This post was published 9 years, 5 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.
In Beijing today, HTC announced the much-rumoured One M9+ which has a larger, higher resolution display than the standard M9 and also sees the addition of a fingerprint reader.
The display is 5.2″, not 5.5″ as most pre-release rumours had seemed to suggest, but still has an impressive QHD (2560 x 1440) display resolution which makes for a staggering pixel density of 565PPI.
As rumoured, the device does feature a fingerprint reader on the bottom which looks rather oddly like a Samsung home button, but acts solely as a biometric authentication device and not a button.
We are told the scanner on the M9+ uses the preferable touch-to-scan type of reader, much like you would find on the Galaxy S6 or the newer iPhone’s, and not the awkward swipe-to-scan type sensor that you may have seen on older Galaxy smartphones.
Other than the questionable aesthetics, there is another peculiar decision behind the hardware of this device and that is the decision to not use th Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC (as used in the regular M9), but instead opt for one from MediaTek.
The chipset used on this device is a 64-bit MediaTek Helio X10 (MT6795T) processor, with eight Cortex A53 cores clocked at up to 2.2GHz and accompanied by as 3GB of RAM. This will surely keep things running nice and smoothly and have ample power for pretty much any task.
However, if MediaTek stay true to past form the kernel sources may never be released, leaving this “One” mostly out in the cold when it comes to hacking and custom development. Not to mention also breaching the terms of the GPL licence for the Linux kernel.
By now you have probably also spotted another difference to the One M9 and that is the return of the Duo-camera. It seems that HTC has included another sensor in the top section above the antenna bars, in a similar fashion as they did with the HTC One M8. The primary camera though will be the same 20MP sensor as the regular One M9 and not a low-res “UltraPixel” camera.
Design wise, the body of the M9+ is pretty much the same as the regular model. It has the same style all-metal body with dual tone finish and the same colour options. The main stand-out elements visually are the additions of the fingerprint reader and the second camera, although of course it is also a little larger in order to accommodate the 5.2″ display (vs 5.0″ in the M9).
However, there is a problem. If this device is sounding like something you want to buy, then now is the time where we must try to let you down gently. It seems HTC has decided this will be exclusively sold in China and so if you live elsewhere then we’re afraid you are apparently out of luck.
We feel this could be somewhat related to their decision to use the MediaTek processor as they are more commonly used in Asia-only devices. That’s not to say that the MediaTek processor is the reason why it is a China exclusive, more that HTC decided it would be so first, and then found that they could get a better deal there with the MediaTek SoC’s.
Anyhow, whatever the reason, that’s the way it is and so for most of us here the regular M9 is the closest we can get to this device.
Would you have bought one if it was available where you live? Let us know in the comments below.
