HTC's beefier M9 for China leaks with sharper screen and fingerprint reader + Event poster

[Victorious Secret]

 

 

Another day, another leak for another phone. 

 

HTC, this is what you should've released the HTC M9 as in the first place. See, all this segmentation garbage? Doesn't do your bottom line much good. Why make two of nearly the same when you can just make the one? 

Jesus, at least Apples strategy made SOME sense. Two sizes, largely the same across the board. Not really punishing people who picked the smaller one or those who picked the bigger one. Can't you do that? Why do you need a plus? Is your M9 already so weak (actually, it is) that you need a Plus for a specific market?

 

 

 

Rumor of a beefier HTC One M9 variant -- aka "M9+" -- had been floating around for some time, but we've remained skeptical until we came across the latest batch of leaks. Better yet, some of these are backed up by an official (poorly made but actually legit) Beijing launch invitation sent out earlier today; see for yourself after the break. What we're seeing is that the Duo Camera feature on the M8 is here to stay, and there's also the previously rumored front-side fingerprint reader which, sadly, reminds us of the home buttons on earlier Samsung devices.

 

 

Another leak shows that this "M9pt" device -- the "t" means this is for China Mobile -- packs a QHD (2,560 x 1,440) display, a MediaTek MT6795T 64-bit octa-core chipset (with PowerVR G6200 GPU), about 3GB of RAM and the same 20-megapixel camera as the M9 -- albeit in a prettier circular shape instead of a squircle.

 

 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/25/htc-m9-plus-leak-china-launch/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

[Thebman712]

 

 Why do you need a plus? Is your M9 already so weak (actually, it is) that you need a Plus for a specific market?

how is the m9 weak?

[SirNumbers]

The M9 is a great phone stop basing your opinions on your favorite reviewer. I'm speaking generally so Noone catch feelings.

[TheSLSAMG]

The M9 is a great phone stop basing your opinions on your favorite reviewer. I'm speaking generally so Noone catch feelings.

It's the least changed smartphone generation-to-generation in a while.

 

It's about as marginal as the change from iPhone 5 to iPhone 5S. Better camera, somewhat different color scheme (in the case of the M8, design), more mature software and slightly better tech specs.

 

It's not a bad device, but it's not a great one. It's lazy.

 

By the way, part of posting the news on LTT is giving your opinion, yet people forget this.

[Victorious Secret]

how is the m9 weak?

 

 

HTC missed the "two years at most" memo for keeping a design and they missed the "tick tock" path that some in the industry have caught onto. Selling to us nerds doesn't matter, selling to the mass market does. People expect fast turnaround. 

 

HTC was due for a proper "new flagship". Not a "mini update" that actually stripped away some decent features and added none back in. I mean, these guys still haven't added in OIS when a Nexus 5 has it. Thats lazy. Thats low effort. HTC either has no ideas or doesn't have the moxie to try anything different. 

 

Hey, it took one year of below average sales for Samsung to go back to the drawing board for the S6, maybe the M10 will get the same treatment. 

 

To be fair, assuming age is not something to be done if you don't actually know the individual's age.

 

Except I do. I know all. Did you miss the memo? Its God Victorious Secret to you, peon. 

 

/s

or not to /s

[TheSLSAMG]

HTC missed the "two years at most" memo for keeping a design and they missed the "tick tock" path that some in the industry have caught onto. Selling to us nerds doesn't matter, selling to the mass market does. People expect fast turnaround. 

 

HTC was due for a proper "new flagship". Not a "mini update" that actually stripped away some decent features and added none back in. I mean, these guys still haven't added in OIS when a Nexus 5 has it. Thats lazy. Thats low effort. HTC either has no ideas or doesn't have the moxie to try anything different. 

 

Hey, it took one year of below average sales for Samsung to go back to the drawing board for the S6, maybe the M10 will get the same treatment. 

 

 

Except I do. I know all. Did you miss the memo? Its God Victorious Secret to you, peon. 

 

/s

or not to /s

They actually had OIS on the M7 and stripped it on the M8 because of the Duo Camera. Now that's what I call catering to market bullshit.

[Victorious Secret]

They actually had OIS on the M7 and stripped it on the M8 because of the Duo Camera. Now that's what I call catering to market bullshit.

 

Their camera nonsense is the best (worst?) kind of nonsense. 

 

At one end you have Apple who gives the 3rd finger to increasing MP counts. On the other you have everyone else who would probably sell a 50mp smartphone if they could. HTC could've gone in the middle. 15-20mp. A very high quality Sony sensor, a very big one (comparatively speaking) with a very fast lens. f/2 or faster. 

 

It shouldn't be rocket science. I'll give Samsung and the S6 decent amounts of shit, but they kinda got the camera right. Some shots better than my iPhone, some worse, some you couldn't tell which did what. And since I like to use my iPhone to shoot bloody supercars, I think thats personally, in my use case, the best praise I could give the S6. 

The most innovative smartphone I've used in the past year has been the Passport. Go explain that madness. A goddamn Blackberry. 

[AlexGoesHigh]

bullshiting aside that the most hideous looking finger reader i have ever seen, it looks like they bought it straight from the GS5

[imthewalrus]

Everybody knew the M9+ was coming out. HTC even said it, that there were going to be variants of the M9. Second, just because it has more pixels, doesn't mean it has a better screen. The M9's screen is almost the same as the M8's. The only issues people have had with the M9 is the overheating issues. 

[TheSLSAMG]

Their camera nonsense is the best (worst?) kind of nonsense. 

 

At one end you have Apple who gives the 3rd finger to increasing MP counts. On the other you have everyone else who would probably sell a 50mp smartphone if they could. HTC could've gone in the middle. 15-20mp. A very high quality Sony sensor, a very big one (comparatively speaking) with a very fast lens. f/2 or faster. 

 

It shouldn't be rocket science. I'll give Samsung and the S6 decent amounts of shit, but they kinda got the camera right. Some shots better than my iPhone, some worse, some you couldn't tell which did what. And since I like to use my iPhone to shoot bloody supercars, I think thats personally, in my use case, the best praise I could give the S6. 

The most innovative smartphone I've used in the past year has been the Passport. Go explain that madness. A goddamn Blackberry. 

I'd like the Blackberry Classic personally, might get my dad to get it since he misses his BlackBerry from going to an iPhone 5S.

 

The M8 has been doing me rather well. I like it. I just wish they would put an iPhone 6 Plus' camera into one and cut the shit with the odd distortion that my M8 and my sister's Samsung Galaxy S5 had.

[Victorious Secret]

Everybody knew the M9+ was coming out. HTC even said it, that there were going to be variants of the M9. Second, just because it has more pixels, doesn't mean it has a better screen. The M9's screen is almost the same as the M8's. The only issues people have had with the M9 is the overheating issues. 

 

I'm sorry, if I wanted to cook breakfast on my technology I'd put my eggs in tin foil and leave them on my GPUs exhaust. There is no excuse for a phone to be overheating in the scenarios that the M9 does. 

 

bullshiting aside that the most hideous looking finger reader i have ever seen, it looks like they bought it straight from the GS5

 

If its the newer style one that doesn't require you to swipe, but rather just press, then the stupid looks can be forgiven for a solution that probably works well. 

 

Well, we can hope thats what it is. 

[carolkarine]

You forget, LTT Tech News is all about shit posting, no effort posts, one liner wonders and generally other nonsense. 

 

Screw me for having an opinion. And sorry @Aniallation, if you're gonna shitpost do it elsewhere. 

I would rather have entire articles quoted with no opinion from the forummer. Most of the people posting here seem to get their internet pitchfork up at the slightest things, but they do a decent job of collating news from everywhere.

[Victorious Secret]

The M9 is a great phone stop basing your opinions on your favorite reviewer. I'm speaking generally so Noone catch feelings.

 

In 3-4 days I'll be able to base it off my own use. Perks of the trade, I guess. I'm just not anticipating magical greatness over the M8 like others have stated. 

 

Maybe its a trend of the times, phone not being outright magical anymore or having compelling reasons for upgrades. 

[Mew]

I wouldn't entirely blame HTC for Snapdragon 810's lack of excitement. IMO, Qualcomm has been seriously lacking the last 2 years. All their chips throttle to some point (first run vs last run). Performance, especially single threaded performance is embarrassingly behind Apple and nVidia's dual core K1. I didn't believe in big.LITTLE when I first heard of it, and it doesn't seem that impressive right now, at least Qualcomm's implementation that is; Samsung did a better job with it. Qualcomm increased gpu performance to match that of K1 and A8x, and claimed that Snapdragon is 4K ready (marketing bs). God bless competition because people can finally see the reality of Qualcomm and stop buying their products, whether that is phones with Samsung Exynos chips, Mediatek chips, or Apple chips. 

 

Edit: Going backwards in terms of low light performance is silly though, especially since they pushed "Ultrapixels" so hard and before that, their phones performed well in low light situations. However, people seem to favor crisper, more detailed outdoor pictures over better low light performance (gs5 vs m8) so I guess it makes some sense. The display quality going down may be due to inconsistent results and small sample sizes combined with perhaps a poor color profile that companies like Samsung likes to use. Actions speak louder than words and it's best to just avoid the M9 even though that might mean the end of the first Android phone company. 

[imthewalrus]

I'm sorry, if I wanted to cook breakfast on my technology I'd put my eggs in tin foil and leave them on my GPUs exhaust. There is no excuse for a phone to be overheating in the scenarios that the M9 does.

The one m9 surface temperature WHEN RUNNING BENCHMARKS is of 50c, 10c higher than the one m8. To cook an egg you need at least a temperature of 62 degrees so that the egg white coagulate.

[Nowak]

Sometimes I think people don't realize that HTC is in a financial situation similar to AMD and lacks the R&D money to truly redesign their phone right now.