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
V900 - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Heh, that's kinda funny... iPhone owner here too, a fairly happy one at that, and the Z3Compact is also the only Android handset I find the least bit tempting!polygon_21 - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
"The One M7 was essentially the phone that saved HTC."The M9 might be the one that kills it.
Laxaa - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Ouch. HTC really dropped the ball here.I was considering replacing my Lumia 920 with the M9, but at this point I'd rather wait for the M10 with the Snapdragon 820. Too bad, because HTC really had a good template with the M7(always felt that the M8 was a step back in tersm of design).
jvl - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
"(...) but we’re basically fighting physics here."Uh really? Have you seeen... well, the Moto X? Either of those, that is?
How can you say something like that?!
jvl - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Before any downputting comments arise, find the quoted piece at the design section, directly under the picture showing off HTC's brand.Which I avoid for this specific reason....
jvl - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Wow, after skimming through the review I really wonder... Do we really need an HTC as a competitor? This device feels completely unnecessary. If they can't even get an improvement right, they're better off making room for someone who can.Sony could use more exposure, I've got the impression their lineup wipes the floor with HTC's.
Seriously, I usually compare the plots (benchmarks and whatnot) to both my current phone or my aspired-to-next-phone (currently: Moto x 14 / none) - in this case, there is not a single feature I'd like to see from the M9 in the device I have....
Plus, that logo... (Any company worth its sh*t should be proud enough and confident enough not to spoil the front like that)
sonny73n - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Yup, not to mention the logo is very ugly, plus the the off-centered display is a deal breaker for me.DeciusStrabo - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
The M9 gets an hour (15 %) more runtime than the Moto X. A single feature that I would think you'd see as worthy.Laxaa - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Sony has some great phones(The compacts are excellent), but they are plagued by lackluster camera performance(lack of OIS and terrible processing), which is ironic considering Sony produces most of the sensors on the market today.The Z4 will be one to watch though, and I hope there will be a compact version of it.
marcolorenzo - Monday, March 23, 2015 - link
Back when the reviews first came out for the HTC One X, they certainly didn't mention the problems listed in this article's introduction. Of course, I don't remember what Anandtech had to say about it but I definitely remember several sites praised it as if it was the second coming for Android. Based on those reviews, I decided to "upgrade" to it from an iPhone 3GS. What a huge disappointment. The only good thing about it was the camera I think. Performance was pathetic and the battery life was barely tolerable. They were also terrible with software upgrades but of course, this could not have been foreseen by reviewers. It almost made me go back to Apple but I stuck around and got a Z1 Compact after my contract was up and has been very satisfied ever since.The fact that the M9 has received hardly any design changes from the M8 or M7 for that matter and suffers from performance and battery life problems show that HTC is a relic of a company and deserves to be put down. In this day and age, there's simply no room for idiocy like this, especially not when the competition is so strong and definitely not when they are already playing catch up. I'll be buying a S6 Edge next month, the M9 won't even be factoring into my consideration.