HTC One M9 hands-on: excels in design, improved specs, may look too much like its predecessor
Chris Hall / Pocket-lint :
Context & Ripple Effects
The hands-on lands one day after HTC officially unveiled the phone at its March 1 event, following a month of pre-launch exposure: an Evleaks render in late January showed the two-size, refined-aesthetics direction, and a full spec leak on February 23 had already confirmed the Snapdragon 810, 3GB of RAM, and 20MP camera. So Pocket-lint's first impression is less about surprise than confirmation — and its sharpest observation is a negative one: the M9 may look too much like the phone it replaces.
First-order effects
- Buyers deciding between last year's model and the M9 face a near-identical design, making the upgraded internals — the Snapdragon 810 and 20MP camera from the leaked spec sheet — the only real pitch for upgrading.
Second-order effects
- The follow-up reviews validate both halves of the hands-on's caution: The Verge's M9 review praises design and battery life but finds the camera disappointing, while Ars Technica's testing shows the Snapdragon 810 throttling under heat, degrading performance — leaving the familiar design carrying the sales burden alone.
Third-order effects
- With the standard model offering little visual differentiation, HTC splits the line: the M9+ launched in China weeks later with a larger Quad HD screen and fingerprint sensor, effectively conceding that the base flagship needed a premium sibling to stand out — part of a broader stretch that saw HTC later appoint Yves Maitre as CEO and push hard into Vive VR hardware.
The trend: Incremental flagship redesigns are pushing Android manufacturers toward derivative premium variants — and, in HTC's case, toward diversifying beyond phones entirely.