One M9 owners: What are your HTC One M9 first impressions?

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I'm interested in people's impressions of the M9 as well. Only used it a handful of times, but I enjoyed it a lot. Thought it was a great device and I'm sure anyone who purchases it would be happy with it.

Sent from my HTC One M8 using Tapatalk

 

[Pat Pat2]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I received my M9 today. I was very disappointed. The phone still feels slippery as ever and the killer is the camera is worse than the reviewers have stated. It just cant seem to figure out how to set the exposure properly. Stills were either over or under exposed with poor color saturation. I wanted to love this phone but its going back. I did also notice that on my phone the audio was a bit lower than the M8 I used. That was not a big deal because the audio was superb.

 

[Gruff35]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I received my M9 today. I was very disappointed. The phone still feels slippery as ever and the killer is the camera is worse than the reviewers have stated. It just cant seem to figure out how to set the exposure properly. Stills were either over or under exposed with poor color saturation. I wanted to love this phone but its going back. I did also notice that on my phone the audio was a bit lower than the M8 I used. That was not a big deal because the audio was superb.

Sorry to hear you did not like the phone. Just return it. Try out an S6 or wait until HTC gets their stuff together with the M10. You're the second person on this forum who wasn't pleased with the device. Sounds like the harsh reviews were telling the truth.

 

[Sdot312]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I got my M9 yesterday. It feels better in hand than the M8. Less slippery and the edge lip or whatever it is called helps. It does get hot when running benchmarks, otherwise its fine. The camera for some reason does not seem better than the M8 even tho it should be. Still need to test more. I can definitely tell it is lighter and smaller albeit slightly. I like it.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[festinator]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

Sorry to hear you did not like the phone. Just return it. Try out an S6 or wait until HTC gets their stuff together with the M10. You're the second person on this forum who wasn't pleased with the device. Sounds like the harsh reviews were telling the truth.

Meh, wouldn't call them harsh till they came to the camera part. Everything else about the phone everyone seemed to like, other than the camera, which I don't see as a big deal but a lot of others do. Still would take it over the s6, just because i don't mind the camera.

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[petvas72]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I got my gunmetal gray M9 yesterday and wanted to post my first impressions:

I like the new design. The device feels better in the hand and you get the impression it is somehow better built than the M8. At first I thought that the power button placement would be a problem, but actually it's not.
Display: I like it very much. It has a cooler color temperature compared to the M8. Apart from that no visible changes.
This device gets really warm. I managed to go up to 44 Celcius...even after applying the update.

I like the new Sense, especially the theming engine. I disabled the home sense widget though.
Sound quality is at least as good as on the M8. To my ears it is actually better now.

I don't know about battery life yet and I cannot say much about performance, but everything seemed to be very fast.

 

[Rose4uKY]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I just got home and going to mess with mine for a bit. I like the way it feels but I always have a case on too. The silver on gold is nice. My husband likes and uses Do Not Disturb and I don't see it on the notifications but saw something else in the settings that said interruptions that might be similar. I am off tomorrow so I have all day to mess with it I just want to download my apps and set up emails Can I not go to app store and get apps on wifi? It's telling me error retrieving information from server. Does phone need to be activated for play store?

Mine let me go to home screen get on wifi it's not activated. My husbands says do you want to activate without a represenative and says hands free activation and won't go to home screen like mine did. But I really like the gunmetal grey the front where the speakers are it's pretty wish I had gotten the gunmetal kind of now.

 

[Mystikal777]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

The target audience for the M9 wasn't owner's of the M7. There is a video of HTC's head designer who specifically stated they were fixing all the problems the M8 had with the M9. Think HTC took one design element from the M7. The rest of the phone was based on the M8 and things HTC did wrong with the phone. Like feel...grip...power button...camera. HTC wasn't thinking about the M7 owners at all. Why? Because more people purchased the M8 than the M7.

You're right, HTC are not specifically targeting only M7 owners here. But from a HTC One owner's perspective, you wouldn't feel you are missing out on a great deal if you have the previous year's model. My leap from the M7 to the M8 was only because of 2 reasons - I ended up disliking the "Glamour Red" version I bought, and I fancied a slightly bigger screen. But other than that, the differences were small, despite the M8 being better.

Obviously HTC have made improvements on last year's model, so they do have a great flagship here. But if you look at the difference between Samsung's S5 and S6, and HTC's M8 to M9, you will see Samsung have made many changes, whilst HTC have adopted the, "if it ain't broke then don't fix it" policy.

 

[petvas72]

I am using the M9 today for the first day and I find two things really negative. The battery life is worse compared to the M8 and the second issue is that the device gets really warm.
Here a screenshot of the battery life today:
I also used the GPS for half an hour, so I guess the results would be better without it..
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[strangelan16]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

Should get my gun metal grey version today. So will put some opinions later.I'm coming from a Xperia z2 not had HTC phones before so I'm hoping its a worthy upgrade

 

[neo905]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I am using the M9 today for the first day and I find two things really negative. The battery life is worse compared to the M8 and the second issue is that the device gets really warm.
Here a screenshot of the battery life today:
I also used the GPS for half an hour, so I guess the results would be better without it..
Posted via the Android Central App

There seems to be something squirrely going on with your GSAM. Your app percentage is negative 119%?!? No that look at it again all the percentages are way off. 1hr and 38min on screen time in 50% is bad though.

 

[petvas72]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

There seems to be something squirrely going on with your GSAM. Your app percentage is negative 119%?!? No that look at it again all the percentages are way off. 1hr and 38min on screen time in 50% is bad though.

Here the actual status.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[neo905]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

Here the actual status.

Posted via the Android Central App

The percentages still do not add up to 100% and the app usage is still -93. The screen on time is much better though. I think after a few days when the battery settles you may be able to get 5 hours screen time and you don't even have power saving on.I think the GPS skewed the first one. I usually loose 20% battery like per 30 minutes with GPS on. What is your screen brightness? Could you also let me know how the battery life is on LTE? Seems like you were just on wifi for this screenshot. Thanks, this is helpful.

Could you also give me your honest opinion about the camera, especially low light.

EDIT: Sorry I read it wrong. You used 60% of the battery not 40% so at 2 hours on screen you are looking at 3-4 hours screen time total which isn't very good at all.

 

[petvas72]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

The percentages still do not add up to 100% and the app usage is still -93. The screen on time is much better though. I think after a few days when the battery settles you may be able to get 5 hours screen time and you don't even have power saving on.I think the GPS skewed the first one. I usually loose 20% battery like per 30 minutes with GPS on. What is your screen brightness? Could you also let me know how the battery life is on LTE? Seems like you were just on wifi for this screenshot. Thanks, this is helpful.

Could you also give me your honest opinion about the camera, especially low light.

EDIT: Sorry I read it wrong. You used 60% of the battery not 40% so at 2 hours on screen you are looking at 3-4 hours screen time total which isn't very good at all.

I haven't used the camera yet. I will try that tonight.
Yes, the GPS ruined the test
The screen brightness is in auto mode. Having said that I am not happy with it and will probably disable it. It tends to darken the screen a lot.

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[neo905]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I haven't used the camera yet. I will try that tonight.
Yes, the GPS ruined the test
The screen brightness is in auto mode. Having said that I am not happy with it and will probably disable it. It tends to darken the screen a lot.

Posted via the Android Central App

I usually throw LUX auto brightness on all my phones. Helps with battery like a lot and has custom settings which keep it as bright as I want it in the day and and darker than stock auto settings at night so I don`t burn out my cornea.

 

[Gruff35]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I haven't used the camera yet. I will try that tonight.
Yes, the GPS ruined the test
The screen brightness is in auto mode. Having said that I am not happy with it and will probably disable it. It tends to darken the screen a lot.

Posted via the Android Central App

Man, I thought everyone knew you shouldn't leave your phone in auto brightness mode. The sensor has to adjust way too much and is a battery hog.

Also, please note that apparently the M9 no longer has any sort of panel self-refresh (PSR). This has been pointed out and discussed by Anandtech in their review.

This PSR bit is what helps saves a lot of battery because the screen does not refresh static images; it refreshes just what actually changes on the screen.

The battery suffers a lot because of this. It's a shame HTC cut corners like this.

HTC cut a HUGE corner. The M9 isn't like the M8.

 

[That70sGAdawg]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

The battery on ANY new phone is terrible for the first 3-4 days (cycles). Yes, I've read the reviews (again people using it just for a few days). Let the OS and battery cycle a few days before judgement. Also, I'm sure HTC is working a firmware update to improve it as will Lollypop 5.1 when released. My only issue is that I personally ended up with an AT&T unit instead of unlocked or developer unit - and I'll be one on the last for carrier firmware updates..

 

[NEXUS_HTC_PS]

The battery on ANY new phone is terrible for the first 3-4 days (cycles). Yes, I've read the reviews (again people using it just for a few days). Let the OS and battery cycle a few days before judgement. Also, I'm sure HTC is working a firmware update to improve it as will Lollypop 5.1 when released. My only issue is that I personally ended up with an AT&T unit instead of unlocked or developer unit - and I'll be one on the last for carrier firmware updates..

Yeah, I'm impatiently waiting a Dev Edition nand backup and an exploit for S-OFF so I can flash the .1540. firmware. I'm already bootloader unlocked and flash TWRP.

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[Gruff35]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

The battery on ANY new phone is terrible for the first 3-4 days (cycles). Yes, I've read the reviews (again people using it just for a few days). Let the OS and battery cycle a few days before judgement. Also, I'm sure HTC is working a firmware update to improve it as will Lollypop 5.1 when released. My only issue is that I personally ended up with an AT&T unit instead of unlocked or developer unit - and I'll be one on the last for carrier firmware updates..

It's 2015 and do you need to cycle a cordless phone battery? If what you said were true then HTC would have that nonsense posted on their website or place those instructions into every smartphone box. Not to mention people who review the phone would say let the phone go through a few charging cycles to determine accurate battery life. The M8 worked out of the box without a problem. I can't take these excuses anymore.....geesh

What people fail to realize is that if you aren't in a great reception environment that your battery life will be horrible. Say you work in a building with thick cement walls. That will cause your phone to constantly search for a signal when its lost. I work in a building like that and when I took a trip to Atlanta for training. I was in a building with great reception and my battery couldn't do any wrong.

 

[puch96]

Re: HTC One M9 First Impressions

I received my M9 today. I was very disappointed. The phone still feels slippery as ever and the killer is the camera is worse than the reviewers have stated. It just cant seem to figure out how to set the exposure properly. Stills were either over or under exposed with poor color saturation. I wanted to love this phone but its going back. I did also notice that on my phone the audio was a bit lower than the M8 I used. That was not a big deal because the audio was superb.

Maybe just wait for the M9+.... Rumor has it quad HD display, 20MP rear shooter with OIS.... If that is the case, it should make pictures better???
Also it will probably come with 5.1 or bigger display.... who knows.....