Based on materials from androidcentral.com
HTC One M9 – the flagship of 2015 from the Taiwanese manufacturer, famous for its design solutions. The third device in the modern line HTC One, which began with the M7 2013. The current flagship has not impressed the number of users that the company expected, but it is still one of the best smartphones on the market.
If you are just going to buy an M9 or have already done so, but do not know which side to approach it, this material is for you, the 'HTC One M9 guide for' dummies'. We will try to help you get the most out of your device.
1. 'Iron'
In style, the M9 follows directly on its predecessors, the M8 and M7. You have a large metal bar in your hands with excellent front-facing stereo speakers and front and rear cameras. The most important characteristics are:
- Display: 5 inches IPS 1080p
- Operating system: Android 5.x Lollipop
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810
- Internal memory: 32 GB expandable by microSD up to 128 GB
- RAM: 3 GB
- Main camera: 20 MP
- Front camera: UltraPixel (4MP effective)
- Battery: 2840mAh
2. Setting
The setup process in Sense 7 is pretty much the same as for any smartphone from HTC recently released. Here you have a cross between what has been done HTC and Google. Look at the options offered to you, log into your accounts, and if you upgrade to a newer device, you need to synchronize the data with the old one.
It's worth mentioning that this is the first time you have the option to opt out of any location tracking, as well as set your privacy settings (of course, we often just scroll through these things).
- More about customization HTC One M9
3. Home screens
And now to the fun part – directly to the use of the phone. Home screens are where you 'spend' a good chunk of your life with a new device. Much here is similar to previous versions of Sense. You have BlinkFeed , home screens, and an app quick launch bar. But it cannot be said that there is nothing new here at all.
BlinkFeed
For the uninitiated, it's a FlipBoard-like news aggregator built into Sense 7. Its location is on the far left of the home screen. BlinkFeed is pretty good, you can link it to Twitter and Facebook and even read the Google+ feed. You can also add news feeds of your favorite sites.
New in Sense 7 is the ability to get information about where you can eat nearby (using Yelp), it can also be displayed on the lock screen.
Sense Home Widget
Sense Home is a more controversial innovation in Sense 7. It takes up half of the home screen (you can still add screens as you wish) and predicts which apps you need based on time of day and location. If you are at home, you will be presented with the applications that you use more often at home, the same with work and time spent outdoors. It's good if it works for you, but you may need to dig into the list of applications much more often than expected. Luckily, this is just a widget that can be easily removed.
This widget has a couple of weird folders – Recommended and Downloaded Apps. Our advice is to take them down first.
Pinning applications
If you have frequently used apps and would like to save them to the Sense Home widget, you can 'pin' them by pressing and holding. True, if you fill in all the points designated for this, it loses its meaning.
- More about Sense Home
4. Notifications and quick settings
You can bring up notifications by pulling the top edge of the screen. Here at HTC follows Google's original design. But the quick settings are more confusing. Pull the top edge a second time (or do it once with two fingers) and you'll see the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, brightness, and airplane icons. Tap on the icon to enable / disable the option, or on three dots to bring up the settings.
The flashlight app now lives here. You can change the order of the quick settings and add several as you like. Everything is quite functional, but it is starting to look a little outdated.
5. Camera
The camera is the M9's sore spot, don't even hesitate. Not that it is completely terrible, but the processing suffers, especially when compared to other top-end smartphones. Not the worst camera in the world and you will be able to get good pictures, but not as guaranteed as we often expect.
If you want, digging into the settings and understanding how it all works, you can squeeze more out of the camera than what it is capable of 'out of the box'.
And a few more words about taking pictures with the M9.
- HTC set the stage a couple of generations ago with their Zoe and Video Highlights modes, now they are standard for most galleries, and the M9 is no exception.
- Gallery One gives you access to photos from sources such as Flickr, Facebook and Dropbox.
- The camera can shoot in RAW. Definitely worth a try if you're interested in manual settings at all.
- Finally, the M9 has a pretty solid built-in photo editor.
To be continued.