If having a good sound system on your smartphone is more important to you than pretty much anything else, then the HTC One M9 might just be the best thing you've ever got your mits on.
For me, however, the new flagship from the Taiwanese manufacturer is disappointing in so many ways.
By and large, it looks an awful lot like last year's iteration, the HTC One M8. It sports an all-metal body; dual, front-facing speakers; and a 5-inch screen.
Unless you get the new handset through Telstra, which has it in limited edition "gunmetal grey", the One M9 chassis is a two-tone silver and rose-gold aluminium. I liked it at first glance because it was different, but I have to say, as I spent more time with the phone it did the opposite of grow on me.
I tend to think it looks more like the tarnished buckle on my decade-old wallet than the "luxury" look HTC was aiming for.
It's quite solid and weighty, too, although a smidge lighter than the One M8 at 157g. But my handbag is heavy enough already.
And, it's no secret that I'm not a fan of curved phones. These are annoying to use on a flat surface, as they rock from side to side.
The One M8 sported the power switch on the top of the phone; on the One M9 it's been moved to the right-hand side. While easier to reach, I frequently mixed it up with the volume buttons, which are immediately above it, and also the same shape and size.
HTC's Android skin, Sense, has received an upgrade on the One M9, conveniently titled Sense 7.
The main newbie here is Sense Home, a customisable homescreen widget which repopulates with different apps depending on whether you are at home, at work or "out".
It's a nice idea in theory but ultimately I disabled this after a couple of days. It has a flagrant disregard for the way many people live their lives today - which is to say, checking emails at home and Facebook at work. Plus, if you have a job where you're out of the office for half of the day, it's kind of annoying to have the home screen apps keep changing on you.
Sense 7 includes some updates to HTC's news aggregator, BlinkFeed, such as location-based suggestions for where to eat, but it still lacks the design smarts of rivals like Flipboard, which is pre-installed on Samsung devices, or my personal favourite, Feedly.
I'm a fan of the swipe keyboard but HTC's new TouchPal keyboard is nowhere near as good at figuring out what you're trying to write as, say, Samsung's.
There are other irritating quirks on the keyboard when just tapping the keys though. For instance, when an iPhone corrects a word, it only needs to be told once that you did not in fact mean to type "duck", and it will revert to the word you meant to type, and remember it for next time.
With the One M9 you have to prompt the keyboard to add a word to the dictionary to achieve the same thing.
The phone is loaded with bloatware, including a car app (I don't have a car), smart remote app, "parent dashboard", HTC's slideshow app Zoe and its pretty average note app Scribble, not to mention all the requisite Google apps and oodles more Android related bits and bobs. There's no "uninstall" option for these.
On the plus side, you'll get 100GB free Google Drive storage with the phone.
While the smarts are smarter - Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, 4 x 2.0GHz + 4 x 1.5GHz octa-core processor - there were some minor performance issues.
Unlike just about every person in the universe, this phone does not like Candy Crush Saga. For whatever reason, play was jerky. This simply should not be happening on a brand new, top-tier phone.
The One M9's camera is a let-down.
HTC has moved the ultrapixel camera seen on the One M8 to the front for better selifes, but there's no longer the dual rear-facing camera seen on the One M8, which allowed for some cool perspective effects in snaps.
The One rear-facing camera has a large Gorilla Glass covering that's prone to greasing up just by daily use of the phone.
And despite it boasting 20 megapixels, a few comparison shots with snaps from the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S6, both in similar price range to the One M9, showed the One M9 performed last each time, producing fuzzy pics with poor tone.
The 1080 x 1920 pixel high-definition screen is decent, but not nearly as nice as the one on the Samsung Galaxy S6, at an impressive 2560p x 1440p.
So, to the good part, because I want to like HTC, I really do - underdog and all that.
The dual speakers seen on the One M8 are back again on the One M9, but better.
Now "with Dolby Audio", HTC says the One M9 produces "surround sound", but that's quite an odd claim given there are just two speakers.
Still, play the same tune through the One M9, iPhone 6, Galaxy S6 and even a MacBook Air, and the One M9's speakers win hands down.
Which is super handy, because I've been meaning to get a portable radio for ages so's I don't have to use my laptop all the time.
The speakers are as loud, crisp and delicious as tinny speakers on a small electronics device can be - which, in the end, is what they still are.
Through standard earpierces the audio improvements are more debatable: turning on the "HTC BoomSound with Dolby Audio" does indeed give a bigger, deeper sound - but perhaps even a little too boomy.
I did not test the phone out through a home speaker system, but let's get one thing clear, folks - this is a mobile phone, not a stereo receiver, and it should be judged as such.
Besides, if that's where the One M9 shines, it's not something HTC has been spruiking.
At $1099, the HTC One M9 is by no means a cheap handset, and you could do a whole lot better.
Rival premium flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Apple iPhone 6, start cheaper, both at $999 for the 32GB models.
Storage-wise, the One M9 does give you more bang for your buck, with a Micro SD slot expandable to 128GB, setting you back just the price of the SD card.
For the same storage capacity on the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 you're looking at $1299.
In other words, the One M9 might be a good pick for serious media junkies, but for many the drawbacks will very much outweigh the benefits.
HTC One M9 Technology Specs
Screen: Super LCD3 capacitive 5-inch touchscreen, 1080 x 1920 pixels, Corning Gorilla Glass 4
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 octa-core 64-bit 4 x 2.0GHz + 4 x 1.5GHz
Storage: 32GB storage plus microSD slot expandable to 128GB; 3GB RAM
Network: 4G and below
Price: $1099
