The HTC One M9 Review: Part 2
by Joshua Ho on April 6, 2015 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Qualcomm
- Mobile
- Snapdragon 810
- One M9
WiFi Performance
Fundamentally, a smartphone is defined by its ability to connect to the internet. Although cellular data is important, WiFi performance is crucial for anyone on a limited data plan and in areas where cellular data is slow or nonexistent. To this end, HTC has outfitted the One M9 with Broadcom’s BCM4356 WiFi/BT combo chipset, which we’ve seen before in the Nexus 6. This chipset supports 2x2 802.11ac, but the One M9 only supports a maximum 433 Mbps physical link rate, which means that it’s only using a single spatial stream. I haven’t been able to find any information on the antenna configuration of the One M9, but it’s likely that HTC is only using a single antenna for WiFi on the One M9 which would make it similar to the One M7 and One M8 in that regard. In order to test how this configuration performs, we use IPerf on Android connected to a PC to see how rapidly the device can send UDP packets.
As one can see, there’s a reasonable performance uplift when compared to Qualcomm Atheros’ WCN3680 WiFi/BT combo chip, but it isn’t as big as moving to a 2x2 MIMO configuration. The lack of MIMO also has implications for WiFi range, but WiFi signals degrade quickly enough that this wouldn’t be a massive difference.
GNSS
As the One M9 uses a Qualcomm modem, it's a pretty safe bet that it also uses the modem for GNSS location services. In practice, this means that the One M9 locks on to satellites quickly any time it's possible to download assistance data to speed up GPS.
Without assistance data, the One M9 seems to have worse performance than expected, although weather conditions can always affect overall performance. Time to first lock took a minute and 42 seconds, and accuracy wasn't quite as high as one would hope, tending towards 30 foot accuracy rather than 10 foot accuracy. It's likely that local weather conditions were responsible for this issue, as subjectively it seemed that GPS performance was comparable to other phones tested at the same time.
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Connoisseur - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
There seems to be a significant difference in size between the Z3 Speakers and the HTC ones. Having never heard a Z3, I'm assuming the HTC ones have more volume to them. I'm not saying it was the right call but squeezing a decent sized speaker in the front would necessitate a larger bezel above to fit the display circuitry. The Z3 speaker looks tiny and seems to take minimal space in comparison. Maybe that's just Sony throwing around it's hardware prowess but the extra bezel, although ugly, makes sense in the HTC case. It's not like they just stuck it there to display their logo.Laxaa - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
The black bar is fine, but my biggest issue is the logo on the front. It just looks out of place.kspirit - Tuesday, April 7, 2015 - link
No, the stereo speakers on this thing make good quality sound because they actually need the hollow space in there to reverberate the sound waves. Otherwise they would shove the screen drivers in there. It's a tradeoff. Deal with it.Dorek - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Even if the black bar can't be eliminated, it couldn't be that difficult to just make it capacitive buttons instead of a stupid HTC logo.Refuge - Thursday, April 9, 2015 - link
I love the bezel on the bottom It gives me a place to put my thumb without triggering anything on the phone. Giving me a solid grip when passing it around or quickly picking it up on the way out the door.My girlfriends G3 while really nice, frustrates me to no end because she has no hard capacitive buttons, and barely any bezel, I'm constantly poking things on the bottom of her screen when passing the phone around.
MikeMurphy - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Am I the only one not concerned with increased performance? Phone these days are plenty powerful. Sell me on a jumbo battery, or health tracking features.jabber - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Yeah to be honest I'd be sold on a phone that's another 3-4 mm thicker, so we could have a two day+ battery life and a better lens/sensor system in the phone.I really don't have an issue with a 200g phone.
Refuge - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
I might reccomend looking at the LG Vista, it is a mid range so very affordable.The screen is gorgeous, and the batter life is extremely impressive. My son has one, and he plays games on it constantly, that battery holds up really well too!
Drumsticks - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review. It's a shame to see just how poor the One M9 is. Hopefully the S6 review comes out this week! Will y'all be reviewing the G4 when it comes out?sprockkets - Monday, April 6, 2015 - link
Weird, I thought the Sensation was better in a lot of respects vs. the GS2 phone. Screen comes to mind. Only issue with the Sensation was it was only on Tmobile, and the thunderbolt was a poor phone. Evo was OK I suppose.That comparison was 4 years ago, minor nit there.