Mobile World Congress of off to a great start with HTC kicking off the event with some great new things. HTC has pulled off all stops and branded their products as ‘best available in the market’ currently. The HTC team kept the presentation simple and that is made their products shine and take center stage. HTC introduced its flagship HTC One M9, their first fitness band HTC Grip and their Virtual Reality device HTC Vive. So a lot of things to be excited about and this is just the start. Let us have a look in detail what different features do these devices sport.
HTC One M9
First off HTC’s agenda was the much anticipated HTC One M9. It is no doubt a beautiful product, even though we did get to see the leaked images and renders of the device, the actual device has its own charm. Even the HTC spokesperson said ‘beautiful design is at the forefront of our philosophy’. With the HTC One M9 the company has introduced a ‘dual-tone finish on a single unibody design’.
HTC One M9 sports a 5-inch 1080 x 1920 pixel display, no Quad HD for HTC flagship this time around. It is powered by the 64-bit Snapdragon 810 chipset , same as LG G Flex 2 along with that it has 3 GB of internal storage and 32GB or native storage that is expandable via microSD card slot upto 128 GB.
HTC seems to have upped its game in the camera department, with some serious upgrades. HTC One M9 sports a 20 megapixel main camera with sensors that have been manufactures by Toshiba. Toshiba’s sensors “utilize a proprietary square-pixel design that enables exceptionally high-quality images with low-power consumption.” So we are expecting some good results from HTC camera as well. For the selfie shooter the company has gone with the UltraPixel front camera so that it will give users the best results available.
The Sense 7.0 UI seems impressive as well. HTC has spiced up the software and they claim made it ‘smart’. The Sense 7.0 will provide users with a way to customize and optimize their experience. The Sense 7.0 UI will let users make their own themes and it will also adjust to the users mood and locations as well. If one if at the home, the theme will change along with the icons needed. People will also be able to search their pictures as well.
HTC One M9 will run on Android Lollipop 5.0 and will be powered by a 2840 mAh battery. HTC claims that it has a 21 hour talk time in 3G mode and it can survive up to 17 days on standby mode. There are some serious upgrades in the audio section as well, not only does it have BoomSound stereo but Dolby Audio 3 also optimizes the audio experience.
Well the device will start getting into markets somewhere around middle of March and will sport a price tag of somewhere around $600-700. It will be available in four different colors: Black, Silver, Gunmetal Grey and Pink.
HTC Grip
We knew that HTC will be introducing a new wearable that will be a fitness band instead of a smartwatch, and they did it. The company introduced a smart fitness band for serious athletes, the HTC Grip at the MWC unveiling. Its tag line is ‘built to move with athletes’ and the promo video showed different athletes. The tracker comes with 5 precision sensors and people can also customize their workouts and even invite up to 20 of their friends for a fitness challenge. The band comes with a curved display and the company claims that will make reading different notification really easier. The device will also be able to offer fitness and nutrition recommendations as well. It sports a 1.8-inch curved AMOLED display and will show time, distance covered and help people see different notification as well. It has a 100 mAh battery which CAN last up to five hours with GPS. The battery time may put someone off but it’s a new product and HTC can work on optimizing that in the future as well. The price and the availability of the product is not known yet.
HTC Vive
After Samsung, HTC has also introduced their own ‘virtual reality’ handset, the HTC Vive. This will definitely shake things up and bring virtual reality devices more main stream. The company has partnered with Valve, a renowned video game developer and distributor for this handset. The device makes use of 70 sensors to give a great 360 degree experience. People will be able to experience as well as interact ‘just like in real world’. The headgear will offer a variety of VR Experiences. The company’s vision for their product was
Vive creates an exciting opportunity for all developers and content creators, to help us bring virtual reality into the mainstream with an end-to-end solution that completely redefines how we entertain ourselves, communicate with each other, learn and, eventually, how we become more productive,”Cher Wang added. “HTC Vive is real, it’s here and it’ll be ready to go before the start of 2016.
This device will be available to consumers somewhere near the end of this year and the price of this product is still not confirmed.
HTC definitely pulled off all stops and introduced great devices at the MWC. You may have noticed that there was not HTC One M9 Plus as speculated, maybe HTC will introduce something seemingly familiar in the future. Whaich of HTC’s devices are you looking forward too, if you are a fitness junkie the band seems a great product to show off. What do you think about HTC’s new lineup, did something impress you?
