When it comes to smartphone design, HTC is probably the only smartphone manufacturerthat can match Apple’s diligence with absolute perfection. The company recently unveiled its highly-anticipated lookalike of theiPhone 6s, and gave a clear sign that they’re no behind in making premium phones with stunning design language.
The new One A9 is not a flagship, butits stunning design and sturdy metal bodycertainly makes it look like one! It looks just like an iPhone for Android, and brings decent specs to deliver smooth performance right out-of-the box.
However, despite similar looks, there are quite a few differences between the iPhone 6S and HTC One A9. HTC’s innards look better than iPhone’s, but can the metal-clad phone really match iPhone’s smooth and slick performance? Let’s compare them and find out!
Design
If it weren’t for the logos, it would have been really difficult to differentiate between the iPhone 6S and HTC One A9.Both premium looking phones feature identically crafted plain metal shells with rounded corners and boast antenna lines running along near their top and bottom. They also bear fingerprint sensors at the bottom and look very similar with exactly same weight and a negligible difference in thickness. The iPhone 6S comes with 7.1mm thickness, while the One A9 is a little chunkier at an equally impressive 7.26mm.
But there are some noticeable tweaks as well. The fingerprint sensors featured on the front-panel are of different shapes. The TouchID scanner on the iPhone 6S is round as always, while the scanner of One A9 is a little oblong in shape. Even the rear cameras are placed at differently. The camera of iPhone 6S is placed on the side, while HTC has featured a centrally placed rear camera.
Moreover, both phones come in four color variants. HTC One A9 ships in Red, Grey, Gold and Silver, while the iPhone 6S comes in Rose Gold, Gold, Silver, and Grey.
Display
The HTC One A9 isn’t a massive smartphone, but its 5-inch AMOLED display is certainly bigger than the 4.7 inch LED-backlit panel of the iPhone 6S.On paper, the One A9 features a screen resolution of 1080 x 1920pixels and looks fairly stronger than 750 x 1334 pixels of the iPhone 6S, but in real life, the visual experience on both phones is extremely sharp and crisp.It’s obvious, neither of the two stand out against Galaxy S6 or LG G4, but both of them create an ideal ecosystem for work and play.
In the display category, there is also a special element that takes iPhone 6S a step ahead. Yes, you got that right, it’s the 3D Touch. The pressure sensitive display of the iPhone 6S triggers different functionalities on soft and hard press. It’s something which you cannot find on HTC One A9 or on any high-end smartphone!
Hardware and Performance
While HTC marks stronger on-paper hardware, Apple brings top-notch performance with impressive integration ofits hardware and software capabilities.
HTC One A9 houses an Octa-core Snapdragon 617 SoC with four cores running at 1.5GHz, and other four tickling at 1.2GHz.The 64-bit chipset delivers seamless performance, but is not at par with high-end SoCs found on flagship phones.Though 3GB RAM is an essential addition, the performance of this phone is good enough moderate and heavy usage.
The iPhone 6S, on the other hand, powers up by Apple’s proprietary A9 processor clocked at 1.85GHz paired with 2GB RAM. The device looks a little weak on paper, but its performance is absolutely amazing. You can play high-end games, and can switch seamlessly betweenheaviest of the apps without any lags or glitches.
And, as for storage, the iPhone 6S looks like a better choice with three storage variants offering 16GB, 64GB, and 128GB of built-in storage. The device lacks a microSD card slot, but it’s certainly better than One A9 which caps at maximum 32GB with further expandability up to 2TB via microSD card slot.
Software
For software, both phones run the latest iteration of their own custom UI.HTC One A9 runs the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow based Sense UI, while the iPhone 6S boastsiOS 9 with a slew of mind-boggling upgrades. HTC, at the first place offers a familiar experience with high-customization and less bloatware, while iPhone 6S with iOS 9 looks completely slick and user-friendly.Both operating systems create an ideal ecosystem and pack their own pros and cons.
Camera
The camera setup equipped with HTC One A9 and iPhone 6S is fairly impressive.The sassy HTC smartphone features a 13MP rear autofocus shooter with optical image stabilization, while the iPhone 6S brings a major and impressive upgrade withits 12MP main camera and 4k video capturing capabilities.It lacks OIS but its camera output is extremely crisp and vibrant.
On the front side, the UltraPixel camera of HTC One A9 stands out in the crowd and delivers picture perfect selfies, while the iPhone 6S brings an improvement with its conventional yet 5MP front-facing snapper.
Battery
Both phones offer sufficient power for an entire day of moderate usage. The HTC One A9 houses a 2150mAh battery and promises up to 16 hours of talk time and 60 hours of audio playback, while the iPhone 6S incorporates a smaller 1715mAh battery and promises 14 hours of talk time and 50 hours of audio playback. They both are outperformed by Galaxy S6 and other high-end players, but on standard usage, they can easily cater all your needs!
Final Verdict
So, this elucidates the fact that apart from design and build quality, there is a lot more that differentiates between the HTC One A9 and iPhone 6S. Though One A9 is not a complete flagship phone, it comes out on the top with a better display, expandable storage, and longer battery life.
On the contrary, with an improved processor and highly impressive 3D touch, the iPhone 6S makes up a stronger package, and stands apart from all high-end players rolling in the market, including the android lookalike the HTC One A9!