Back in October, HTC announced their replacement for their poorly selling ‘M’ series – the new HTC One A9 – and the next day you could pre-order it on their Canada website. It was offered in either Carbon Gray or Opal Silver for $649 and was originally scheduled to ship November 6, but delays changed the date to November 11. This unlocked device should work on any Canadian network, HTC specifically lists “supported carriers: Bell, Rogers, Telus, Videotron and Wind Mobile.” Today, HTC announced they were adding two new colors – Topaz Gold and Deep Garnet that look great. These colors were announced when the HTC One A9 was first introduced, but were unavailable in Canada until now. All four colors are in-stock and ready to ship according to their website.
The HTC One A9 is classified as a mid-range device, but for another $100 dollars one could pick up a Galaxy S6. The One A9 is a full-metal device that resembles an iPhone – it looks almost just like one – whether on purpose or by ‘accident,’ it is a very nice looking device. HTC removed the dual BoomSound speakers and placed a single speaker on the bottom to make room for a ‘Samsung-like’ home button that is the One A9’s fingerprint scanner. This is all part of HTC’s plan to do battle in the low to mid-range end and possibly let Samsung, LG and Apple battle it out for the high-end market.
The HTC One A9 – in any color – 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 Canadian version comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage and offers a microSD card slot to expand the base memory up to 200GB. The main camera is 13MP with autofocus, a dual-tone LED 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. A 2150 mAh battery with Quick Charge capabilities provides power. It has the usual suspects – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.1, 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. It was also the first HTC device to run Android 6.0 Marshmallow.