Barcelona: Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC launched its HTC One M9 flagship handset along with a wearable fitness band HTC RE Grip and a virtual reality headset on Sunday before the Mobile World Congress opened its doors on Monday.
The sleek smartphone with a metallic design looks similar to the HTC One M8 launched last year. The M9 boasts of impressive processing power and HTC’s own upgraded user interface.
The company’s CEO Peter Chou said that the M9 marks the third generation of HTC’s iconic design.
“People say M8 is the most beautiful smartphone in the market,” he said after unveiling the smartphone. “We didn’t stop there. We aimed higher, and challenged ourselves,” he said.
Drew Bamford, a lead designer at HTC, said that the M9 had “built on the DNA” of previous models. M9 has a five-inch Full HD display with sapphire glass, 3GB RAM, 32GB storage capacity, a 20MP camera on the back and Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 810 platform — an octa-core 64-bit processor with four Cortex-A57 cores at 2GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores working at 1.5GHz.
The company has dropped its dual camera as in HTC One M8 with dual-LED dual-tone flash. It supports 4K recording and a maximum shooting resolution of 5376 x 3752 pixels.
The phone will be available in Asia and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (Emea) in March.
The HTC RE Grip was co-developed with American sports giant Under Armour and features an understated black design as well as built-in GPS tracking.
“Our partnership with Under Armour has allowed us to direct our combined ambition, talent and passion towards developing new ways to empower athletes to make the most of their training every day,” said Bamford, Corporate Vice-President of HTC Creative Labs.
He said that Grip is the first product to offer deep integration with UA Record, providing an experience that will surpass the high standards of even professional athletes.
It is compatible with Android and iOS devices, as well as Bluetooth-enabled accessories.
The curved 1.8 inch Plastic Amoled display, available in three sizes, is capable of tracking and recording a variety of workouts and is also waterproof, with in-built GPS.
The Grip can function up to 2.5 days on a single charge with its 100mAh battery.
Robin Thurston, senior vice-president of Connected Fitness at Under Armour said, “HTC is an exciting partner for Under Armour and Grip, designed by HTC and powered exclusively by UA Record, is just a taste of what’s to come in the next year. Together we’re looking forward to exploring new ways to empower and inspire athletes of all levels and to rewrite the rulebook of performance tracking, training and improvement.”
The Grip will first be launched in the US this spring for $199 (Dh730) before entering the UK market.
Chang said that non-smartphone revenue in the next two years will contribute around 10 per cent of HTC’s total revenue.
The company, in a bid to diversify its product line to boost sales, has also made a foray into the burgeoning virtual reality sector with a lightweight headset known as Vive.
HTC is teaming up with game developer Valve as well as other developers and entertainment giants HBO, Google and Lions Gate to take on Samsung Gear VR, Facebook’s Oculus and Google’s cardboard virtual-reality goggles.
The company declined to disclose more specifications of the system, saying more details will be unveiled by Valve at a gaming conference in San Francisco this week.
According to research firm Gartner, 25 million head-mounted virtual reality headsets will be sold worldwide by the end of 2018.
For now, Vive works only with PCs and consoles, Chang said.
“We believe that VR will totally transform the way we interact with the world. It will become a mainstream experience,” he said.
