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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
127 Comments
View All Comments
Dorek - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
He probably means the life of the company? If they keep releasing phones this bad, they WILL go out of business.KiretoX - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
I don't really understand why HTC first had a good idea and tried with 4Mpix and then instead of going in the middle between resolution and quality went right away to this terrible 20Mpix sensor? It would have been interesting if they went to something around 8-13Mpix... which is just fine resolution-wise. So now they first failed with low 4Mpix and now again failed with the super high 20Mpix...Laxaa - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
It really seem slike they just rushed as far as they could in the opposite direction when deciding the specs for this camera. Ultrapixels was a good idea and a middle ground would have been nice. Maybe something like the iPhone 6 but with OIS.How large would the pixels be on a 8.3 MP(4K capable), 1/2.3 sensor be?
pjcamp - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
HTC doesn't have the market share to request a custom sensor like Apple. They have to work with whatever standard parts are available off the shelf.melgross - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Yes, and they could,d have gotten an 8MP sensor off the shelf, or. 12-13MP version, or even a 16MP. They didn't need to go all the way to 20.It almost seems as thought they didn't even look at the specs, just the pixel count. And then they got rid of the camera processor as well. Very bad move.
Dorek - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
"And then they got rid of the camera processor as well. Very bad move."Yeah, this is ridiculously stupid. I had a dumbphone in 2008 (the Motorola Zine) that had a separate imaging co-processor, and as a result it had autofocus times and shot-to-shot times on par with any 2015 smartphone. An imaging co-processor goes a LONG way.
LordConrad - Friday, April 17, 2015 - link
I would have preferred an 8 Ultrapixel camera on the M9. More incoming light and plenty of pixels for a phone camera.sinPiEqualsZero - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
I'm sad to see this. Did no one at HTC use the phone before releasing it? I was hoping the M9 would be my new Windows phone later in the year.May need to switch to Android if no good flagships come out...perhaps the G4.
Thanks for the thorough review, Josh.
J4ckb1ng - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
HTC's are Android phones. Me, I'm happy the M9 is not vastly different from the HTC M8. The M8 is my first smartphone and I don't regret my decision. I wish the M8 battery life were longer, but I'm glad overall that I have no urgent need to ditch the M8 for the M9.Refuge - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
HTC Phones are also Windows phones. They have the flagship M8 in windows flavors, go look.If the M8 is your first smartphone I can see why you love it, it does feel premium and it is a good phone. Better than this M9 is if you ask me. But I honestly still feel that the ONE M7 was by and far the best phone of their ONE Mx lineup.
I'll definately be keeping this phone for the time being, HTC has nothing worth upgrading to if you ask me right now.