HTC was hoping they’re going to make a huge comeback this year, but the company is still having issues turning a profit and were forced to cut costs again several months ago. This Taiwan-based smartphone OEM did release a number of compelling devices this year, unfortunately for them, most of those devices are Asia exclusives. The sales numbers aren’t exactly great, and the company is hoping that their upcoming A9 (also known as Aero) handset will turn things around for them. This device is teased to be the ultimate flagship, and will sport a great camera if previous reports are any indication.
That being said, this device has surfaced on Geekbench a couple of days ago and revealed its partial specs. Before we dig into that, let’s cover the newly leaked material first, shall we. @LlabTooFeR is a common source of HTC-related leaks, and the leaker has today shared yet another piece of HTC A9 info. According to him, the device will run Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, and HTC’s Sense 7 will be installed on top of it. These are actually great news considering this device is said to arrive in about two months or so. Android 6.0 Marshmallow will quite probably launch at the end of this month when Google is expected o launch the company’s new Nexus device, so that basically means that HTC will be amongst the first OEMs to adapt their Sense UI to Android 6.0 Marshmallow and release a device which has it pre-installed, assuming this info is accurate.
The HTC A9 is said to be fueled by MediaTek’s Helio X20 (MT6797) 64-bit deca-core (tri-cluster design) processor. This SoC actually offers great benchmarking results and seems to be on par with the Exynos 7420 in this regard, despite the fact it is built on a 20nm manufacturing process. The HTC A9 will also ship with a 4GB of RAM, and you can also expect a rather capable rear-facing camera with a rumored aperture of f/1.9. When will this phone launch? Well, HTC did schedule an event in Japan on September 29th, but if the device is going to sport Android 6.0 Marshmallow, it certainly won’t launch that early. Our best guess is October or November, but keep in mind that nothing is confirmed yet.