HTC has launched recently its flagship HTC 10 smartphone alongwith mid-segmented HTC One X9 and few other phones at different price points. The X9 is beautiful looking phone priced at Rs. 25,990 and will fight with recently launched OnePlus 3 with higher specifications at Rs. 28,000. Let us see how this phone performs with its hardware and software and whether it is worth spending Rs. 26,000.
If you are looking for stylish and slim device having a display of 5.5 inch then have a serious look at HTC One X9. This phone has full metal unibody design and the back of the phone looks like iPhone 6 which according to HTC is their original design. The rear camera is on the back on the left hand side with LED flash and is covered with glossy glass cover which has similarities with Huawei Nexus 6P.
On the front side their is micro-USB slot at the bottom, 3.5 mm headphone jack at the top and Android navigation buttons are under the screen. This phone comes with two stereo BoomSound speakes – one has been placed on the top and the other is at the bottom to give you exhilirating audio experience. We have liked this set up of speakers very much as it makes watching movies and gaming a different kind of experience.
Their is HTC logo on the top of the front and in the middle of back. On the right hand side their is power button which has different look and at the middle and over it are volume rockers.
The two SIM slots and a dedicated micro SD slot are covered with plastic flap and you can easily take out the trays. No need to use ejector to fish out the trays which is sometimes very cumbersome procedure.
Overall, the design of the phone is very impressive and this phone has thickness of 7.98mm. The back of the phone has brushed metal so that the phone does not slip from your hand.
This phone flaunts a 5.5-inch full HD display with resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. The display of this phone is vivid and bright. You can use this display even in sunlight and it is a treat to watch content on it. You will also enjoy playing games on this display.
This phone comes with 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture,dual-tone LED flash, Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and 4K video recording feature. For video recording, you also get features of Hyperlapse and Slow Motion. The front facing 5MP camera has f/2.0 aperture with full HD 1080p video recording capaility. The front camera has various modes such as Auto Selfie, Voice Selfie and Live Make Up for clicking beautiful selfies with ease of use.
The rear camera performs very well even in low-light which is a plus for this phone. It reproduces clear and accurate clicked images and the images do not come out grainy even when they are captured in fading or low-light.
We have captured some images with the rear camera in daylight and early in the morning and the results have come out really good. You can see that these images are quite bright and have enough detail and contrast. These images may not look as good here because while publishing on this blog, we have to compress them but they look quite vibrant in the PC or in the phone:
As far as its front camera is concerned, it is mediocre and good for social networking postings. Like the majority of front shooters, this camera also struggles in low-light but otherwise it performs well.
This phone is driven by 2.2GHz MediaTek Helio X10 octa-core processor, which looks quite medicore for a phone of this stature. HTC should have provided the latest Snapdragon 820 or so in this phone because the other phones in the same range come with the aforesaid processor. But still, the performance of Helio X10 is quite satisfactory and it gets heated up a bit if you play heavy games for prolonged period of say 30 to 45 minutes. However, it performs nicely if you are watching movies, browsing and watching other contents for longer duration.
This phone comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 2TB via microSD card. This phone gets its juice from 3000mAh battery which can easily last for full day and the added advantage is that it has fast charge capability.
This phone works smoothly on Indian 4G LTE bands and quality of calling and receiving is excellent. Surprisingly, this phone works perfectly even where 4G signals are low.
This phone runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the latest layer of HTC Sense UI, which fortunately is easy to operate and multi-tasking and opening of multiple tabs, is very smooth on this phone. It comes pre-loaded with useful apps such as News Republic for getting the latest news and videos, and HTC Help to resolve issues pertaining to the phone.
Conclusion : HTC One X9 is a cool phone having a premium design and reasonably good hardware. On the downside, this phone does not have fingerprint sensor, which has become a standard feature on phones of atleast of this range. Strange that HTC has not incorporated this feature on this phone, but otherwise the phone has all the ingredients of a good mid-range smartphone. If you want to possess a stylish device with good performance then certainly, you can consider this phone.
This phone will find stiff competition from recently launched OnePlus 3 which has far better camera, fingerprint sensor and runs on Snapdragon 820 processor with 6GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage but has a price tag of Rs. 28,000. The other competitor for this phone could be Xiaomi Mi 5 which also has Snapdragon 820 processor combined with 3GB RAM and 64GB ROM and is priced Rs. 25,000. But the HTC One X9 has far far better apperance compared to Mi 5.
When will this be available to buy? Have been waiting for it since 20th June….