HTC One A9 goes official with Snapdragon 617 SoC, Android Marshmallow and 2150mAh battery

HTC has officially announced the long talked Hero Phone (or HTC Aero) – the HTC One A9. Despite announcing the One M9 and One M9+ earlier this year, the company has been dealing with financial issues and has had to change leadership. With the One A9 the company has taken a different approach. 

The HTC One A9 has an all metal body build with rounded corners and slightly curved at the rear for easier gripping. It sports a 5-inch display with thick bezels, about 67-percent screen-to-body ratio and the front is covered with 2.5D Gorilla Glass. The fingerprint sensor is embedded into the home button and Android virtual buttons replace navigational keys.

The device sports a 5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (FHD), measures 145.75 x 70.8 x 7.26 mm in dimensions and weighs 143 grams. It is powered by a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor paired with Adreno 405 GPU and either 2GB of RAM and 16GB native storage space or 3GB of RAM and 32GB native storage space. 

Both variants have a microSD card slot which supports up to 2TB cards. Handling photography on the HTC One A9 is a 13MP main camera with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) for low-light situation; it also has a Pro mode and capture RAW images. The front facing camera is an UltraPixel (4MP) one. 

Connectivity options on the One A9 includes VoLTE, 4G LTE (LTE Cat.7 – up to 300Mbps download speed), Dual Band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, and Bluetooth. 

The HTC One A9 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS out-of-the-box with HTC Sense UI ontop and becomes the first phone other than the Nexus smartphones to run the OS. It is backed by a 2150mAh battery which supports Quick charge 2.0 and 3.0 but HTC’s Rapid Charger is needed for this purpose. 

The One A9 will be available worldwide for $399 starting the the first week of November from the company’s website, retailers and carriers alike. Available colour options includes – Carbon Gray, Deep Garnet, Opal Silver and Topaz Gold. Other colour options – Rose Gold and Cast Iron will reportedly be available in some specific regions.

HTC is offering those who buy the HTC One A9 from www.htc.com 1-year protection under the UH-OH program, 6 months subscription of Google Play Music and regular patches 15 days after any Nexus phone update. Official Unlockable bootloader will also be available but won’t void any warranty. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCTkEU67zco