HTC chairwoman Cher Wang made a bold statement before the press event on Oct. 20, when the HTC One A9 smartphone was released.
The Taiwanese company claims that its latest handset will directly rival Apple's iPhone 6. According to Wang, the HTC model represents a viable alternative to the phone produced by the Cupertino-based company.
"[HTC One A9] will strike a balance between beauty, performance and simplicity," the leader of the Taiwanese electronics producer stated in a letter to the employees.
To reinforce the tech forwardness of the company, the launch of the anticipated handset will be broadcasted live online, and all HTC staff was encouraged to watch the event.
Earlier this year, a faux-pas of Orange, the French telecom company, spilled the beans about the specs, looks and price of the new HTC phone.
The official release sheds light on the actual specs, and they look promising.
A 5-inch display that supports a full-HD resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels is backed by a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 chipset with an octa-core CPU. The American version gets 3 GB RAM and 32 GB of storage space, whereas the variant in the U.K. has only 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of storage space. MicroSD card support exists, extending the storage capacity even more.
HTC One A9 features two cameras of different capacities: the front camera comes with a 4-megapixel sensor, while the backside-facing camera will be a 13-megapixel. The latter has optical image stabilization, making it very selfie-friendly.
The aluminum build poses a striking resemblance to that of iPhone 6, causing fans and critics to engage in keyboard-breaking debates over who copied who in terms of design. The slimness of the device relies on sacrificing battery power, meaning that the HTC One A9 comes with a 2,150mAh power source.
An embedded fingerprint sensor is in the Home button, and it is different from Apple's or Samsung's in that it can't be pressed down. The new mid-range smartphone from HTC runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow from day one, and has a proprietary Sense UI that can be optimized to save battery life.
The best deal for the Taiwanese phone comes from the United States. An unlocked handset with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage sells in the U.S. for $399.99. For buyers from other countries the news is less good: the U.K. puts a spicy price tag of £429.99 on the hero phone, which converts to $665.
The handset comes to all American carriers, with one variant covering T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T, while Verizon supports a different band set.
For good measure, here is what the iPhone 6 has to offer.
The Apple smartphone is powered by an A8 microchip with 64-bit architecture and a secondary M8 motion coprocessor, plus 1 GB RAM. The storage space options are 16 GB, 64 GB or 128 GB, and there's no card slot to boost it. The Retina HD Display of 4.7-inch supports a 1,334x750-pixel resolution and has a PowerVR GX6450 (quad-core graphics card) behind it.
The phone works on iOS 8 and is upgradable to iOS 9.0.2. The iPhone 6 also features 2 cameras: the rear-facing has 8 MP, whereas the front facing one has only 1.2 MP. For increased security, the handset embedded a fingerprint sensor in the Home button.
The price of $649 will get you an unlocked, SIM-free, 16 GB iPhone 6 that looks almost identical to an HTC One A9.
The Taiwanese handset put all efforts into matching iPhone 6 both in hardware and software features. This means that chairwoman Cher Wang was right and customers might choose HTC over Apple when purchasing their next mid-range smartphone.
