HTC is going through a rough patch lately. Not only did their flagship device lose out to high-end flagships from other manufacturers like Samsung and Apple, it was also plagued with controversy as its Snapdragon 810 was running way too hot, all of which led to plummeting sales. Then in hopes of pulling more sales, they launched the One A9 which has been accused of looking like a carbon copy of the iPhone 6/6s, though was rather well received by critics. On paper, the One A9’s specs were far from being a world beater, with only a Snapdragon 617 processor mated with 2GB of RAM, so it left many HTC fans who desired a worthy flagship wanting more.
Then, the Taiwanese company gave fans another glimmer of hope when the HTC One X9 leaked online with what looked to be promising specifications. Now, more pictures of the device have also been leaked and it looks…different to say the least.
Based on the pictures, the new addition to the One lineup looks to have a couple of very interesting design choices. The first, and most obvious of which, is that camera “visor” ala-Nexus 6P that stretches across the top of the device right around the camera module.
When images of the Nexus 6P were first leaked and people saw the visor, they were a little apprehensive to it and how it seemed to have tainted what could have been a good looking device. Now though, that visor has become a signature of the latest Nexus device and at a glance, people can easily differentiate it from its less powerful brother the Nexus 5X. The thing is, while Huawei decided to set that visor apart, letting it dominate in its blackness across the top of the phone, HTC seems to have tried to “hide” their “visor” by painting it the same colour as the rest of the device.
Again, apprehensive is the word we could best use to describe those looks. That said, taste varies between the individual so there obviously will be people who completely dig that look. Around the front of the device, HTC seems to have gone “retro” with the inclusion of capacitive buttons along the bottom of the device (where their logo usually is) while the HTC logo has moved to the device’s forehead. There also seems to be, what looks like, a pair of front facing speakers (which we hope are BoomSound speakers) as well as a front facing camera.
The HTC One X9 recently passed through Chinese certification authority TENAA. revealing what looks to be some frankly disappointing specifications. It looks like the device will be running an octa-core 2.2GHz processor (which rules out the Snapdragon 820 and Helios X20 rumoured earlier) mated with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage that is expandable via microSD up to 1TB. The smartphone also looks to sport a 5.5″ full HD IPS display (1920×1080 pixels).
In terms of optics, the device will get a 13MP primary camera with an LED flash and a 5-megapixel selfie shooter on the front. It is also rumoured to run Android 5.0.1 Lollipop (likely with HTC’s Sense UI on top) out of the box. To be fair, we couldn’t really expect this to be a full-fledged flagship device, especially since it doesn’t bear the M badge. One could hope, right?
