Gadgetory

it's a radical departure from a company desperately in need of some change but for all that's different here there's also a heaping helping of the familiar I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is a first look at the HTC One a9 everyone's thinking it too let's get it right out there yeah this looks an awful lot like Apple's iPhone 6 family of devices and that's something HTC readily acknowledges but the way HTC's he said it's just reclaiming a design legacy it started back in 2013 from HTC's perspective Apple stole its mojo not the other way around however you feel about that in the hand the one a9 feels like what it is a solid but very lightweight metal handset that'll eventually be available in four colors it's dominated by a 13 megapixel camera with optical stabilization on the back and by a sheet of Gorilla Glass 4 on the front HTC took plenty of notes from the feedback it got on the one m9 the a9 doesn't have a single sharp edge insight its power standby key is heavily textured so there's no confusing it with the volume rocker and those buttons now stand well apart from the sim and microSD trays on the other side of the phone the a9 is much slimmer than the HTC s of yesteryear but it's still nearly as tall as the one m9 it replaces to avoid making it even taller the company says it was forced to make a choice between its trademark front firing speakers and a fingerprint scanner and well bye-bye boom sound drop your finger on that sensor it's very fast and the 5 inch full HD display kicks on to reveal another big departure HTC has gone with AMOLED instead of its usual super LCD for this one and that's a big plus in terms of contrast and color saturation the one a9 ships with Android marshmallow it's one of the first devices outside the Nexus family to do so and as such you get all the goodies of that new build including Google now on tap and the new battery saving enhancements like doze and apps standby good thing considering the anemic size of the a9 s power pack HTC says it's eased up on its third-party UI with this device but from what I can see cents is still very much alive in the form of the blinkfeed social stream the interface design in general and features like Zoe speaking of the selfie cam is still the four ultrapixel module made into a wide-angle lens and tuned for low-light all this is powered by a Snapdragon 617 processor backed up by three gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of storage and that mid tier silicon might not be the newest of the new but it doesn't seem to have any trouble making marshmallow quick and zippy and as a special bonus it'll also enable quick charge 3.0 meaning the one a9 should be capable of going from 0 to 80 percent charge in just over a half an hour with a compatible charger sold separately with this dramatic redesign HTC says it wants to bring a new level of simplicity to the Android experience and the one a9 certainly seems capable of that but at least at this early stage it's tough to escape the feeling that in its rush to reinvent HTC has crossed over into conformity giving up some of the quietly brilliant identity that got it this far we'll see whether that trade-off was worth it and whether that first impression holds up over time in our full review coming soon this was just a quick first impressions pass folks for more details including pricing and availability and the all-important color options see our official news posts at pocketnow.com and let us know what questions you want answered in our full review leave a comment here tweet at us at PocketNow or tweet at me at captain 2 phones til next time this has been michael fisher thanks for watching we'll talk to you soon