Poor HTC. The One A9 was supposed to be the company's return to form, a flagship that helped the company regain its spot among the top premium smartphone manufacturers. But in the weeks leading up to the handset's release, all anyone seemed interested in discussing was how much the thing looks like an iPhone.
Though, to be fair, it really, really looks like an iPhone. The company was quick to defend the device, of course, more or less telling the press that HTC doesn't copy Apple, Apple copies HTC.
"We're not copying. We made a unibody metal-clad phone in 2013," an HTC exec staid during a press briefing in Taiwan ahead of the phone's release. "It's Apple that copies us in terms of the antenna design on the back."
The company ups the ante even further, poking the Cupertino bear with the phrase "design worth imitating" on the A9's product page, adding, "from the company that crafted the world's first all-metal design, HTC again sets a new design standard." They might as well have just emblazoned the words "sue us, we dare you" on the backplate of each phone.
The truth of about this whole copying this is, naturally, somewhere between the two. Everyone copies everyone - but HTC just happened to do so a bit more blatantly than most with the One A9 - and they did so with the most instantly recognizable handset on the market.
Of course none of this means that the device - which feels a bit like a hail Mary for the struggling Taiwanese smartphone maker- is destined to fail. It just means that the A9 has to do that much more to stand apart from the competition.
Design
As the saying more or less goes, if you're going to borrow, borrow from the best. And hey, while cribbing some key pieces of design language from Cupertino, HTC has put together a pretty solid little phone.
The A9's got the aformentioned curvy metal unibody design that significantly scales back the bulk of older HTC models, like the One. And the company's managed to keep the weight off, too, keeping the 5-inch model at the same 5.04 ounces as the 4.7-inch iPhone 6S. The phone's a bit larger than the base model iPhone, owing to that larger screen size, and is just a hair thicker. It's far from unwieldy, though, easily gripped in a single hand.
HTC devotees will almost immediately note the absence of front-facing speakers, a step back from the integrated Beats grilles rocked-up front. They're gone (thanks in no small part to the company parting ways with the audio brand later snatched up by Apple), and the company instead is taking an unfortunate page out of Apple's playbook and moving the speaker to the bottom of the device for aesthetic reasons, no doubt. And even without the presence of front-facing speakers, the handset still has considerable top and bezel real estate.
On the bottom is a long, octagonal home button with a built-in fingerprint reader. Above that is a small HTC logo, bucking the trend of removing branding from the front of the device. Though, in this case, any method for distinguishing the handset from similar-looking products is probably for the best. At top is an underwhelming 4-megapixel front-facing camera. There's also a charging light up there that is invisible when not active.
The front glad converges with the sides, which curve into the rear, all one piece of unibody brushed metal. On the left side are the SIM and microSD slots. HTC certainly gets a point here for continuing to offer expandable storage on top of the built-in standard 32 GB. One the right side are the volume rocker and power button, the latter of which is serrated, so you can tell the buttons apart in your pocket. Along the bottom edge are the headphone jack, microUSB port, and a small speaker grille.
Things look pretty familiar around the back as well, a brushed metallic backing broken up with two flush antenna bands toward the top and bottom. The camera and flash sit above the top band, though HTC has moved them to the dead center of the device, decreasing the likelihood of an errant finger blocking an otherwise perfectly good image.
Smack dab in the middle of it all is a prominent HTC logo, just in case you forgot.
Here's the thing about the A9—it's a solid, well-built phone, one that would be getting points for its design language, were it not so close to such a prominent handset. As it stands now, however, it's hard not to compare, and HTC's model just doesn't have the aesthetic constancy of Apple's handset.
Audio/Visual
All right, I promised myself I wouldn't spend this whole review discussing the iPhone. OK, maybe a little bit more, if only because the A9 comes out on top here. For all of its charms, Apple's handsets just don't compete with the top Android devices in the screen resolution department.
The A9's 5-inch display clocks in at 1080 x 1920, with a density of 441 PPI, handily beating the iPhone's 750 x 1334. Both pale in comparison to some of the truly maxed-out displays being produced by companies like Samsung, but the screen certainly does the trick. It's sharp, it's bright, and it offers a nice default color balance.
More good news: the speakers are actually solid. Not like front-facing, Beats-partnering stereo speakers good, but still pretty good. The speakers get loud without getting too muddy or tinny, but it's hard not to long for past HTC devices when the company was looking to set itself apart with a better all-around audio-visual entertainment package.
Software
The big news here is the arrival of Android Marshmallow. And it is, indeed, big news. After all, it's the latest version of Google's mobile operating system. According to recently released numbers, 6.0 has somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.3 percent of Android devices at last count, putting the A9 in rare air indeed.
The new software brings with it such goodies as Android Pay mobile payments and Android Doze for better battery life. Most of the aesthetic changes are, however, obscured by HTC's own customizations. As competing manufacturers like Motorola have stepped away from skins in favor of purer expressions of Android, HTC's holding steady with the hybridized operating system it handily refers to as "Android 6.0 with Sense." In spite of the upgraded software backend, the experience looks pretty identical to past versions of HTC's Sense skin.
Of course, the company has maintained some of its better-loved features such as BlinkFeed, the customized newsfeed accessible with a right swipe from the homepage. And for those who need a little nudge choosing apps to populate their handset, HTC offers up a Suggestions app.
The real bright spot of the skinned experience, however, are the Themes, which offer a variety of different icons, wallpapers, fonts, and full-on refreshes. It's one of the more customizable mobile operating experiences and one that's certainly welcome on a device that's taken more than its share of heat for looking too samey.
Internals
Like many of the phone's specs, the Snapdragon 617 is decent, but not exceptional. You'll be able to find zippier processors on a number of flagship models, but most users won't notice any discernible difference with most tasks. Indeed, the One A9 is plenty zippy when performing most tasks. This is no doubt helped along by a decent—though not exceptional—3 GB of RAM.
The word "middling" springs to mind when discussing the 2,150 mAh battery. I'll admit to a bit of bias here, having just played around with Motorola's souped-up new Droid offerings, which put battery life front and center (well, slightly behind the shatterproof screen, perhaps). You'll be able to get through most of a day with moderate usage, but that's about it.
Wrap-Up
As the saying goes, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. The One A9 isn't a bad phone. Not at all. It's just not the sort of shot across the bow HTC needs to send in the year 2015. This doesn't mean the company's down for the count, of course, but the smartphone maker needs a device that will really put the company back in the conversation.
As one look at press clips can attest, the most remarkable thing about the handset is just how much it looks like one of its competitors. And while HTC is steadily working to turn that perception around in its press material, the one surefire way to shake off the stigma would have been to create a truly standout device.
The One A9, sadly, is not that.
