4s exposures handheld. Upto 1/2 should be possible.

Nex 6 is the only big screen there and odd one out. Why would you consider the edge though ?

the ones are known for being fluid and responsive, always been that way.

booo said:
btw, sony makes their sensors and known for bravia tech. Samsung is known for their amoled screens and exynos processors. LG also makes screens. HTC doesnt have any native tech of their own.
Click to expand...
If we leave out software, apple does not have any native hardware tech of their own either. For every $200 spent, China keeps $30 and Apple pockets the rest. Its not a problem if you have good designers. this is something indian brands need to aspire to.
 
Last edited:
^Exactly... Apple has some good designers and most of the premium phones look like they have been copied to look like apple devices. Apple is a visionary in the design and asthetics. That exactly is the problem with HTC's new phone they are not visionaries any field. They used to sport Beats atleast but now even that is gone. btw, Apple also has their custom SoC for their 64bit processors. they just did not pick up some snapdragon like everyone is doing.

S6 edge because of the edge and the samoled screen. but looses out due to touchwiz and not having vanilla OS which causes delays. If samsung releases phones with vanilla os and timely updates; they will win the battle hands down.
 
The edge bit, why is that useful for you ?

s6 is rumoured to have a reworked touchwiz, less bloat, its actually quite anticipated. I don't know how well that can work because your average galalxy s customer likes those 'features'. Does not matter if they will be forgotten after a month. they get to brag that their galaxy s has this whilst your non glaxy does not have it. its crazy but it works.
 
Some photos by m9 users.

Tips are to cap ISO at 200, reduce sharpness to -1.5 or -1, contrast + 0.5 and saturation +0.5. Rest is all auto

https://www.flickr.com/photos/56930129@N03/sets/72157651646612476/with/17018964461/

2nd set uses the above settings.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/adam_bryant/sets/72157651317862569/

another earlier set, that too with pre-release firmware (uses some exp comp)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jpenico/sets/72157650671608427/with/16509729050/

photos on review sites are all auto and tend to have washed out colours and make the m9 appear a lot worse than it really is.
 
Back
Top