HTC One E9+ Phablet Delivers Impressive 5.5-Inch QHD Display And MediaTek SoC

HTC just released its flagship One M9 smartphone in the U.S., priced at $649 unlocked. But that isn’t the only new smartphone coming from the HTC camp these days; the company just officially announced the One E9+ phablet for the Chinese market.

Whereas the 5-inch One M9 makes do with a 1080p display, the One E9+ ups the ante with a 5.5-inch QHD display (535 PPI). Powering the phone is MediaTek MT6795M SOC, which is comparable in layout to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (two Cortex A57 cores, two Cortex A53 cores). The smartphone is equipped with 2GB of RAM, and has 16GB of internal storage (expandable to 128GB via microSD).

Since the One E9+ caters to the Chinese market, you’ll also find dual nano SIM slots in addition to the standard fare 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and dual front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers (like the One M9). As for photography geeks, you’ll find a rear-facing 20MP camera and a 4MP UltraPixel camera up front (we’re assuming they’re the same cameras from the One M9).

When it comes to the battery in the One E9+, we have some concerns. Not only does the One E9+ have a physically larger display to power, but there’s also the power-hungry QHD resolution to consider. But inexplicably, the One E9+ actually has a smaller battery than the One M9 (2800 mAh versus 2840 mAh) despite having larger physical dimensions. We’ll likely have to wait until real world benchmarks are released, but I'm hoping the battery figure is a typo in HTC’s detailed specs sheet (there are a couple of other inaccuracies listed there as well).

One the software side of things, there are no surprises — you’ll find HTC Sense 7 running atop Android 5.0 Lollipop.

We don’t have any information yet on pricing or availability, but the phone is supposed to make its live debut in Beijing next week — details will most definitely be revealed at that time.