It’s always exciting to see the first wave of smartphones packing Google’s software, but that excitement was short-lived with the HTC One A9. Though it’s part of HTC’s top-end One family, slightly scaled-down specs and a different design make the A9 a cheaper alternative to the company’s One M9 series. Beyond a full-HD 5-inch display, it packs a 13-megapixel rear camera, an octa-core processor, a physical home button that doubles as a fingerprint reader and an all-metal design that’s rather reminiscent of the iPhone 6. This is an exceptionally slim phone too slender to accommodate HTC’s signature BoomSound speakers. Instead, the company has included a single, mono-speaker on the bottom edge, which is easy to cover.To HTC’s credit, it has still found space for a microSD slot; a handy addition now that Android M can treat microSD cards as native storage, enabling you to run apps from them. By itself, it is a respectable mid-range handset but the Shs1.8m price tag says otherwise.
