HTC One M9 update improves camera and battery

HTC is to begin pushing out an update to One M9 users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa beginning later today (barring any unexpected complications). The update will bring the software version to 1.40.401.5 and is the same update that rolled out in Taiwan a couple of weeks ago and will come to North America later this month.

The update will aim to fix a few problems with the camera, the battery life and even overheating issues. The list of changes is:

Battery Life

The battery life on the One M9 is average at-best and the update should bring improvements to battery life when using two very popular preloaded applications: YouTube and Facebook. This should mean better battery life.

Camera

The camera on the One M9 is arguably one of its worst features and the update should bring a few much-needed improvements, including:

• Greater auto-exposure balance to improve overexposure, so images don’t look washed out
• Reduction of blur and noise in low light, so images are clearer with better detail
• Reduction of yellow/green hue in photos, so colors appear truer to their actual hue

Heat Management

For Qualcomm – who provide the Snapdragon 810 chipset used in the One M9 – the overheating concerns with its Snapdragon 810 were only enhanced in the One M9 as the metal build proved conducive to the overheating. One of the biggest concerns is overheating when your phone is being charged and the update should bring:

• Smart charging thermal improvement, which means your phone will stay cooler when it’s being charged

The update may only be small in size and stature but the fixes will be very welcome to HTC One M9 users, who may be considering whether they purchased the right handset. HTC’s latest flagship certainly has a lot of good features and – although I don’t like it personally – there are some who will find it pleasant. The biggest problem is its Product Strategy and the fact that, having released a bunch of better flagships in Asia, the One M9 is still its global flagship in the West.

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Unfortunately for HTC, customers do read the web and its new devices such as the One M9 Plus – which should have arguably been the real flagship – the One E9 Plus and the One ME will only alienate customers. Then again, with poor demand for the One M9 resulting in cost-cutting and a return to loss-making, maybe some changes need to be made to HTC’s Product Strategy.