Malaysia is one of the biggest markets for smartphones and according to the GfK (Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung) report from last year, Malaysians spent a total of US$2.66 billion buying them. Insane! Well, premium flagship devices are definitely major contributors to this, like the HTC One E9+ we’ve received very recently, so here’s a quick first look at the device.
Fundamentally Similar
The One E9+ is a strange creature. While featuring nearly identical specs with the HTC One M9+, it looks a lot less premium in comparison. Firstly, the One E9+ has an all plastic body, compared to the One M9+’s metal unibody. At 7.5mm in thickness, it’s also noticeably thinner than the latter, though that could be due to the flat back instead of using a curved back. The flat back has a textured feel to it to help give it a better grip, which is useful since the E9+ is a larger 5.5-inch device.
Definitely different
The One E9+ doesn’t have the Duo camera feature, thus you only get the single 21-megapixel lens at the back and with only one LED flash. It also doesn’t have the Ultrapixel feature for the front camera, so selfies won’t look as good. The dual front facing speakers on the top and bottom makes a reappearance in the E9+, so we’re expecting it to have really good volume at the least. And lastly, the most conspicuous absence here is the fingerprint sensor at the bottom.
Just as Smooth
I gave the E9+ a boot up and used it for some basic uses like web browsing and such, so far I’ve yet to encounter any hiccups. But I’ll get around to multitasking, games and even videos soon, just to see how it holds up to those simultaneously. I expect it to perform much like the M9+, since it has the same internals.
Not a Bad Thing
Though the E9+ isn’t the most premium smartphone, it has enough reasons to merit consideration, just from its specs alone. It doesn’t hurt that at RM1,899, the E9+ is more affordable than the M9+. Next issue, we’ll give it a full hands-on to see how the user experience is.
Official mobile service partner: U Mobile
