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There’s nothing quite as exciting in our adult lives than opening the box to a new phone. With our phone-addicted generation, it’s more thrilling than all the toys we got as kids because it’s like you are unwrapping your new partner-in-crime.

That’s how I felt as I opened my new HTC One A9. This was my new sidekick, the one who would keep me in touch with all my friends, allow me to stay on top of work at all times, capture every special moment and even the moments that probably shouldn’t be photographed ever, and of course keep me entertained while stuck in traffic.

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It was love at first sight. The HTC One A9 is super sleek, and its slim design almost inspired me to go hit the gym. Almost. I was intrigued from the beginning when it had me set up a fingerprint security. The future is so cool, no one’s getting into my phone now unless I want them to! The really important thing is that this phone is easy to use, which is super critical for someone who isn’t particularly technologically inclined, such as myself.

The easy-to-use design helped me quickly investigate the issues that really matter when making the serious commitment to a phone. No, I don’t mean anything to do with the traditional purpose of a phone, like calling people. And I don’t even mean what we spend half of our time on our phone for – scrolling through Facebook – because if a phone can’t provide us with a decent Facebook experience we wouldn’t even be talking about it in the first place. I mean the camera and the speakers. Those are the features that will determine whether or not a phone is worth the space it will take in your pocket.

So I put them to the test. I wanted to start with the speakers, since the HTC One family has always boasted of game changing audio. Apparently the HTC One A9 has HTC BoomSound™ integrated into the headset combined with Dolby Audio™ surround technology, with a built-in DAC that delivers audio at 24-bit, 192KHz quality. I’ll be honest, I’m not a DJ. I don’t know what that means. I tested the quality the only way I knew how, by plugging in the fancy headphones and searching for Adele’s Hello on YouTube. Holy cow, wow! I’ve never heard Adele so sweet with earbuds! If the speakers can deliver her famous vocals, I’m confident they can deliver anything.

Next up, the camera. The rear camera is really good, a couple shots proved that. It should be, it’s 13 megapixel with Optical Image Stabilisation to help get rid of the shakes. It also has a bunch of sweet features to play with. There’s a RAW setting, where you can adjust the white balance and everything to how you want it. There is an incredible panoramic option. And there’s hyperlapse and slow motion video settings. I wasn’t convinced that those were necessary at first, but after seeing my friends in hyperlapse mode, I was dying laughing and had found my new favorite way to create videos! It’s like being able to make your own GIFs, but better!

But the front camera is what I was holding my breath for. There’s nothing worse than when there is a perfect selfie opportunity and your front camera is being super rude with the lighting. But not with the HTC One A9, its UltraPixel sensor captures 300% more light than conventional smartphone cameras. Breathe a selfie-sigh of relief.

Now that the priorities are settled, here are some other details that might be interesting. Like that it is powered by Android 6.0 Marshmallow, has Android Pay, and saves your battery by automatically turning off power-hungry applications while the phone is dozing. Because it puts unused apps on standby, you can watch 12 hours of HD video on one charge. That’s pretty impressive.

The HTC One A9 features the newest Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 617 processor with integrated X8 LTE and 64-bit octa-core CPUs. In real-people words, that means that the HTC One A9 is designed to deliver a perfect balance of powerful performance, fast connectivity and better battery life. With support for epic LTE wireless speeds through next-generation carrier aggregation

technology, it delivers more high-definition streaming videos, more pulse-pounding high-resolution audio and more storage in the cloud to hold everything your heart desires. The phone is available in both 16 and 32GB configurations and features expandable memory, supporting up to 2TB in SD card storage, perfect for storing all your apps, games, photos, music and videos.