HTC decides to rip off UK customers with the new A9.

Meanwhile I just bought a second hand 2012 Motorola for £38, to replace my 2012 Motorola... :p

The price difference between the states and here annoys me something chronic... It isn't just with HTC's, or even just with phones!
 
Our phone pricing is going nuts here. Blackberry Priv is up for $799 CAD, which is 394.52. Even with 20% for VAT thats £480. CPW are retailiing it for £580. Joke.
 
The sad thing is, it could actually do really well with this phone if they priced it right and tweaked the design a little to be less iPhony (pun intended). By all accounts, it's a good solid mid-tier phone.
 
So often these situations can be explained once you take into account tax etc, but that's ridiculous. No idea what the justification could be, other than 'We don't actually want to sell this in the UK'.
 
Such a shame, I loved my M7 and was wishing they'd bounce back with M9 but looks like HTC are now out of the game with silly decisions.
 
aye.. going down in a blaze of glory and Apple patent related lawsuits. Just surprised their phyiscal button isnt round! The thing was they had a chance to make things right with the M9 (given the poor camera on the M7 and M8) by giving it a decent camera... yet they chose not to. Strange company!
 
Looking at the initial hands on it certainly doesn't look underpowered. Apparently it's smooth and quick, it has Marshmallow already (hopefully an trend that will emerge) and a supposedly lighter weight skin (perhaps why it is able to have Marshmallow already?). It has an AMOLED display too, which most would prefer I guess.

It's such a shame it's lost the front-facing speakers to make space for that ghastly fingerprint reader, and almost as bad that with the chin fingerprint reader that they didn't add off-screen buttons a la Samsung, which might have actually a modicum of sense (pardon the pun).

Then you've got that battery - if this is the most frugal smartphone conceived, with that chip and the help from the AMOLED display, then it will still be woefully poor on the battery. I know Apple have a much smaller battery but it has less pixels to push and an OS fully optimised for the hardware.

The cost will come down here quickly, and frankly if still it had the front-facing speakers, the fingerprint reader placed anywhere else and a battery fitting of the size, it might have been a worthwhile phone, but it's hard to see any justifiable reason to recommend it to anyone at all - there's no market for a rip-off which won't last a day at that anywhere near the asking price.

Hopefully it's just a sideline before the M10 (the 9 in the name suggest so) as it would be a shame for HTC to go under with this line as their flagships.
 
i quite like it due to it's good size and unique styling :) i hope that the price does come down soon. It is a shame we won't get the 32GB but after watching this

i think it maybe ok for the 16GB as well..
 
this_is_gav said:
The cost will come down here quickly, and frankly if still it had the front-facing speakers, the fingerprint reader placed anywhere else and a battery fitting of the size, it might have been a worthwhile phone, but it's hard to see any justifiable reason to recommend it to anyone at all - there's no market for a rip-off which won't last a day at that anywhere near the asking price.
Click to expand...

Fixed the design and pricing for them:

rip_htc.jpg


Its not enough to save them though.. rip HTC.
 
My last three phones have been HTC's; the One X, The One M8 and now the One M9 and there's a noticeable drop in quality with the M9 - and unless they really do something stunning for their next flagship I doubt I'll be getting another.

They've lost their primary designer and most of the 'talent' they once had, so I'm doubtful that they're going to last much longer.
 
xibinim said:
I thought it might be cost but a friend pointed out, weren't HTC demoted by SoC suppliers from the top tier of manufacturers? Or something along those lines?
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/9725/hands-on-with-the-htc-one-a9

Anandtech just say

"The SoC is also not exactly the definition of high-end, as HTC has elected to use a Snapdragon 617 which is likely due to issues with the Snapdragon 810 and 808. As far as I can tell Snapdragon 618 or 620 weren’t possible at this time so it seems that HTC is in some ways stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to SoC choice. In some ways, I don’t really see another choice here, especially given the price point that HTC is competing in."
Click to expand...

I guess maybe the 808 is quite expensive at the moment.
 
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