HTC's New Flagship Phone Doesn't Mess With a Good Thing

HTC's New Flagship Phone Doesn't Mess With a Good Thing

HTC's New Flagship Phone Doesn't Mess With a Good Thing

HTC is easy to root for. It's the perennial underdog in the smartphone wars—the company that was making gorgeous phones while Samsung drowned the world in pieces of cheap plastic. It was the first to ship a truly beautiful Android device, and its design thinking launched a trend toward better-looking phones across the board.

The story of the One M9, the phone HTC announced Sunday at Mobile World Congress, is that if you got it right the first time, don't mess it up. The One M9 smartphone is mostly the same as last year's One M8, which was mostly the same as the One M7 before it.

HTC is also taking a bold dive into wearables today—untested waters for the Taiwanese company—with a new fitness bracelet called Grip. But HTC's smartphone formula is clear and consistent. And damn if it doesn't still produce nice-looking phones.

The One M9 is gorgeous, refined even from last year's model. It's a little slimmer and a little easier to hold—apparently HTC heard its users didn't like accidentally flinging their beautiful smartphone onto the ground. There's a slight camera hump on the back, because 2015 is the year of the camera hump, and the power button has (finally!) been moved to the side of the phone. It has great front-facing speakers, a really nice 5-inch, 1080p screen, and a Snapdragon 810 processor. I've only spent a few minutes with it so far, but it felt fast and smooth, every bit the flagship phone.

>The One M9 is coming to all major US carriers. It's great, but not surprising. It's the Grip, HTC's first-ever wearable, that is the real wild card.

For the first two generations of One, HTC swore up and down that its "Ultrapixel" camera was a good idea. This year, the company has seen the error of its ways, and moved the very bright and very bad sensor to the front of the camera. On the back, there's a new 20-megapixel camera. All the gimmicks are gone: There's no crazy refocusing, no weird ideas about light capture, just a straightforward, good camera. And hey, your selfies will be super-bright now.

On the software side, there are some really clever new personalization features. HTC's new Theme app lets you visually tweak every iota of your phone, from icons to menu colors, based on a color, a wallpaper, or even a photo. You can take a picture and convert it automatically, or download a theme from HTC's store. The company's even promising to work with designers to make cool themes for your M9.

A new widget automatically alters the homescreen. It watches your location, and using that knowledge, offers up shortcuts to apps you might need right now. So you'll see one homescreen when you're at home, another at work, and another whenever your phone notices you're in an airport.

The phone's coming to all major US carriers, and will fit nicely where the M8 has been for the last year. It's great, but it's not surprising. It's the HTC Grip, the company's first-ever wearable, that is the real wild card.

HTC Tries the Wearable Market on for Size

The Grip is a fitness device, not a "life-tracker" you're supposed to wear all day. It's more like a sweatband from the future. It's a rigid dark blue band with a neon lime green inside, and it's waterproof enough to handle a sweaty workout. It'll do basic smartwatch things, like sending quick call and text notifications to your wrist, all of which show up on a 1.8-inch display on the band itself. But the most powerful feature it offers is built-in GPS, which means you can collect much more accurate data and even leave your phone at home while you run. (A few high-end devices and watches have GPS, but they're all bigger and more expensive.) HTC says the battery will last two and a half days of normal use or five hours with GPS on, which if nothing else will be good encouragement to finish that marathon a little quicker.

The Grip's companion app is Under Armour's UA Record, which is a brand-new app for hardcore athletes. HTC made Grip in close partnership with Under Armour, and says this is the beginning of a truly beautiful friendship. The company saw a gap left by Nike and the Fuelband, for people who want more than a simple step-counter but don't want to strap a crazy-looking heart rate monitor to their chest while they run, and made Grip for exactly those people. (Actually, the Grip is compatible with a bunch of chest-strap monitors, so you can get as crazy as you want to.) Grip will track your sleep, too, and HTC says that between its hardware and Under Armour's software—which has grown in the last year to include massive amounts of data from MapMyFitness and MyFitnessPal—there's a lot of coaching and collecting it can do about specific workouts and specific people.

HTC has big plans for 2015; executives say they're nowhere near done yet. Wearables is a clear focus for the company as it looks to expand, but they say Grip is just a first try, a way to ship something and see what people really want. For now, HTC remains first and foremost a smartphone manufacturer. And from the looks of it, still a damn good one.