It was just yesterday that HTC announced their new replacement for their poorly selling M series – the new HTC One A9. HTC has already put the new device up for pre-order on its Canadian site in either Carbon Grey or Opal Silver for $549, but you will have to add another $10 for shipping anywhere in Canada. While pre-orders are available today, the actual shipping day is November 6.
The HTC One A9 is a full-metal build with an AMOLED display and a ‘Samsung-like’ home button that is really a fingerprint sensor. It also comes in some great colors – Topaz Gold, Carbon Gray, Deep Garnet (a crowd favorite) and Opal Silver – and all of them are to be available at launch time. HTC is trying to rev up sales and is hoping that the mid-range One A9 will pump new life in those markets. Apparently, HTC thinks it is more important to build a following in the low and mid-range markets and let the others battle it out in the high-end market. Will this new device be HTC’s savior…no, but it is a nice solid device with mid-range specs and it comes in some great, attractive colors, although the Carbon Gray and Opal White are the only colors available in Canada.
The HTC One A9 comes with a 5-inch Full HD AMOLED display with 441 pixels-per-inch (PPI). It packs a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor with four cores clocked at 1.2 GHz and four cores clocked at 1.5 GHz. The One A9 comes with two models – a 2GB/16GB and a 3GB/32GB – with the 3GB model coming to North America, with both variants offering a microSD card slot to expand the base memory up to 200GB. The main camera is 13MP with autofocus, a dual-tone flash and OIS. The front-facing camera (FFC) uses a 4MP UltraPixel sensor for selfies and video chatting. There is no BoomSound here – just a single speaker on the bottom of the device, although it does have a special Dolby Audio with Hi-Res Audio for great headphone listening. Power is provided by a 2150 mAh battery with Quick Charge capabilities.
It has the usual suspects – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, an FM Radio, NFC and a microUSB v2.0 port for charging and data transfer. It measures 145.8 x 70.8 x 7.3 mm and weighs in at 143 grams.