The HTC One A9 is a midrange phone that seeks to put form over function. It’s a good-looking phone that more than resembles an iPhone 6, with the difference being that it runs Android Marshmallow. In fact, it’s almost identical to an iPhone. And that could be a bit of an issue because while it costs as much as an iPhone, it doesn’t perform anywhere near as well.

The HTC One A9 has a five-inch 1080p Amoled screen running at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. The screen is sharp, detailed and rich in colour. It is a good performer and offers rich contrast and colour across apps, games and movies.

The HTC One A9 is powered by a Snapdragon 617 chipset and 2 or 3GB of RAM. It has a 13MP camera, 4MP front camera, 2150mAh battery that supports Qualcomm’s QuickCharge 2.0, fingerprint scanner, 16GB of storage and a microSD slot that can be formatted as extra internal storage.

The phone runs quickly and is very responsive. Movies run stutter-free and games play well. Opening the camera is probably the slowest thing you’ll do with your HTC One A9, but once it’s open it does take good pictures.

The HTC One A9 is one of the first phones to be released running the latest Android OS. Marshmallow is slick, easy to use and includes a couple of useful new features. One of these is Doze, which is a super battery-saving mode that manages processes much more efficiently than before, eking out battery life much further as a result.

The new look of Marshmallow is also something I like. A new font, new buttons, new screen layout and new menu options all work in its favour and for us at least, makes is much easier to live and work with than iOS.

The HTC One A9 is an expensive phone that looks exactly like another expensive phone. At the moment it is hard to recommend it because of this. Once prices reduce however, the A9 is a solid midrange handset with all the bells and whistles you need for daily life.

Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.

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