More HTC One (M9) Concept Images Appear

Sunday, September 21, 2014

More HTC One (M9) Concept Images Appear

Writing concept posts is great fun, such as the HTC M9 we featured a week and a half ago. And this time we have another set of beautiful HTC One (M9) concept renders by Ashik Empro together with some information on what he’d like to see under the skin. Ashik’s specification mirrors HTC’s trend for putting slightly below bleeding edge hardware inside a beautiful body and he has asked for the device to be powered by a quad core 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor backed up by 3 GB of RAM, which compares with a quad core 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor for the M8 (upped to 2.5 GHz for some Asian markets) and 2 GB of memory.

The M9 will have a slightly bigger screen at 5.2-inch and 1,440 by 2,560 pixel resolution, compared with the 5.0-inch, 1,080 by 1,920 pixel screen on the current HTC One. The M9 will be available with a choice of 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB internal storage options too. The cameras get an upgrade too, with the rear camera set now featuring an optically stabilised 13 MP main unit with an 8 MP duo companion camera. The front camera will remain at 5 MP resolution. And the device will be powered by a 3,200 mAh battery. The renders look stunning, especially the red model (I have a preference for red devices or at least red cases) but I’d like to draw attention to Ashik’s processor specification as this is a little different to what I’d be expecting. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Snapdragon 805. In terms of processing power and efficiency, it’s expected to behave in an identical way to the Snapdragon 801, but at higher clock speeds. No problem here, but Android L is coming and it’ll support 64-bit architecture.

I’d rather see the device jump to a 64-bit processor so as to take advantage of this. At the moment based on what Qualcomm and Nvidia have said about their 64-bit chipsets, I’d like to replace the Snapdragon 805 with the Snapdragon 810. The Nvidia K1 is reckoned to be the current king of the hill when it comes to chipsets, but this is because the Snapdragon 810 hasn’t been released yet. This is a big.LITTLE processor operating a pair of quad core processors, four Cortex-A57s and four Cortex-A53s, just like one of the processors we’ll find in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. It’s reported to offer an improvement of between 25% to 55% in performance compared with the Snapdragon 805 but draws around 20% less power. For most people, most of the time, mobile processors are already quick enough but drawing less power is clearly a win situation. Hit us up in the comments to let us know what you think of these pictures. Make mine the red one!