HTC Corporation, a pioneer in innovation and design, today unveiled its most personal, beautiful and powerful smartphone yet, the HTC One M9, at a press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh. The newest addition to the HTC One family will be available from major retailers and mobile operators from the end of March, priced at SAR 2,799.
Philip Blair, President HTC, EMEA said: “HTC is consistently pushing the boundaries, we broke records with the HTC One M8. Today HTC is one of the top three preferred smartphone brands in the region. Our objective is to consolidate our presence in the region and we plan to achieve this by continuously listening to our customers’ needs and delivering great products.”
HTC has unveiled its most personal, beautiful and powerful smartphone; the HTC One M9 is a classic yet timeless celebration of beauty and elegance that combines high style and performance, enabling you to get the most from your mobile phone
“Our newest smartphone is, once again, pioneering innovation and design by offering our customer a more intuitive phone and a more refined experience than ever,” said Nikitas Glykas, Vice President, HTC MEA. “At HTC we have directed our efforts into building a brand around innovation, customer insight and value. We want our product to be an extension and an indispensable part of our customer’s lives. The M9 is the quintessential smartphone of choice for ardent technology and lifestyle enthusiasts.”
A complete celebration of design
Building on a three-year pursuit of excellence, the HTC One M9 melds the best of the award-winning HTC One M7 and HTC One M8 into a stunning, iconic design. Distinct metal edges combine perfectly with graceful curves for a jewellery-grade look. Small and easy to hold, the crafted, all-metal unibody design is highlighted by an exquisite dual-tone silver and rose gold¹ finish that is as distinctive, as it is durable. Mirror-polished gold sides cascade effortlessly into a hairline brushed silver back panel, encasing a bright and vivid display.
“At HTC, we want to surprise and delight our customer, and the HTC One M9 does just that by being one of the most intuitive premium all metal smartphones on the market today. With the launch of the M9 today, we are taking our award-winning HTC One concept a step further,” said Neeraj Seth, Head of Marketing, HTC MEA. “Our latest offering exemplifies innovation, lifestyle integration and sets new standards for smartphones in the region.”
HTC Sense 7: An extension of you
Your phone should make a statement about who you are and the new HTC Sense™ 7 experience puts you in control of everything. Highly customisable and intuitively you, Themes puts you at the centre of the smartphone experience, intelligently analysing your favourite photos to modify the look and feel of your apps, colour scheme and backgrounds.
As your always-on travel companion, your smartphone is perfectly placed to enrich your mobile life. Sense 7 reinvents the home screen to deliver the most useful apps to the homepage based on your location. Whether at home, work, or play, you’re never more than a click away from the features you need with this contextual, customisable widget. A more intelligent HTC BlinkFeed™ also makes it easier to uncover the hidden gems that surround you by using location data to recommend points of interest, news and information.
Incredible imaging: Helping you create your best memories
With the best camera being the one you carry in your pocket, your smartphone should make it a breeze to take brilliant, creative and fun images. The HTC One M9’s cameras are designed to capture every moment in amazing quality, allowing you to relive those moments again and again. The main camera features an incredible 20 megapixels that accentuate every crisp, intricate detail and a sapphire cover lens that protects from scratches. For vivid video that looks like the latest blockbuster, the camera also shoots movies in 4K resolution.
The best moments take you by surprise and spontaneity often doesn’t come fully lit. The ultimate companion of the impulsive snapper, the HTC One M9 addresses low-light shots with a powerful UltraPixel™ front-facing camera. Dynamic auto exposure and UltraPixels that capture 300% more light than standard cameras deliver sharper, more natural and balanced self-portraits in any lighting conditions.
HTC Sense 7 with HTC’s EYE™ Experience software makes taking creative pictures easy. A host of new editing effects including Shapes, Prismatic, Elements and Bokeh allow you to add a little bit of individual artistry into every shot, with the Zoe™ app automatically editing them, putting them to your choice of music² and letting friends remix the collection with their own shots to create a shared celebration from every moment.
With so many incredible images, quickly showing your friends those brilliant shots could become an issue. Wherever they’re stored, the new One Gallery makes it easy to search through your entire photo library, viewing images saved on the phone, on social media, and on select cloud platforms. The gallery puts your whole image library at your fingertips, searching by date, location, event, album or even the images themselves with Image Match.
Exhilarating audio: Hear the difference
A truly great viewing experience deserves sound that puts you on the front row. The HTC One M9 guarantees a larger-than-life soundtrack courtesy of HTC BoomSound™. The HTC One family’s iconic dual front-facing speakers, now combined with 5.1 channel Dolby® Surround sound3 simulation, get you even closer to the action, delivering extraordinary, cinema-style surround sound. Uniting HTC BoomSound and Dolby Audio™ creates immersion vibrant audio experience, so you can enjoy movies with rich, clear and powerful sound even without connecting headphones or external speakers. Whether listening via the stereo speakers or headphones, even the most discerning music fans will be blown away by the phone’s support for perfect, 24-bit high-definition sound that surpasses even CD quality. HTC’s unique combination of HTC BoomSound, Dolby Audio™, a finely tuned sound profile, and Qualcomm® Immersive Audio gives all of your music and movies an unmistakable HTC One M9 flavour.
Connecting your world
Smartphones are fast becoming the central hub for home entertainment and HTC Connect™ makes it easy to enjoy your multimedia experience beyond your phone. A three-finger swipe on the screen connects the phone to compatible TVs or external speakers from leading manufacturers including Harman Kardon. HTC Connect’s integration with Qualcomm® AllPlay™ smart media platform and Blackfire Research™ wireless media technology, allows you and your friends to stream high quality content from your smartphones to multiple home entertainment devices around the house. The playlist feature also allows multiple smartphones to share a speaker with Qualcomm AllPlay. For the ultimate connected smartphone-powered TV experience, the HTC One M9 comes exclusively preloaded with the Peel® Smart Remote app. Instantly connecting you to the shows you love, the app even learns from your viewing habits, transforming your phone into a personal TV guide and remote control.
Accessories and availability
For a standout look, the HTC One M9 will be available with a range of unique and customisable accessories including the second generation HTC Dot View case, which adds more retro personalisation thanks to a host of new features and colour options. A transparent back keeps your smartphone pristine without hiding it from the world with the case injecting fun into even the most tedious commute by transforming into a mini games arcade. The new HTC Dot View case won’t even get in the way of apps such as Instagram, Snapchat and Badoo with through-the-case notifications alerting you to the latest photos, messages and check-ins.
Life has no limits, and when your adventurous side takes you into the unknown, an IP68 water resistant Active Case and Active Headset means that your phone can boldly follow wherever the action takes you, keeping up with the pace of the most epic adventures.
The HTC One M9 will be available in dual-tone silver and rose gold, single-tone gunmetal grey, single-tone gold and dual-tone gold and pink, from SAR 2,799 in all operators and electronic stores, across the region from the end of March.