Hands On With The HTC 10: A Fresh Start

At this point it’s probably not a secret that HTC has been struggling for the past few years. While the One M8 was a solid upgrade to the One M7, it was unfortunate in the sense that it did not resolve the problems that the M7 had. HTC made a leap in extending the One’s core strengths of an aluminum unibody design, dual front-facing speakers, and generally polished user experience, but they left other matters unresolved. More frustratingly, with the One M9 it seemed that HTC had taken a step back as there was very little that had meaningfully changed, and it wasn’t entirely unusual to see changes that were a regression relative to the One M8. To be honest, I was ready to write off HTC entirely from the market as the One M9+ felt like it was just more of the same mistakes from HTC.

To see if the HTC 10 is more of the same, read on for the full article.

Meizu Launches the m3 note

With every year, we tend to see quite a few launches happen in the first two quarters as the cycles in supply chains align for mass production to start around this time. We’ve already seen a number of new products from Huawei, LG, Samsung, and Xiaomi. Meizu is the latest company to join this list with its announcement of the m3 note.

With a 6061 aluminum unibody design, the m3 note draws heavily from the PRO 5. The rear camera is accentuated by a large, black surround with the pill-shaped dual-color LED flash sitting just below. Unlike the PRO 5, however, the camera sits flush with the back. Meizu’s unique T-slot design also carries over from the PRO 5. Instead of the usual plastic antenna strips, Meizu machines slots into the aluminum back, whose polished finish provides a nice contrast to the sandblasted aluminum.

The volume rocker switch sits above the power button inside a groove machined into the right edge, while the SIM and SD card combo slot is on the left edge. A 3.5mm headphone jack is found up top. The downward firing speaker sits next to a centered microUSB port on the bottom.

The m3 note’s 5.5-inch FHD IPS display—which reaches a peak brightness of 450 nits, according to Meizu—sits behind edge-to-edge glass. There’s also an mTouch 2.1 fingerprint sensor below the screen that’s surrounded by a stainless steel accent ring. Overall, the rounded corners, beveled edges, and 2.5D curved cover glass give the m3 note a similar in-hand feel to the iPhone 6s Plus.

Inside the aluminum chassis is an octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 SoC. This midrange SoC uses four ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs with a max frequency of 1.8GHz and another four with a max frequency of 1.0GHz in a big.LITTLE arrangement. These frequencies are a little below the P10’s rated frequencies of 2.0GHz and 1.1GHz, respectively. So either Meizu is underclocking the P10 to save power, or it’s using a lower-binned version of the P10.

The P10 SoC also includes an ARM Mali-T860MP2 GPU. This is ARM’s current midrange GPU, which features two ALUs per core instead of three ALUs per core like the high-end Mali-T880.

The m3 note comes in two different configurations: 2GB RAM / 16GB internal storage and 3GB RAM / 32GB internal storage. Both versions support microSD cards for storage expansion and feature a rather large 4100 mAh battery, which should provide the m3 note and its lower-clocked P10 SoC with excellent battery life.

The 13MP rear camera sits behind a 5-piece lens array with an f/2.2 aperture. It’s unclear who makes the sensor, but it does use PDAF to improve focus speed. There’s no OIS support, which is a feature that has yet to trickle down to this price point. The m3 note records video at up to 1080p30, a limit imposed by the P10 SoC.

The m3 note comes in three different colors: gold/white, silver/white, and gray/black. It will be available in China for 799 and 999 RMB for the 2GB and 3GB models respectively. The m3 note will also be available India, Russia, France, Spain, Brazil, Italy, Russia and several other countries throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East and Latin America, with exact pricing to be determined.

Huawei Launches The P9 and P9 Plus

Today in London, Huawei has launched the latest devices in its P-series line. The P9 and P9 Plus take cues from the previous P8 but also some hardware moves over from the Mate 8 in the form of the SoC base design. The two models come in various memory and storage variants to the EU and Asia, though some colors and high-end storage configurations will be Asia only.

The new P9 and P9 Plus are aluminium unibody designs, with the two main features being the new Kirin 955 SoC and the Dual Camera design on the rear with Leica certification. The way Huawei is using the dual camera design is different to previous dual camera smartphones from other companies – one is a color camera and the other is a black and white camera. This allows several advances over a standard one camera design.

Firstly, having black-and-white data means that the grey contrast of an image can be optimized depending on the shot itself. The B/W camera also has fewer color filters in the lens design, allowing for 2x light into the sensor over the color camera, giving an equivalent light data of 3x a single camera design. Thirdly, with two cameras and a separation, based on the contrast data Huawei can use an ISP to attempt triangulation of distance. This allows the integrated software to implement a simulated focal length of F/0.95 to F/16, giving bokeh type effects. This is not a true bokeh, but in the three minutes I played around with the device it did give a similar effect. Both cameras are 12MP, running 1.25 micron pixels and a base F/2.2 aperture. There is a laser autofocus on the P9, but no OIS.

The cameras are Leica certified. The partnership with Leica was announced earlier in the year, but this means that the sensors and lenses pass Leica’s internal tests for color accuracy and reproduction. At this time we were unable to find out who exactly makes each of the sensors, although when we get the device in house (hopefully after the press event today) we can find out. Leica’s partnership also extends to the software, allowing the new camera features to be used.

Gallery: Huawei P9

Both the P9 and P9 Plus have the same camera arrangement and underlying Kirin 955 SoC. This is an upgrade over the Kirin 950 we saw in the Huawei Mate 8, with increased clock speeds (+200MHz on the A72 cores to reach 2.5GHz) and upgraded ISP/DSPs in silicon. HiSilicon states that power efficiency has seen an improvement over the Kirin 950, which should result in outstanding battery life for the P9.

The difference between the P9 and P9 Plus will be in several areas. Both devices are 1920×1080 (FHD) resolution, with the P9 at 5.2-inch and the P9 Plus at 5.5-inch. The P9 Plus will use a Super AMOLED display, with the P9 being a standard IPS but with 69% DCI-P3 gamut. The DRAM/storage configurations will be different as well. The P9 will be available in 3GB/32GB and 3GB/64GB variants (LPDDR3, eMMC), with a 4GB/128GB variant coming to Asia in the future (LPDDR4). The P9 Plus by contrast will have a base 4GB/64GB model, again with a 128GB model for Asia.

The P9 Plus in all variants will feature Huawei’s Force Touch technology, as seen on the Mate S 128GB version, however we are told that the utility of the feature will have increased beyond picture zoom and weighing fruit. Also, the EU will have the Mystic Silver and Titanium Grey colors only, while Asia also gets the Rose Gold and Haze Gold variants.

Both the P9 and P9 Plus will use USB Type-C, with Asian versions supporting Dual SIM functionality. The P9 battery runs at 3000 mAh compared to the P9 Plus at 3400 mAh, with both devices listed as 1.5-day battery run time. Both devices feature the same fingerprint sensor from the Mate 8, with the P9 Plus having an IR blaster as well. Both devices (in our quick hands on) ran Huawei’s customized EMUI 4.1 interface, which is reminiscent of iOS. Both devices also support knuckle interactions, similar to the Mate S.

Pricing for the 3GB/32GB and 4GB/64GB models of the P9 comes in at 599€ and 649€, while the P9 Plus in its 4GB/64GB variant comes at 749€. The P9 should hit the shelves in April, with the P9 Plus in May. 128GB variants for Asia will be slightly later than the smaller storage implementations.