HTC One M9 review: One up

Web browser

HTC One M9 comes with Google Chrome, which is becoming the most popular mobile browser and should be fairly familiar. It has some advantages over competitive browser, including switching between tabs from the Lollipop's Task Switcher interface.

Thanks to your Google account, Chrome can sync the tabs you have open on other devices (desktops, tablets) with the phone. This feature also syncs your bookmarks and favorite sites and can remember passwords and login data across different platforms.

Google Chrome

Other pre-installed apps

The HTC One M9 comes with Polaris Office 5, which can view and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, it can display PDFs too. The app handles files stored locally along with ones in your Google Drive account. The View Together option lets you do a presentation on multiple devices by connecting them together wirelessly.

Polaris Office 5 with cloud integration

HTC has skinned the calendar to match Sense 7 looks. Adding an event lets you specify time (with a warning if there's a conflict with another event), who will attend and where the meeting will be held. Multiple online calendars are supported.

HTC Sense 7 calendar

HTC Backup can do manual or scheduled backups of your apps, messages (texts and emails), contacts and accounts (mail and social). The data is sent either to Google Drive or Dropbox and you can limit the app to transfer over Wi-Fi only.

HTC Backup • backup settings

The alarm clock application can handle multiple alarms, each with its own start and repeat time. The stopwatch and timer are self-explanatory.

The clock app

There is a cool Weather app as well, which relies on the AccuWeather services.

The weather app

HTC Scribble is resurrected, with optimized interface for both drawing and taking notes. You can make cards, lists, diaries, to-do sheets, among others. It supports various type of multimedia content and comes with lots of predefined templates to get you started. The last time we saw Scribble was in the HTC One Max, and we are happy to see it brought back from the dead and with updated interface and functionality.

The HTC Scribble app

Google Maps is the default SatNav app and is the only one a typical user needs. It can plan driving, public transport, cycling and walking routes. With a data connection it will also display traffic alerts. It allows you to download offline maps of an area but in this case it would only serve as a digital map and address searching is not available.

Google Maps

Finally, Google Now integrates with your Google account and can access your daily routine, internet searches, email, etc. and give you information relevant to your interests and daily needs.

Google Now

It provides traffic information to your work or home, knows the scores of sports teams you follow and gives you the weather forecast for your location. It's great for at-a-glance info, but can handle voice input as well. It also has a dedicated homescreen/lockscreen widget.