HTC has finally announced the much-awaited HTC One A9 smartphone for the Indian market. The smartphone was announced alongside the Desire 828 Dual SIM, which was a mid-range device which was launched for the Chinese markets. Both smartphones will arrive in India by December and for now HTC has not given out any details regarding their pricing; but stated that the same will be announced a few days before launch.
The HTC One A9 clearly needs no introductions. Its claim to fame unfortunately came from the fact that it looks pretty similar to the Apple iPhone 6 and 6s. Still then, HTC has delved into the details and upon a closer look, users will notice the differences.
The all-metal design seems inspired from HTC’s previous flagship the One M9 while the fingerprint reader on the front is similar to the one on the HTC One M9+. And expertise in metal shows with an almost seamless design with the only resemblance to the iPhone being the single colour front bezel and the gaps for the antenna bands on the back.
Inside, the flagship smartphone is pretty-much a mid-ranger and this is a bit surprising considering the smartphone’s expected price tag. The One A9 variant that has been announced for India, packs in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. Pricing factors may have forced HTC to leave out the 16 GB version that comes with 2 GB of RAM. There’s also micro SD card expansion up to 2 TB for those who need it.
On the front, we get a 5 inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) with Gorilla Glass 4 protection. On the back, we have a 13 MP primary camera with an f/2.0 aperture, BSI sensor behind it with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) running the show. HTC claims that primary camera also features a sapphire lens for the cover. Coming to front-facing camera, we have a 4 MP UltraPixel unit that is similar to what we saw on the One M9.
The smartphone packs in the usual connectivity options including 4G LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. All of the above is powered by a 2150 mAh battery and the smartphone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with HTC Sense UI out of the box.
Also launched was the HTC Desire 828, a mid-range device that becomes the first smartphone in its Desire series to feature OIS. The features a 5.5 inch Full HD display and a 1.5 GHz MediaTek MT6753 SoC coupled with 2 GB of RAM. There’s 16 GB of internal storage that is also expandable via a micro SD card slot. The camera department consists of a 13 MP OIS unit on the back and an UltraPixel unit on the front. The handset features a dual 4G SIM set up and powers all of the above with a 2800 mAh battery.
