HTC One M9 hype thread

[Achtung!]

Wow... HTC made the wrong choice to go with the Snapdragon 810. HTC should've waited for the Snapdragon 820.

This may just be the news that will ruin HTC, since last year they were struggling a lot financially.

HTC does not have the cash that Apple and Samsung have. It has limited cash to invest in technology, so they relied on Qualcomm to design decent chips.

Looks like Qualcomm has failed HTC. I wonder if HTC can sue them?

Updated: HTC One M9 found to overheat in benchmark test
16 March, 2015

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 chipset may have been found to run cooler than the 801 in some parts, but it looks like it may be leading to some overheating issues after all. Specifically, we're talking about the HTC One M9, which employs the Snapdragon 810 SoC.
A Dutch website has tested how hot the handset gets while running the GFXBench benchmark, and then compared what it found to a few other high-end devices: the iPhone 6 Plus, HTC One (M8), LG G3, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

 

[Strk]

Its on fire... http://www.xda-developers.com/htc-m9-benchmark-proves-snapdragon-810-overheating/

In all fairness, that's not really that hot.

 

[Achtung!]

In all fairness, that's not really that hot.

1 benchmark test and a near 20 degrees Celcius difference compared to its competitors?

You know that affects CPU throttling right? It will decrease the speed of the Snapdragon 810 as it is forced to slow down.

And who knows, it may go even higher with long periods of usage. It may damage the CPU and other components.

 

[Artdeco]

The use case of benching my phone constantly isn't real.

 

[crankytinkle]

Now,I'm starting to get confused with all these reviews for the HTC M9 and benchmarking.. I knew for one that androids sporting a snapdragon 810 is likely to overheat quickly..

 

[poofyhairguy]

The use case of benching my phone constantly isn't real.

Sure it is. Basically the same as playing a high-end game for a while.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Funny how you guys overlooked this part of the article.

However, it should be kept in mind that this could be a bug on the M9 due to it running pre-release software, and if so, it is extremely likely that HTC will fix it before the official M9 release.

 

[touchstone]

Funny how you guys overlooked this part of the article.

i think you're being a bit optimistic there, but for htc's sake i hope you are right. it is crap that they have to be affected by qualcomm's stupidity and i will be very disappointed if they go out of business. i own an m8 and although i will probably get a samsung s6, i still think that htc has a better design team than samsung and i think their phones have been better (m7>s4 and m8>s5)

 

[Strk]

1 benchmark test and a near 20 degrees Celcius difference compared to its competitors?

You know that affects CPU throttling right? It will decrease the speed of the Snapdragon 810 as it is forced to slow down.

And who knows, it may go even higher with long periods of usage. It may damage the CPU and other components.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if that is the upper limit or if it goes higher (I.e. throwing in a benchmark loop and seeing how hot it goes). If 55C is the peak, it may be higher than some, but it really isn't that bad. I guess it also depends on when throttling kicks in to reduce the heat as well. Either way, it seems like the Snapdragon 810 is kind of a crappy upgrade compared to the 805 and companies should have just stuck to the latter this round of updates. The 810 just seems to be overwhelmingly mediocre.

 

[lopri]

poofyhairguy predicted this long time ago, iirc. I am still reserving my judgment on S810 but it won't be a while before the bad rep solidifies unless a different showing is made.

 

[Qbah]

My M8 can get pretty hot, though not as hot as the M7... that thing was sometimes hard to hold. If the M9 can get a lot hotter than the M8, that sucks... I'm sure the Internet will react to it in a very negative way too.

 

[poofyhairguy]

poofyhairguy predicted this long time ago, iirc.

It was obvious way back in 2013 after this happened:

http://www.cnet.com/news/after-apple-64-bit-a7-criticism-qualcomm-exec-reassigned/

Ever since then a blemish on Qualcomm's roadmap was a guarantee.

I feel bad for HTC honestly. They didn't have a choice like Samsung to avoid Qualcomm this generation. They depended on Qualcomm to keep the upgrades coming so they could focus on improving the M8. This kind of bad press could sink all their hard-gained momentum in the market.

I don't like their excuse that it is a software problem though. No way there is some huge difference in the software that causes this. Sure the final version might not get as hot, but that is because the chip will be throttled to like 50% power most of the time and not because of some magic fix. The problem is the implementation of the standard ARM core, every company that has done it has had issues:

Nvidia's Tegra 2 lacked NEON, Samsung had the S4 interconnect issue that basically meant that the Exynos version of that phone was forever broken, and now Qualcomm has this lemon on their hands.

The moral of the story is that even though ARM might be winning the architecture wars, it is not because of their high-end designs. High-end generic ARM cores are dead to me, the only product line of theirs I trust is the lower power segment (the A7s or A53s). For everything else I want custom-designed cores.

What HTC needs to do is make sure when Qualcomm ships their next SoC with a custom core they get first dibs at them and they get into products quickly. If the big version of the M9 has a different SoC maybe they have a chance to stay out of the red this year.

 

[dawheat]

Reviews are pretty tepid. Display is sane at best, but in other ways less bright and accurate. Battery life is worse, low light photos are bad. Not a great update.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Disappointing to say the least and this doesn't bode well for the LG G4, although I'm guessing LG will work to try to improve it other ways (already went 2K so won't take an extra hit from that, but hopefully they can push the display to be closer to Samsung in quality, and maybe improve on the PSR so that they can at least not regress in battery life like the M9 did).

Sure it is. Basically the same as playing a high-end game for a while.

It's not even high end games. There's way too many games (including simple stuff like match 3 ones) that peg SoC use all the way. It's ridiculous and I wish there was a way to limit programs (or rather they'd be coded to do it themselves).

It was obvious way back in 2013 after this happened:

http://www.cnet.com/news/after-apple-64-bit-a7-criticism-qualcomm-exec-reassigned/

Ever since then a blemish on Qualcomm's roadmap was a guarantee.

I feel bad for HTC honestly. They didn't have a choice like Samsung to avoid Qualcomm this generation. They depended on Qualcomm to keep the upgrades coming so they could focus on improving the M8. This kind of bad press could sink all their hard-gained momentum in the market.

I don't like their excuse that it is a software problem though. No way there is some huge difference in the software that causes this. Sure the final version might not get as hot, but that is because the chip will be throttled to like 50% power most of the time and not because of some magic fix. The problem is the implementation of the standard ARM core, every company that has done it has had issues:

Nvidia's Tegra 2 lacked NEON, Samsung had the S4 interconnect issue that basically meant that the Exynos version of that phone was forever broken, and now Qualcomm has this lemon on their hands.

The moral of the story is that even though ARM might be winning the architecture wars, it is not because of their high-end designs. High-end generic ARM cores are dead to me, the only product line of theirs I trust is the lower power segment (the A7s or A53s). For everything else I want custom-designed cores.

What HTC needs to do is make sure when Qualcomm ships their next SoC with a custom core they get first dibs at them and they get into products quickly. If the big version of the M9 has a different SoC maybe they have a chance to stay out of the red this year.

Yeah HTC was basically screwed because of when their updates are and Qualcomm being off the mark. But I think that's also a big problem with the yearly update cycles that these companies adopted, it's led to gradual changes which have really tempered interest and sales, plus if there's any delays (or problems that should need delays to fix but instead they rush the product out) in any components then they have problems.

If it is just software then the M9 is almost a total failure by HTC. It regressed while keeping mostly the same design (so can't pin throttling/heat issues on some crazy thin design or anything). From the sounds of it the camera change wasn't impressive either but we'll see, it might be lone bright spot but we'll see how it fares in testing.

But shows that even when the pieces are in place for success it doesn't guarantee it. But I think the real issue is the problems with 20nm (I think Qualcomm wanted to wait since they new Apple was buying up all the capacity for it they could and let the bugs get worked out). Hopefully 14/16nm things will go smoother. Will be curious when Qualcomm gets their version of the new ARM cores out, wonder if they'll have them by the fall (for Note line, and not sure what else any more that releases then that might be using it so not a huge issue if they work to make sure it's good and for quality and capacity of 14/16nm to get going). But it'll be heading up against A72 based designs next year and more ARM chips from more companies (the Chinese ones are catching up quickly, nVidia, AMD will be entering this space, Intel will at some point surely put a lot of emphasis, Samsung is stepping up their game, and even LG is moving to do their own design) and on top of that most will be offering their own LTE modems (so the single package solution that helped Qualcomm so much will be diminished).

Yeah will be interesting to see how that turns out. Not sure if the custom Qualcomm designs will be out in time, or if maybe Qualcomm can improve the 810 over time to make it actually live up to it's potential. But this phone could use an update mid-way through it's lifecycle (funny thing is, if they replace the SoC with a "mid-range" one like they're apparently going to do with the M8, it might actually improve it).

Reviews are pretty tepid. Display is sane at best, but in other ways less bright and accurate. Battery life is worse, low light photos are bad. Not a great update.

It's not an update, it's an actual regression. The SoC performance is not worth the power/heat issues (805 would've been a much better choice). Display was made worse which also hurt battery life. And they basically didn't do anything else worthwhile (whereas with the iPhone 6 we saw a major change to the design as well as adding the larger plus).

 

[lopri]

S810 is worse than I thought. I thought it might be comparable to Exynos 5433, given the node and architecture. Well, only in Qualcomm's dev platform. (and probably with some help of DVFS manipulation) Between the M9 and the G Flex 2, the SOC proves to be a dud in a phone. It is shocking that it is even sold and bought - presumably there are plenty of engineers who knew this.

 

[lopri]

I don't like their excuse that it is a software problem though. No way there is some huge difference in the software that causes this. Sure the final version might not get as hot, but that is because the chip will be throttled to like 50% power most of the time and not because of some magic fix.

Yup. Looking at the Geekbench database, the effect of the patch took place right after the reported patch date (3/19/15).

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/search?page=7&q=one+m9

 

[tvdang7]

I guess this thread is exactly that. HYPE thread...lol. Less battery life , camera not on par with others.

 

[crankytinkle]

Overheating is my main concern. It makes me worried tho I know it be fine

 

[Londo_Jowo]

According to Android Central there are no overheating issues with the M9.

http://www.androidcentral.com/five-things-know-about-htc-one-m9

2. The Snapdragon 810 processor is just fine

The Internet had itself a bit of a freak-out over the Snapdragon 810 processor that's being used in the HTC One M9. (It's also used in the LG G Flex 2.) Early press stories and the odd blog post with pre-production hardware and software definitely didn't help things. So what did we find? Allow ourselves to quote ... ourselves. From our review:

The result on the M9? Pretty much nothing. I could feel the phone heat up some, but not to anywhere near what anyone would reasonably call uncomfortable, let alone dangerous. It simply did not happen under what is considered normal, if not solid, use. Not even enough cause for concern to even worry about taking its temperature.

Someone will try to melt their M9. And if you see an infrared video of it looking obviously hotter the other phones, remember sixth-grade science class — metal conducts heat better than plastic. Of course it'll look hotter. Our experience with production hardware and newer software simply showed heat to be a non-issue.

 

[dawheat]

According to Android Central there are no overheating issues with the M9.

http://www.androidcentral.com/five-things-know-about-htc-one-m9

Honestly that was one of the weakest reviews I've read. It was mostly things like - well when I use the phone to surf and play games, it runs fine. Camera is pretty good. Honestly all flagships from 2 years ago meet these standards.

Performance can and should be measured so people can make informed decisions. If it performs about the same as the M8, then users who like the build quality can save a lot of money going with the M8. Saying it runs my stuff well is hardly doing your job - I can get that info from a random youtube blogger.

The camera didn't have any low light examples - the closest they seem to get was an indoor shot. It's not exactly doing your job if you don't let your readers know one of the biggest weaknesses of the camera.

No mention of battery life which seems consistently worse than the M8 in all other reviews.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

If you don't like it, buy something else.

I currently have a M8 and it does everything I need it to do, at this point I'm not looking to upgrade.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I currently have a M8 and it does everything I need it to do, at this point I'm not looking to upgrade.

Me too, HTC gave me a reason not to.

My M8 will have to last until Google gives us a normal sized Nexus. Thank God for the GPe conversion.

 

[pete6032]

Dang I'm on a ONE M7 and I like it enough, save for the terrible camera. I see no reason to jump to the M9. Guess my next phone will not be HTC.

 

[fastman]

Until it's released with the windows O/S and tested with that are a lot of these benchmarks/temp tests speculation?

 

[zerogear]

Seems like M9 got updated with pretty significant camera upgrade - seems to bring it on par with S6, at least in daylight photos.

Some samples here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=60831169&postcount=41

As for the thermals, I think it's mostly fixed as well