Hands on: HTC One M9 – Iteration at its best

The first thing you notice when you pick up the HTC One M9 is that it feels a lot like the HTC One M8 – at least from the make of the phone, and the fact it has the same kind of all-metal exterior. It feels incredibly solid, it definitely feels like a high-end smartphone. If you liked the One M8, you're going to love the One M9.

The first thing you notice when you pick up the HTC One M9 is that it feels a lot like the HTC One M8 – at least from the make of the phone, and the fact it has the same kind of all-metal exterior. It feels incredibly solid, it definitely feels like a high-end smartphone. If you liked the One M8, you're going to love the One M9.

I had a chat to the guys at HTC about the process of actually creating the metal body – you think they just carve it out of a bit of metal and that's that, but it's not that simply. They can't just polish out scratches, as every time you do it makes a little bit thinner. If a HTC One M9 gets scratched or scuff while it’s being made, they have to melt it down and start again. 

The fact the One M9 still has expandable memory via microSD is great, considering Samsung has removed that feature in the Galaxy S6. If you listen to the chatter, some people don't care, but some people really want expandable memory. Considering neither of the world's top smartphone manufacturers support expandable memory in their flagships, HTC seems like it could be in a good position to gain some new customers.

One of the phone's clever new features is a location based home screen, which displays different apps based on where you are. If you're at home it displays one set of apps, if you're at work it displays another, and then a third when you're on the go. I'd love HTC to take this one step further and automatically open and close apps based on location. Personally, I just the One M9 to sign me out of Twitter when I get home and hide all of its notifications. I'm on it enough at work as it is.

HTC's trademark front-facing speakers can now imitate 5.1 sound, although a busy showroom floor wasn't the best place to try this out. Personally, I'd just prefer to use high quality speakers or headphones.

The HTC One M9 looks like a really solid phone. It's not too far from home, but the One M9 takes what was already good about the One M8 and makes that little bit better. The HTC One M9 might just be my next smartphone.

Charlie Brown travelled to Mobile World Congress 2015 with the support of HTC and Samsung.