I don't get it...htc came up with such a beautiful design for a phone when it launched the m7. Everyone praised it and it won phone of the year..if something isn't broke why fix it? People hate on the m9 and for what? The camera is a 20mp camera that hasn't even had final software unveiled. All specs are better than the previous year and the phone itself is a beautiful size and premium materials. I think that to many people expect unrealistically that each year a whole new looking phone is going to come out but it's just not realistic.
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There are a few issues with the M9 for me which deal with the design, hardware choices and software. I'll try to explain why the general opinion of the device is ho-hum (or at least why my opinion is that).
Design:
As you mentioned, when HTC revealed the M7 back in 2013, it was a beautiful looking device. But now in 2015, the design is starting to edge on the stale side. Aside from that, there are some changes which I don't like about the M9:
- The M7 had nice tight corners, whereas the M8 and M9 have larger rounded corners
- The M7 had symmetrical speakers both top and bottom. The M8 had asymmetrical speakers where the top speaker was shorter than the bottom, and the M9 seems to make it even smaller
- The M7 and M8 had circular camera modules which I preferred over the M9's now square module
- The M7's black bar had a useful feature in the capacitive buttons. The M8 and M9 have the black bar with no use other than to house the internal components - from a design standpoint, it doesn't look that nice
- The two-tone metal finish on the M9 is said to take twice as long to manufacture, but does that make the phone better/look nicer? Is that an actual improvement to the phone?
- I just think this third iteration now should have had a distinct aesthetic change. Even the M8 changed a bit from the M7. The M9 changed little from the M8.
The thing about design is that it's all subjective. While I still think the M9 is one of the nicer looking designs, it is getting a bit stale to me an no longer as impressive as the M8 and certainly not the M7 when they were revealed.
Camera:
Probably the biggest 'issue' with the M7 and M8 phones. I had the M7 and currently have the M8 and have taken great photos with both phones. However the cameras did have their limitations and when compared to other flagship devices, if fell very short in well lit shots.
From my understanding there have been reviews with the new camera software (Android Central is one of them) who still say the pictures taken with the M9 aren't very good and in certain cases, takes worse shots than last year's M8. This to me is completely unacceptable. They had been criticised for two years now about the camera, they knew it, accepted it and have responded to it by providing a new 20mp shooter, but it isn't really much better. Hardware specs aside (how on earth does a 9.6mm thick phone with the camera module sticking out not be able to fit OIS?) it seems like their software image processing is worse. Other companies are just killing them on the camera front. Images from the S6 on various websites legitimately look like a couple of generations ahead of the M9's camera.
Software:
Sense imo is the best looking and performing OEM skin on the market. I love Sense 6 even more than stock android - I think it legitimately looks and performs that good. Sense 7 looks to be even better, however looks more like Sense 6.5 (as Android Central call it). The UI is pretty much untouched, except that they've added 3 new features; Themes, Yelp to Blinkfeed and Smart Widgets.
- The smart widget looks poorly implemented. Various reviews have mentioned that it doesn't learn your app usage fast enough or doesn't learn at all.
- Yelp on Blinkfeed is for me, a completely irrelevant addition. Don't use blinkfeed other than the occasional swipe through to see what's going on, but I mostly use RSS.
- Themes look ok, but again, not something I'd be particularly interested in. I'd imagine I'd try it once or twice then not use it again.
I can see why those features would appeal to consumers, but for me personally, I don't see Sense 7 being a significant improvement over Sense 6.
So they are my gripes with the M9 this time round. And the combination of those reasons will be why I won't be picking up the One M9. I get what you're saying, and maybe my expectations of the M9 were too high, but when you hear reports of the M9 camera performing worse and the battery life being worse than last year's phone, that's just not acceptable to me.