The HTC One M9 Review: Part 1
by Joshua Ho on March 22, 2015 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- Snapdragon 810
- One M9
GPU Performance
Although CPU is often the focus of any given SoC, it’s important to avoid using a weak GPU as even cases as simple as web browsing or navigating through a UI can rely on the GPU for rendering, in addition to the common use cases of gaming. It’s also possible that GPUs can be leveraged for compute, which has great use for cases like image and video processing. To this end, the Snapdragon 810 has an Adreno 430 GPU that runs at 600 MHz, similar to the Snapdragon 805’s Adreno 420. As a result, all of the improvements we’re seeing from the Adreno 420 to the Adreno 430 are solely the result of architecture and driver improvements rather than clock speed increases.
As one can see, the One M9 manages to deliver results that basically mirror what we saw with Qualcomm’s MDP/T, although there is some variance that can be seen. HTC did make the right call here with the 1080p display as we see a pretty massive jump in performance from the One M8 to the One M9 in GPU performance, and using a 1440p display would have eaten away most of these gains. I suspect that the hit to GPU performance with 1440p displays will be mostly compensated for by the next generation of SoCs, but for now I’m still not sure that it makes sense to push such a resolution on a phone.
NAND Performance
Storage performance is often an unnoticed aspect of any device, but it can often force itself to the foreground when it’s insufficient. Probably the most famous case of this is the Nexus 7 (2012), which was really the first device that caused people to start to look closer at NAND performance. While we’re close to a better solution for storage testing, for now we can still look at Androbench to get a decent idea of relative storage performance, although this is nowhere near as extensive as our SSD testing.
In this test, HTC does show some level of improvement over the previous generation but does regress a bit in the random read department. As far as I can tell, HTC is using Samsung’s eMMC solution here, with the model name BGND3R, as opposed to the One M8 which used a SanDisk eMMC IC. It's interesting to see how the One M9 still uses ext4 here, even though the Nexus 9 adopted F2FS. As far as I can tell, there seems to be a reason to adopting one filesystem over another but this reason is still unclear to me.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
132 Comments
View All Comments
dandroid45 - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Man, I feel the same way, black, blue, silver, and white and maybe red, call it a day after thatflyingpants1 - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
I'd give it all up for the front speakers and mSD. The metal is pointless since it's going in a case on day 1.Jumangi - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link
Yea your better off getting a cheaper used M8 off of Ebay than one of these. HTC is in for another long year of losses.ol1bit - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
I Still have an M7, and it shocks me to see HTC keeps getting worse with each generation. Sure it's faster at gaming and such forth, but speed isn't everything. My phone is plenty fast for everyday items, and even some lite gaming, but for most gaming I use My Shield Portable. Sad really.VoraciousGorak - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
Also a (very happy) M7 owner here, looks like I'll be keeping my phone for at least another generation. Loving the screen, other metrics still competitive, newer smartphones not really enticing me even with how relatively old the M7 is. Shame I have one of the ones with a crappy low-light sensor (purple all the things!)RYF - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
There are some batch of M7 with defective camera module. You can get it changed. I have several friends who get it swapped and it is all well till now.Refuge - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
I also own and still love my HTC One M7. Great phone, and nothing has driven me to upgrade yet. I've never had a smart phone as long as this one.superflex - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Mine is almost 2 years old and other than a screen crack in one corner and dust under the front camera (which I never use), I love the phone.Battery life is still good for a 2 year old phone and the boom sound cant be beat.
This review doesn't bode well for HTC. Throttling, heat, poor display and mediocre CPU gains don't compel me to upgrade.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 22, 2015 - link
I feel some pain when I think of my past M7 too, the size was perfect, the build was lovely, display is one of the very best I've seen, but the charge time did it for me.My GS5 charges quick (under 2hrs), and when I can get a charge, I get more quicker too, thus making me more mobile. But the GS5 screen (in MY opinion) is horrible.
Now I've nowhere to look; M9 no front buttons, GS6, no front speakers. Event the amazing Note Edge I tried at the weekend - no front spearkes.
But its my money, and I can wait. Someone will come along with the right product eventually.
Spoelie - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
The Moto X 2014 comes close to a spiritual successor of the One M7. I've passed it tho for 3 reasons:* One front firing speaker instead of two, subjective tests all give the nod to boomsound.
* Amoled - great for movies, not so great for Android white-infused-Lollipop. Several counts of far reduced battery life.
* No IR blaster
But ergonomically, bezel size, etc. it is much better than the HTC M8+. It also has the quick charge spec.
Fix these for the Moto X 2015 - update the SOC, keep the physical size/1080p, maybe improve camera performance a bit, and I'm dropping my HTC...