Recently, HTC announced the birth of their latest smartphone which is the new HTC ONE. We know since before that the ONE series carries a “premium” meaning towards it. Starting from the ONE M7, ONE M8 and ONE M9 series, few things changed in the process but what remains always is the premium metal unibody design. When the ONE series evolved, the percentage of metal increased by each series and finally the brand new HTC ONE A9 comes with full metal unibody design. Anyway, lets get to the main point, what’s the difference between the HTC ONE A9 and the iPhone 6s?
Design
The most notable feature is the design itself. Many controversy is going on lately with who copied who. Anyways, both of them are pretty identical. Only differences which you can see cleary will be the camera, flash and mic positions, the antenna lines on the top and bottom, rounded corners and the build quality itself seems similar – premium full metal unibody. Technically, weight of both these smartphones are exactly the same at 143g but the iPhone 6s is slightly thinner at 7.1mm vs the HTC ONE A9 at 7.26mm. On the front you can clearly see the existence of fingerprint scanners on both devices. One on the iPhone which is circular while the one on the HTC is oval shaped.
Display
On the ONE A9, you get a Full HD display (1980×1080) AMOLED display while the iPhone 6s comes with a unique resolution of 1334×750. We all know that iPhone’s display is always good and highly recommended. However, the ONE A9 will be a better choice with its higher resolution and better contrast. The recently famous feature 3D touch on the iPhone will be an extra edge with its useful feature for certain apps that can make things to be done easier. Android smartphone do have 3D touch but it isn’t put to proper use yet as it was always available since the start of Android 1.0. This will be worked out by custom ROM makers and as well as the upcoming software updates from Android smartphone manufacturers to included more features based on 3d touch such as the Huawei Mate S
Processor
The ONE A9 comes with a new 64-bit Octa core processor, the Snapdragon 617 processor. This is a new chip from Qualcomm, however it is not a flagship level type of chip and rather a mid-ranged chip. The advantages of this chip would be LTE speed at 300Mbps and supports Quickcharge 3.0. The A9 chips on the iPhone 6s is definitely a better performer. Although its only a Dual core chip, it is proven to be a better one in many benchmark tests as this chip is definitely made for Apple and its a flagship level chip.
Storage, RAM and OS
The HTC ONE A9 comes in two variants, one with 16GB of ROM and 2GB of RAM. While another one comes with 32GB of ROM and 3GB of RAM. The iPhone 6s comes with 16GB,64GB and 128GB of ROM with all of them pre-build with 2GB of RAM. The iPhone is well known for its fluidity of iOS and how smooth the UI and performance will be even with their previous iPhone 6 variants which comes with only 1GB of RAM. So with 2GB of RAM, it is definitely more than enough. However on the HTC ONE A9, 3GB RAM will be the best variant to have and paired with the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS and HTC Sense. We love the simplicity and uniqueness of HTC’s Sense UI. It is usually very eye-candy and user optimized for optimum performance.
Rear and Front Camera
The ONE A9 has 13MP main camera with f2.0 aperture and not to forget, OIS (optical image stabilization) while the iPhone 6s has a 12MP camera. Calculation wise, the HTC ONE A9 wins. We are aware of the 4k video recording capability on the iPhone 6s, but until we get our hands on the ONE A9 we are unsure if it comes with 4k video recording capability although we do think it doesn’t support. On the front, HTC’s trademark Ultrapixel camera remains at 4MP which will shoot a better selfie than the one on the iPhone 6s which has a 5MP camera due to its ability to allow more light in order to capture a much accurate picture.
Battery Capacity and Feature
In terms of battery, iPhone 6s comes at 1715 mAh capacity while the HTC ONE A9 comes at a better capacity of 2150 mAh. We know that Android OS consumes slightly more battery than the iOS, however to compensate that, the ONE A9 comes with Quickcharge 2.0. Once Quickcharge 3.0 is made available, the ONE A9 will automatically be updated to that pattern with a software update.
Pricing
Since we know the pricing of iPhone’s are generally expensive( 16GB- RM3199 off contract) the HTC ONE A9 will surely be the cheaper one in any variant offered. We predict in Malaysia that the ONE A9 3GB/32GB variant will be priced at around RM1799 off contract.
What we think?
We think that the HTC ONE A9 is a great smartphone with good future to it. People who prefer a premium-feeling smartphone will surely get this one while those who can really afford an iPhone will still settle for that one. Again, we can’t really compare these two phones face to face as both are on its own league. The iPhone 6s is more like a flagship smartphone while the HTC ONE A9 is more like an high-end mid ranged Android smartphone.
Image via Slashgear