This year, HTC released two great smartphones and one of them is the One M9 , a variant of its flagship. However, it was soon challenged by a new competitor in the form of the mid-range Xperia M5 from Sony. This is how the two devices compare.

Design

The One M9 is by far the better looking device between the two and it has the same design as the flagship One M9. It comes with a full metal body, which has been hand polished. It has a fingerprint scanner and comes in three color options, a silver/gold combination, gunmetal gray and amber gold. As for its competitor, it has a premium look thanks to Sony's OmniBalance design system. It has a metal frame and glass on its front and back. It comes in three colors, white, gold and black. Its main advantage over the One M9 is probably its IP68 certification. This means the device is waterproof and can be submerged in up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes.

Display

Even though both these devices fall into the smartphone category, the One M9 , with its 5.2-inch super LCD3 screen comes out ahead as it has a better resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels and a density of 565 pixels per inch. The Xperia M5, on the other hand, has a 5.0 inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a density of 441 pixels per inch.

Specs

These devices have almost similar hardware. The Xperia M5 comes with a Mediatek MT6795 Helio X10 chipset, which is coupled with an octa-core CPU clocked at 2.0 GHz along with a PowerVR G6200 GPU. The One M9 has a Mediatek MT6795T Helio X10 chipset, coupled with an octa-core CPU clocked at 2.2 GHz along with a PowerVR G6200 GPU.

Memory

The version on the One M9 supports up to 128 GB of external storage but the Xperia M5 has a slight edge as it supports up to 200 GB. In terms of RAM, each device has 3 GB on board.

Price

The price of the Sony Xperia M5 has not been officially announced but it could be between $350 to 450 without a contract. The HTC One M9 , on the other hand, costs $650, unlocked.