The HTC One M9 Review: Part 2
by Joshua Ho on April 6, 2015 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- Snapdragon 810
- One M9
WiFi Performance
Fundamentally, a smartphone is defined by its ability to connect to the internet. Although cellular data is important, WiFi performance is crucial for anyone on a limited data plan and in areas where cellular data is slow or nonexistent. To this end, HTC has outfitted the One M9 with Broadcom’s BCM4356 WiFi/BT combo chipset, which we’ve seen before in the Nexus 6. This chipset supports 2x2 802.11ac, but the One M9 only supports a maximum 433 Mbps physical link rate, which means that it’s only using a single spatial stream. I haven’t been able to find any information on the antenna configuration of the One M9, but it’s likely that HTC is only using a single antenna for WiFi on the One M9 which would make it similar to the One M7 and One M8 in that regard. In order to test how this configuration performs, we use IPerf on Android connected to a PC to see how rapidly the device can send UDP packets.
As one can see, there’s a reasonable performance uplift when compared to Qualcomm Atheros’ WCN3680 WiFi/BT combo chip, but it isn’t as big as moving to a 2x2 MIMO configuration. The lack of MIMO also has implications for WiFi range, but WiFi signals degrade quickly enough that this wouldn’t be a massive difference.
GNSS
As the One M9 uses a Qualcomm modem, it's a pretty safe bet that it also uses the modem for GNSS location services. In practice, this means that the One M9 locks on to satellites quickly any time it's possible to download assistance data to speed up GPS.
Without assistance data, the One M9 seems to have worse performance than expected, although weather conditions can always affect overall performance. Time to first lock took a minute and 42 seconds, and accuracy wasn't quite as high as one would hope, tending towards 30 foot accuracy rather than 10 foot accuracy. It's likely that local weather conditions were responsible for this issue, as subjectively it seemed that GPS performance was comparable to other phones tested at the same time.
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Ultimitsu - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Some information in your camera review part is wrong. For example:1, for the same sensor size, the smaller the pixel size, the more Dynamic Range for the output image. Pixel level DR does not matter.
2, aperture ratio of "F/x" is a ratio. It is not an absolute number. As such when comparing lesnes of different sensor sizes, F ratio comparison is completely pointless. For light gathering purpose and subject isolation purpose, for the same FOV, it is the aperture width that actually matters. M9's aperture opening is 2.15mm, while M8's is 1.925. M9 clearly has larger aperture. thus your statement "The aperture has also regressed somewhat from f/2.0 to f/2.2" is completely erroneous.
There are other errors which I would rather not go into more detail.
Laxaa - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
But isn't aperture relative to the sensor size?Ultimitsu - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
Aperture ratio is not relative to sensor size. Aperture ratio is the ratio of focal length to aperture opening. For example, 24mm F/2 means focal length is 24mm, aperture opening is half that at 12mm.M9's ratio is lower than M8 but its aperture is in fact larger.
TT Masterzz - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
I fundamentally disagree with the assertion that a user should go to the Play Store to find various applications that they like, as taking this to its logical conclusion basically ends with having to download a dialer application from the Play Store on first boot - I totally agree with you Joshua Ho, Ars Technica's Ron gave hardly any credit to the new M9. I know its hardware has been a let down but software is one place I and probably a lot of people will always give credit to HTC. Its incorrect to bash HTC's software just because it does not do gimmicks like spit the screen for multiple apps.Badelhas - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
Why couldnt HTC just create a 8 Ultrapixel camera? I love the camera of my M8, the only thing lacking is resolution...Losaa - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
Very sad for HTC. I love my m8, the m9 is an insult to customers which were happy to stay on the HTC ship for a long time.Peichen - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
HTC is done. I was in Taiwan back in November and even at its home everyone know HTC is not going to be around much longer. People with money are buying iPhone at higher than US price. People without money are eying Xiaomi and other budget goodness. Only a group sandwiched in between will pay iPhone money for Xiaomi quality and even Xiaomi is delivering better quality than HTC.ksdphys - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
I know almost nothing of photography, so please do not take this as a sarcastic question: what is wrong with the example photos in the article? They are described as being "horrible", among other things, and I am just not seeing it. They look more or less fine to me. I really want to know what is wrong since apparently I am really uninformed.tackle70 - Friday, April 10, 2015 - link
I'm really bummed by this... my wife and I are happy M7 owners from two years ago and we're about to be eligible for a cheap phone upgrade, and I was thinking of the M9. Guess I'll wait another year...I don't think I could ever go to a phone with rear facing speakers, though. So there's that... don't think I could ever do a Samsung phone until they change that.
Martin84a - Saturday, April 11, 2015 - link
Does wifi speed correlate to wifi range? What is mean is, who cares about the wifi speed as long as it's not cringe worthy bad. If great wifi speed doesn't correlate with a good wifi range, I think people would much rather know how far away from a router the phone can be used, when using the same router.