HTC had launched the beautiful HTC One A9, which although was called a ripoff of the iPhone design, it still delivered a great device when it came to design and comfort. One of the only major concerns there was with the pricing of the A9. Thus the company planned to release a lesser-priced variant with the downgrade in a few specs.
The HTC One A9s is the newly launched smartphone and it look quite identical to the A9, having a metallic build and a front fingerprint sensor as well. Other notable changes are all on the front itself – as the company decides to get rid of the logo, make the earpiece grill shorter and move the proximity sensor away from the center top.
Now, for the specs that saw a downgrade – you are not looking at a 1080p panel now as the One A9s has a 720p display, and the internal specs too see a change but a confusing one – MediaTek’s octa-core Helio P10 is what powers the phone now, unlike the Snapdragon 617 that powered the One A9. Also, the change in the chipset means you won’t get the Wi-Fi 802.11ac standard but everything else on the connectivity front is intact.
Based on the market, we’d be seeing either a 2GB or 3GB RAM variant and the internal storage would be 16GB or 32GB respectively. Another notable change is with the camera, which is still a 13MP shooter but now we see an F/2.2 aperture unlike the F/2.0 one earlier. Also, the One A9s doesn’t have Optical Image Stabilization, and the UltraPixel camera on the front is gone, replaced by a standard 5MP front-facing camera.
The storage expansion slot is still there and you can expand it by up to 2TB, and while the battery gets a little upgrade (now a 2300 mAh battery is in place), the fast charging standard is gone. The pricing of the One A9s is not known yet and we are hoping it to be quite lesser than its predecessor, though HTC is keeping mum about it and has just mentioned that the device will be competitively priced in the mid-range segment.
