When the HTC One A9 came out, HTC stressed that it was not the one “copying” others around. Metallic builds and plastic antenna bands were its gift to the mobile world, and so the A9 was not to be misinterpreted as an iPhone clone, despite its similarities. And with the One A9s, the device is far from the iPhone on the inside as it could ever be.
Sure, design wise, the HTC One A9s looks just like its actual and spiritual predecessor. There’s the flat metallic back with side curves, there’s the signature antenna bands and the fingerprint sensor on the front. The front and back camera see some repositioning, and the HTC branding below the display is no longer to be found. The display is a downgrade actually, with the One A9s sporting a 5″ 720p Super LCD display, a noticeable step down from the 5″ 1080p AMOLED display.
The downgrade does not stop there. Inside, the HTC One A9s comes with a MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10 SoC with 2x four-core clusters of Cortex-A53’s. While the HTC One A9 was not a flagship with its mediocre-at-best Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 with 2x four-core clusters of Cortex-A53, the Helio P10 on the One A9s is very far behind in the current competition against the Snapdragon 650 and 652. The GPU on the One A9s is the Mali-T860MP2, while the RAM and storage situation remains unchanged with options of 16GB internal storage with 2GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage with 3GB RAM. You still get microSD expandability, and the battery gets a slight bump in capacity up to 2,300 mAh now. But if you got too happy with all of this, Quick Charge 3.0 is being replaced with quick charging limited to 5V at 1.5A only.
The camera on the One A9s is a 13MP shooter with f/2.2 aperture, but it loses out on OIS from its predecessor. The front 4MP Ultra Pixel shooter found on One A9 is now replaced with a regular 5MP camera with a f/2.8 aperture and 1080p video recording.
HTC made a 15-day promise of rolling out a new Android version update when the One A9 was launched. But it is unlikely to keep the promise this time around, so they aren’t making any new promises either. The One A9s comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box (like last year’s A9) but no time solid commitment has been offered for Android 7.0 Nougat.
Pricing and availability of the HTC One A9s has not been released, though the phone is likely to be made available in October. The One A9 was not known for its cheap price and bang-for-buck, so the One A9s will have to do better if it wants to succeed as a successor. Even optimistically, the One A9s feels like another variant of the One A9, one that should have been launched in 2015.
What are your thoughts on the HTC One A9s? Let us know in the comments below!
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