3 weeks with my M9. Thoughts and impressions

[petvas72]

It has been three weeks since I got the M9 here in Germany, so I wanted to post my impressions so far. Now that I had more time to use the device I think I have a pretty good idea what the good things and what the bad things are.

• Design: My first impressions were positive and after three weeks I still believe that the design is just great. Yes, it hasn't changed a lot but it doesn't really matter. The M9 is still the most beautifull device out there, or one of the most beautiful. Of course there are other devices out there that have also a great design, but for me the M9 is still the best. I prefer aluminium to glass and the device feels sturdy and better built than the M9. The difference is small though. The location of the power button is perfect. At first I thought that I would accidentally hit it and yes, it did happen once or two times, but now it doesn't happen at all. The special coating on the button makes it easy to differentiate from the volume buttons. Overall I am very happy with the design.
• BoomSound: I have heard complains that they are not as loud as on the M8, but I can only say two things: They are loud enough and they are great! They offer more deep sounds with better clarity. I am not an audiophile and definitely no expert, but this is my experience so far. I enjoy listening to music, podcasts and watching videos on the M9. A definite improvement over the M8.
• Speed: The device is really fast and there is no lag in the OS. I experience lag though in some apps, but I cannot see how the device would be the issue here. Twitter and Chrome are two examples where lag when scrolling does occur all the time. I use Talon as my twitter client now and scrolling has been very smooth so far.
• Sense 7: It's not a big improvement over Sense 6, but the Theming capability is great (but not perfect). I have created 4 themes so far and I can easily switch between them when I am bored I also love BlinkFeed. It is the first thing I do when I hold my phone. BlinkFeed allows me to get the news very fast and from all sources that interest me. A great solution.
• Display: I always thought that the M8 display was too red, too saturated, offering unnatural (but nice looking) colors. The M9 is the opposite and I prefer it to the M8. Having said that, I was disappointed to see that the auto brightness didn't work as well as on the M8. It is most of the time too dim and I didn't like it. I found an app on the Play store, "Yet another auto brightness tool" and it allowed my to configure min and max brightness levels. The app works really great and have noticed no negative impact on battery life so far. I just wished that HTC had a better out of the box user experience, regarding the display.
• Battery life: Let's just say that it's ok, with room for improvement. I was on a train two days ago for around 45 minutes. My M9 lost almost 10% battery during these 45 minutes! That's crazy and unacceptable. I am also used to my iPhone 6 Plus that has amazing battery life, but still, the M9 can do better. I would say, I can easily have 4 hours on screen time, especially when using WiFi and when not moving around all the time, between locations. If I use a lot of 4G and move around a lot during the day, then I cannot imagine getting more than 2,5 to 3 hours on screen time from the M9. This is an area where HTC has to improve the M9. Maybe a future update..
• Camera: This has been discussed a lot. With the XDA thread settings (slightly customized from me with saturation set to 0) I get good to very good pictures in most situations. Is it better than my iPhone? It depends! Try lowering the resolution to small if you want a direct comparison with the iPhone. You would be using 8Mpixel in the small setting. The biggest disappointment though is the video recording. 4K looks awfull and I cannot recommend it to anybody. FullHD video recording is ok to good, depending on how steady you can keep the device. My iPhone has much better video recording capabilties. HTC must improve the video recording experience. For me this is not important, but I can imagine others would have an issue with that. Overall I find the camera to be good though, better than the M8's.
• Heat: The device does get warm but not up to an unusable level. It can get a bit unpleasant when using the device and charging it at the same time.
• Charging: HTC should have included the rapid charger accessory that they offer for purchase separately. With the standard charger my M9 needs over 2,5 hours to fully charge. With the rapid charger it needs less than 1,5 hours to fully charge.

Overall I am still happy with my M9. It is the best HTC One Mx smartphone to date. Is this the best smartphone though?
I don't think such a thing exists. There are so many devices out there and the two big players, Apple and Samsung have a very strong marketing presence that HTC cannot beat. What I can say though is that the M9 is one of the best smartphones out there. It has its advantages and disadvantages, like any other phone out there. People will have to weigh these and decide what is important to them.
I personally cannot go away from HTC, because I love its design, the way the M9 feels in the hand, the BoomSound speakers, the BlinkFeed and Sense. These reasons make me stay with HTC.

There are areas where HTC can improve though with software updates and I expect them to do:

• Battery life
• Camera, especially for video recording

There are also other areas where HTC should improve for the M10:

• Provide an overall better user experience. Why need a 3rd party auto brightness tool for example?
• Provide a better display technology. The current display is still very good, but my iPhone is better. Samsung apparently has the best displays out there. HTC needs to have a great display on the M10. I don't care if it will be 2K though. FullHD is good enough, but the display should use a better display technology. This will be my biggest wish for the M10.
• Iterate on the design. Do not change the design language but improve it even further!
• Use USB-C for charging
• Provide a 64GB model, but please keep the SD card expansion..

 

[vision63]

This is an excellent review. Thanks for your well thought out observations. I've had mine for a little over a week and I do enjoy it. I've capped the ISO on the camera to 400 and I'm happy with the images so far. I'm a photographer so I have other cameras for extensive shooting. Love the speed. Love Blinkfeed. I am, however a little disappointed that the BoomSound speakers aren't as loud as my M8. It's a significant difference amount to my ears, though it "does" sound better.

Again, thanks for your thoughts.

 

[drone3]

It has been three weeks since I got the M9 here in Germany, so I wanted to post my impressions so far. Now that I had more time to use the device I think I have a pretty good idea what the good things and what the bad things are.

• Design: My first impressions were positive and after three weeks I still believe that the design is just great. Yes, it hasn't changed a lot but it doesn't really matter. The M9 is still the most beautifull device out there, or one of the most beautiful. Of course there are other devices out there that have also a great design, but for me the M9 is still the best. I prefer aluminium to glass and the device feels sturdy and better built than the M9. The difference is small though. The location of the power button is perfect. At first I thought that I would accidentally hit it and yes, it did happen once or two times, but now it doesn't happen at all. The special coating on the button makes it easy to differentiate from the volume buttons. Overall I am very happy with the design.
• BoomSound: I have heard complains that they are not as loud as on the M8, but I can only say two things: They are loud enough and they are great! They offer more deep sounds with better clarity. I am not an audiophile and definitely no expert, but this is my experience so far. I enjoy listening to music, podcasts and watching videos on the M9. A definite improvement over the M8.
• Speed: The device is really fast and there is no lag in the OS. I experience lag though in some apps, but I cannot see how the device would be the issue here. Twitter and Chrome are two examples where lag when scrolling does occur all the time. I use Talon as my twitter client now and scrolling has been very smooth so far.
• Sense 7: It's not a big improvement over Sense 6, but the Theming capability is great (but not perfect). I have created 4 themes so far and I can easily switch between them when I am bored I also love BlinkFeed. It is the first thing I do when I hold my phone. BlinkFeed allows me to get the news very fast and from all sources that interest me. A great solution.
• Display: I always thought that the M8 display was too red, too saturated, offering unnatural (but nice looking) colors. The M9 is the opposite and I prefer it to the M8. Having said that, I was disappointed to see that the auto brightness didn't work as well as on the M8. It is most of the time too dim and I didn't like it. I found an app on the Play store, "Yet another auto brightness tool" and it allowed my to configure min and max brightness levels. The app works really great and have noticed no negative impact on battery life so far. I just wished that HTC had a better out of the box user experience, regarding the display.
• Battery life: Let's just say that it's ok, with room for improvement. I was on a train two days ago for around 45 minutes. My M9 lost almost 10% battery during these 45 minutes! That's crazy and unacceptable. I am also used to my iPhone 6 Plus that has amazing battery life, but still, the M9 can do better. I would say, I can easily have 4 hours on screen time, especially when using WiFi and when not moving around all the time, between locations. If I use a lot of 4G and move around a lot during the day, then I cannot imagine getting more than 2,5 to 3 hours on screen time from the M9. This is an area where HTC has to improve the M9. Maybe a future update..
• Camera: This has been discussed a lot. With the XDA thread settings (slightly customized from me with saturation set to 0) I get good to very good pictures in most situations. Is it better than my iPhone? It depends! Try lowering the resolution to small if you want a direct comparison with the iPhone. You would be using 8Mpixel in the small setting. The biggest disappointment though is the video recording. 4K looks awfull and I cannot recommend it to anybody. FullHD video recording is ok to good, depending on how steady you can keep the device. My iPhone has much better video recording capabilties. HTC must improve the video recording experience. For me this is not important, but I can imagine others would have an issue with that. Overall I find the camera to be good though, better than the M8's.
• Heat: The device does get warm but not up to an unusable level. It can get a bit unpleasant when using the device and charging it at the same time.
• Charging: HTC should have included the rapid charger accessory that they offer for purchase separately. With the standard charger my M9 needs over 2,5 hours to fully charge. With the rapid charger it needs less than 1,5 hours to fully charge.

Overall I am still happy with my M9. It is the best HTC One Mx smartphone to date. Is this the best smartphone though?
I don't think such a thing exists. There are so many devices out there and the two big players, Apple and Samsung have a very strong marketing presence that HTC cannot beat. What I can say though is that the M9 is one of the best smartphones out there. It has its advantages and disadvantages, like any other phone out there. People will have to weigh these and decide what is important to them.
I personally cannot go away from HTC, because I love its design, the way the M9 feels in the hand, the BoomSound speakers, the BlinkFeed and Sense. These reasons make me stay with HTC.

There are areas where HTC can improve though with software updates and I expect them to do:

• Battery life
• Camera, especially for video recording

There are also other areas where HTC should improve for the M10:

• Provide an overall better user experience. Why need a 3rd party auto brightness tool for example?
• Provide a better display technology. The current display is still very good, but my iPhone is better. Samsung apparently has the best displays out there. HTC needs to have a great display on the M10. I don't care if it will be 2K though. FullHD is good enough, but the display should use a better display technology. This will be my biggest wish for the M10.
• Iterate on the design. Do not change the design language but improve it even further!
• Use USB-C for charging
• Provide a 64GB model, but please keep the SD card expansion..

Thanks for the run down, I got the S6 in the end and it's been quite an awkward adjustment although their screen and camera are so good it does balances out the the annoying aspects.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Tikiki]

Nice writeup.

So all the bells and whistles are working/not working to some degree..but how does the phone work? Dropped/missed calls/texts? How is voice quality? ( my xperia z3 sometimes had me sound like I was under water ).

I can somewhat understand the camera quality in our phones now..but 4k vids? If I know im going to be recording..then I bust out my HD cam. Just me though..

 

[petvas72]

Nice writeup.

So all the bells and whistles are working/not working to some degree..but how does the phone work? Dropped/missed calls/texts? How is voice quality? ( my xperia z3 sometimes had me sound like I was under water ).

I can somewhat understand the camera quality in our phones now..but 4k vids? If I know im going to be recording..then I bust out my HD cam. Just me though..

The phone works great. No missed calls or texts.
As far as 4K recording concerns, I don't really care but there might be others that do.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Alex_NJ]

What do you use for a silent mode?

Which option do you choose when you want no sounds included games etc except for your alarm clock?

 

[petvas72]

What do you use for a silent mode?

Which option do you choose when you want no sounds included games etc except for your alarm clock?

Never had the need, so I can't say.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[SCXR]

I think the battery issue is related to the version of Lollipop it's running. When and if it gets 5.1, you should see a very noticeable improvement.

 

[sam00]

It has been three weeks since I got the M9 here in Germany, so I wanted to post my impressions so far. Now that I had more time to use the device I think I have a pretty good idea what the good things and what the bad things are.

• Design: My first impressions were positive and after three weeks I still believe that the design is just great. Yes, it hasn't changed a lot but it doesn't really matter. The M9 is still the most beautifull device out there, or one of the most beautiful. Of course there are other devices out there that have also a great design, but for me the M9 is still the best. I prefer aluminium to glass and the device feels sturdy and better built than the M9. The difference is small though. The location of the power button is perfect. At first I thought that I would accidentally hit it and yes, it did happen once or two times, but now it doesn't happen at all. The special coating on the button makes it easy to differentiate from the volume buttons. Overall I am very happy with the design.
• BoomSound: I have heard complains that they are not as loud as on the M8, but I can only say two things: They are loud enough and they are great! They offer more deep sounds with better clarity. I am not an audiophile and definitely no expert, but this is my experience so far. I enjoy listening to music, podcasts and watching videos on the M9. A definite improvement over the M8.
• Speed: The device is really fast and there is no lag in the OS. I experience lag though in some apps, but I cannot see how the device would be the issue here. Twitter and Chrome are two examples where lag when scrolling does occur all the time. I use Talon as my twitter client now and scrolling has been very smooth so far.
• Sense 7: It's not a big improvement over Sense 6, but the Theming capability is great (but not perfect). I have created 4 themes so far and I can easily switch between them when I am bored I also love BlinkFeed. It is the first thing I do when I hold my phone. BlinkFeed allows me to get the news very fast and from all sources that interest me. A great solution.
• Display: I always thought that the M8 display was too red, too saturated, offering unnatural (but nice looking) colors. The M9 is the opposite and I prefer it to the M8. Having said that, I was disappointed to see that the auto brightness didn't work as well as on the M8. It is most of the time too dim and I didn't like it. I found an app on the Play store, "Yet another auto brightness tool" and it allowed my to configure min and max brightness levels. The app works really great and have noticed no negative impact on battery life so far. I just wished that HTC had a better out of the box user experience, regarding the display.
• Battery life: Let's just say that it's ok, with room for improvement. I was on a train two days ago for around 45 minutes. My M9 lost almost 10% battery during these 45 minutes! That's crazy and unacceptable. I am also used to my iPhone 6 Plus that has amazing battery life, but still, the M9 can do better. I would say, I can easily have 4 hours on screen time, especially when using WiFi and when not moving around all the time, between locations. If I use a lot of 4G and move around a lot during the day, then I cannot imagine getting more than 2,5 to 3 hours on screen time from the M9. This is an area where HTC has to improve the M9. Maybe a future update..
• Camera: This has been discussed a lot. With the XDA thread settings (slightly customized from me with saturation set to 0) I get good to very good pictures in most situations. Is it better than my iPhone? It depends! Try lowering the resolution to small if you want a direct comparison with the iPhone. You would be using 8Mpixel in the small setting. The biggest disappointment though is the video recording. 4K looks awfull and I cannot recommend it to anybody. FullHD video recording is ok to good, depending on how steady you can keep the device. My iPhone has much better video recording capabilties. HTC must improve the video recording experience. For me this is not important, but I can imagine others would have an issue with that. Overall I find the camera to be good though, better than the M8's.
• Heat: The device does get warm but not up to an unusable level. It can get a bit unpleasant when using the device and charging it at the same time.
• Charging: HTC should have included the rapid charger accessory that they offer for purchase separately. With the standard charger my M9 needs over 2,5 hours to fully charge. With the rapid charger it needs less than 1,5 hours to fully charge.

Overall I am still happy with my M9. It is the best HTC One Mx smartphone to date. Is this the best smartphone though?
I don't think such a thing exists. There are so many devices out there and the two big players, Apple and Samsung have a very strong marketing presence that HTC cannot beat. What I can say though is that the M9 is one of the best smartphones out there. It has its advantages and disadvantages, like any other phone out there. People will have to weigh these and decide what is important to them.
I personally cannot go away from HTC, because I love its design, the way the M9 feels in the hand, the BoomSound speakers, the BlinkFeed and Sense. These reasons make me stay with HTC.

There are areas where HTC can improve though with software updates and I expect them to do:

• Battery life
• Camera, especially for video recording

There are also other areas where HTC should improve for the M10:

• Provide an overall better user experience. Why need a 3rd party auto brightness tool for example?
• Provide a better display technology. The current display is still very good, but my iPhone is better. Samsung apparently has the best displays out there. HTC needs to have a great display on the M10. I don't care if it will be 2K though. FullHD is good enough, but the display should use a better display technology. This will be my biggest wish for the M10.
• Iterate on the design. Do not change the design language but improve it even further!
• Use USB-C for charging
• Provide a 64GB model, but please keep the SD card expansion..

Petvas72 which 3rd party auto brightness app are you using on ur M9?

 

[petvas72]

YAAB: https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...apps/details?id=biz.gyrus.yaab&token=472qVC4X

 

[Powarun]

I thank you for your time, I have been reading your reviews on how the M9 is a great phone and really enjoyed your reviews and defending how the M9 is a device being unfairly reviewed. I did not upgrade the M9 from the M8, instead went to the Nexus 6, only because I felt the M9 would not get updated as often as the Nexus, given two years I thought the Nexus would look better without a case than the M9 without a case in two years time. Your reviews helped make the decision difficult though.

 

[anon(5630457)]

I purchased the HTC One M9 today after playing with it at the AT&T store. I love it. The Boom Sound speakers are incredible. I've been downloading my apps for the last hour and I haven't noticed any overheating issues with the 810 (I'm thinking those were exaggerated). I really like HTC Sense. I can see myself wasting a lot of time with Blinkfeed. The display, while not 2K, is great. I have no complaints with it. I added a microSD card to the phone and I got an extra 64 GBs of storage (can't do that on the S6!). I love the premium feel of the device, even though I slapped on an Otterobx defender case.

A note here: The AT&T employee who was helping me was telling me that a few customers came in and complained about the battery life of the S6. That's why I decided on the M9 over the S6. I'm happy with my decision.

 

[kleeno]

It has been three weeks since I got the M9 here in Germany, so I wanted to post my impressions so far. Now that I had more time to use the device I think I have a pretty good idea what the good things and what the bad things are.

• Design: My first impressions were positive and after three weeks I still believe that the design is just great. Yes, it hasn't changed a lot but it doesn't really matter. The M9 is still the most beautifull device out there, or one of the most beautiful. Of course there are other devices out there that have also a great design, but for me the M9 is still the best. I prefer aluminium to glass and the device feels sturdy and better built than the M9. The difference is small though. The location of the power button is perfect. At first I thought that I would accidentally hit it and yes, it did happen once or two times, but now it doesn't happen at all. The special coating on the button makes it easy to differentiate from the volume buttons. Overall I am very happy with the design.
• BoomSound: I have heard complains that they are not as loud as on the M8, but I can only say two things: They are loud enough and they are great! They offer more deep sounds with better clarity. I am not an audiophile and definitely no expert, but this is my experience so far. I enjoy listening to music, podcasts and watching videos on the M9. A definite improvement over the M8.
• Speed: The device is really fast and there is no lag in the OS. I experience lag though in some apps, but I cannot see how the device would be the issue here. Twitter and Chrome are two examples where lag when scrolling does occur all the time. I use Talon as my twitter client now and scrolling has been very smooth so far.
• Sense 7: It's not a big improvement over Sense 6, but the Theming capability is great (but not perfect). I have created 4 themes so far and I can easily switch between them when I am bored I also love BlinkFeed. It is the first thing I do when I hold my phone. BlinkFeed allows me to get the news very fast and from all sources that interest me. A great solution.
• Display: I always thought that the M8 display was too red, too saturated, offering unnatural (but nice looking) colors. The M9 is the opposite and I prefer it to the M8. Having said that, I was disappointed to see that the auto brightness didn't work as well as on the M8. It is most of the time too dim and I didn't like it. I found an app on the Play store, "Yet another auto brightness tool" and it allowed my to configure min and max brightness levels. The app works really great and have noticed no negative impact on battery life so far. I just wished that HTC had a better out of the box user experience, regarding the display.
• Battery life: Let's just say that it's ok, with room for improvement. I was on a train two days ago for around 45 minutes. My M9 lost almost 10% battery during these 45 minutes! That's crazy and unacceptable. I am also used to my iPhone 6 Plus that has amazing battery life, but still, the M9 can do better. I would say, I can easily have 4 hours on screen time, especially when using WiFi and when not moving around all the time, between locations. If I use a lot of 4G and move around a lot during the day, then I cannot imagine getting more than 2,5 to 3 hours on screen time from the M9. This is an area where HTC has to improve the M9. Maybe a future update..
• Camera: This has been discussed a lot. With the XDA thread settings (slightly customized from me with saturation set to 0) I get good to very good pictures in most situations. Is it better than my iPhone? It depends! Try lowering the resolution to small if you want a direct comparison with the iPhone. You would be using 8Mpixel in the small setting. The biggest disappointment though is the video recording. 4K looks awfull and I cannot recommend it to anybody. FullHD video recording is ok to good, depending on how steady you can keep the device. My iPhone has much better video recording capabilties. HTC must improve the video recording experience. For me this is not important, but I can imagine others would have an issue with that. Overall I find the camera to be good though, better than the M8's.
• Heat: The device does get warm but not up to an unusable level. It can get a bit unpleasant when using the device and charging it at the same time.
• Charging: HTC should have included the rapid charger accessory that they offer for purchase separately. With the standard charger my M9 needs over 2,5 hours to fully charge. With the rapid charger it needs less than 1,5 hours to fully charge.

Overall I am still happy with my M9. It is the best HTC One Mx smartphone to date. Is this the best smartphone though?
I don't think such a thing exists. There are so many devices out there and the two big players, Apple and Samsung have a very strong marketing presence that HTC cannot beat. What I can say though is that the M9 is one of the best smartphones out there. It has its advantages and disadvantages, like any other phone out there. People will have to weigh these and decide what is important to them.
I personally cannot go away from HTC, because I love its design, the way the M9 feels in the hand, the BoomSound speakers, the BlinkFeed and Sense. These reasons make me stay with HTC.

There are areas where HTC can improve though with software updates and I expect them to do:

• Battery life
• Camera, especially for video recording

There are also other areas where HTC should improve for the M10:

• Provide an overall better user experience. Why need a 3rd party auto brightness tool for example?
• Provide a better display technology. The current display is still very good, but my iPhone is better. Samsung apparently has the best displays out there. HTC needs to have a great display on the M10. I don't care if it will be 2K though. FullHD is good enough, but the display should use a better display technology. This will be my biggest wish for the M10.
• Iterate on the design. Do not change the design language but improve it even further!
• Use USB-C for charging
• Provide a 64GB model, but please keep the SD card expansion..

100% in agreement

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[iLLusive]

I appreciate the good details you gave about the phone, but I guess either people have just way more activate apps or do not setup the phone in as much detail as I do. As I do not think the battery in this phone, compared to other options on the market, is need for any huge improvement. Yes, we all want our phones to last for weeks and charge them less often I get that. Just saying that I am getting nearly 36+ hours consistently over 3 separate full cycles and I do not see this changing as the device is completely setup to the T. Hope everyone the best of luck of find tuning their setup but I think in some areas of devices as a consumer we are naive to think out of the box it should just give us best results on every aspect of the phone.

Also I setup my M8 / M9 for my customers with most of my settings and as they have completely different lifestyles and uses and got nearly the same battery life I really do not think I just got the "right" M9 device with an amazing gen in the battery. To each their own at the end of the day but I know my battery life on the HTC One M9 is better than my M8, GS5, GS6 and comes close to what I was getting with LG G3 / Note 4 if you factor in the mAh difference.

 

[That70sGAdawg]

Nice follow up review!

 

[syspry]

Just a small point. Losing 10% in 45 minutes isn't something to worry about, that can happen on just about any phone if you've been using it the full 45 minutes. If you lost 10% just sitting in your pocket then yes, I'd be concerned.

 

[darkman265]

Illusive what is your setup

 

[Albert Delgado]

I think the battery issue is related to the version of Lollipop it's running. When and if it gets 5.1, you should see a very noticeable improvement.

Do you know when the m9 will be getting 5.1?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Albert Delgado]

Do you know when the m9 will be getting 5.1?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[neo905]

Do you know when the m9 will be getting 5.1?

Posted via the Android Central App

August from what I hear.