HTC announced the HTC One M9 earlier in the year a couple of hours before the Samsung Galaxy S6 announcement. Unfortunately, at the time the M9 was somewhat overshadowed by Samsung’s Galaxy S6. The M9 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 System-on-Chip, which has been dogged by persistent rumors about the processor running very warm and giving the device performance issues. HTC have also been criticised for their choice of camera sensor. In both cases, subsequent software updates have reduced device temperatures and improved the camera performance. However, it seems that HTC’s plans all along were to build upon the One M9 branding and we quickly saw rumors of the HTC One M9+. Since then, the M9+ has been released and it brings about it several improvements to the original M9. The M9+ comes with a slightly larger, 5.2-inch screen of 1440p resolution, or QHD. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor has been replaced with a MediaTek MT6795T, which is an octa-core 64-bit processor. In other respects, the M9+ is similar to the M9, such as the rear camera.
To compare the two processors, the Snapdragon 810 is also an octa-core, 64-bit SoC but is a big.LITTLE arrangement. The 810 pairs up a quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor with a quad core ARM Cortex-A57 core. The lightweight processing is carried out by the A53 cores, which can run at up to 1.5 GHz. The A57 cores are more powerful than the A53 cores, but somewhat less efficient and can use a lot of power and create a lot of heat. When the HTC One M9 has been working hard, internal device temperatures force the Snapdragon 810 to shut down the A57 cores and the device runs with a 1.5 GHz quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor. By comparison, the MediaTek MT6795T runs with eight ARM Cortex-A53 processor cores clocked at up to 2.2 GHz. On the test bench, the MediaTek processor is quicker at some operations but slower in others, however in the device it offers at least equivalent performance and generally better, despite the M9+ having almost twice as many pixels as the M9 to move around.
A week ago, we saw that HTC were planning on selling the One M9+ around Europe from mid-July and today, the device is available for purchase in the Netherlands – although not officially! The online retailer, Belsimpel, has the silver color model in stock, which is for sale at €699 (€50 less than the European One M9 launch price). We’ve seen the handset going on sale in North America for $799 from mid-June, so the Dutch price certainly looks competitive!