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Here’s when you’ll be able to get your hands on the fancy yet familiar HTC One M9 in Australia, and how much you’ll have to shell out to do so.
Outright, the HTC One M9 will cost you $1099, and it lands on 24 March.
If that’s too steep for you, Telstra, Optus, Virgin and Vodafone will carry it subsidised on plans instead.
Telstra will sell the One M9 on its $70 Mobile Accelerate plan which includes $700 of calls, and MMS, unlimited SMS and 1.5GB of data. The device itself will cost you an extra $12 per month on a 24-month contract, making the total cost $82 per month.
Telstra will carry the Gunmetal Grey colour as an exclusive, and customers who pre-order via Telstra’s website will get a bonus Pair of Monster DNA on-ear headphones worth $229.
Vodafone is a few bucks cheaper for month, offering the One M9 on its $70 Red Plan, which includes infinite standard national calls and texts per month, 300 minutes of international calls per month, 3GB of data and bonuses like free six month subscriptions to either Spotify Premium, The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age. The phone will cost you an extra $10 per month on a 24-month contract, bringing the total per month cost up to $80.
Optus will carry the One M9 on its $80 My Plan Plus, which includes unlimited minutes of calls, unlimited standard national SMS and MMS and 5GB of data. The phone will cost you an extra $3 per month on a 24-month contract, meaning you’ll be paying $83 per month.
Virgin has the cheapest deal for the HTC One M9. It has the One M9 on its $60 plan includes $700 of calls, texts and MMS, as well as 2GB of included data. The phone will cost you an extra $13 per month, but that still only brings it to $73 per month on a 24-month contract.
So what’s the phone like? It looks just like the old one, for the most part. But HTC promises that it’s different underneath.
Under the hood you get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810: an octa-core processor featuring a quad-core 2GHz processor and a quad-core 1.5GHz processor sandwiched together. You also get 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage and an expandable slot that can take a 128GB card.
On top there’s a 5-inch, full HD 1080p screen and new BoomSound speakers which are certified by the folks at Dolby.
Ultrapixel was a great idea, but it has now moved to the front-facing camera rather than being the primary shooter as it was on the One M8. The old camera took a great shot, but doing any kind of zoom and crop on photos taken at a resolution of 4-megapixels was painful. Now you have a whopping 20-megapixels to use, which is great.
Whereas the last One had the looks but not the texture of a high-end device, the One M9 has both thanks to the stepped edges on the metal banding, dual texture finish and the brushed metal on the back. Not to mention the fact that your pride and joy will stay luxurious thanks to a scratch-proof coating that has been applied to the back cover. A lot of care has gone into this device.
But it’s not just form over function. HTC has opted for a powerful octa-core chip inside from Qualcomm, loads of RAM and even expandable storage: something Samsung doesn’t have this year, giving HTC the edge.
From a first look, Sense 7′s recommended apps pane looks a little complicated. People want the apps they choose on their home screen, rather than a machine choosing it for them. At least that’s how I use a phone. It is a learning app though that pushes new apps to you over time, so perhaps it will get better as you use it.
BlinkFeed’s newest upgrades to feed your mind with news, body with food recommendations from leading culinary apps and soul with friend updates is actually really great. I rolled my eyes when I heard it, but it basically just means BlinkFeed is getting better at connecting you with stuff you care about.