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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Despoiler - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Nice find. I suspected that HTC just botched their settings based on the first release camera results and how they improved greatly on the second release. They need to keep working on it.rd_nest - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Seriously how many 'usable' shots can you get at 1/2 sec shutter speed without OIS? Even with OIS, I doubt I can get many.http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=599...
^^ This is what is it supposed to show even with all tweaks and manual settings and good lighting condition.
These above photos are littered with overexposed highlights, loss of detail, noise in sky and just wrong colour. They have a weird greenish tint.
Above all, when you want to take a quick photo, you can't do so many changes in settings and try to find the right combination. If I had time, I would take out my DSLR - why worry about a phone camera?
melgross - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Agreed. I take close to 90% of my pictures these days with my phone. I've got expensive DSLRs and lenses. But for many purposes, the phone camera serves the purpose just as well. I never thought I'd say that, but it's true.But the phone camera must be a really good one.
pjcamp - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
I had hopes HTC would finally have fixed their camera problems. Th design of this phone reflects the chaos in the company's upper management. They can't seem to make a camera to save their lives. Literally.smorebuds - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Literally?pjcamp - Monday, May 11, 2015 - link
Just to update you: upon introducing the M9, HTC experienced a 33% month to month decline in revenues and a 39% year to year decline. That shouldn't happen when your latest and greatest hits the market. So yes, they're circling the drain.Stuka87 - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
So you are saying they are all going to die because the camera is no good? That seems a bit harsh...pedromcm.pm - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
The camera (and other problems) will makes people not consider the M9. Why should they, on the first place? As such, HTC will be going down.LordConrad - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
I doubt it. I almost never use the camera in my phone, and when I do it is to take a quick snap of something funny or interesting I just saw. Any phone camera is good enough for that.pjcamp - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
HTC has been unprofitable or marginally profitable for a very long time. And yes, that will be the death of the company. They needed to do it right and they didn't.