HTC won't work on mini variant of One M9: Greater demand for larger display kills the 'mini' trend

An HTC executive has revealed that the company won't be working on a mini variant of its HTC One M9 flagship."Overall the industry is moving towards new phones over 5-inches in size and our product roadmap is close to that of the industry," Tong said on May 14 at the Taiwan launch of the One M9+, a bigger and more powerful version of the 5-inch One M9, according to a report by FocusTaiwan. The M9+ that was announced in Taiwan just two months after the 5-inch One M9, and also made an entry in the Indian market at Rs 52,500. It sports a 5.2-inch Quad HD display (1440 x 2560 resolution) with a Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection and has a slightly modified design as compared to the HTC One M9. It comes with a 64-bit MediaTek MT6795T (Helio X10) SoC which has an octa-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz and paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage.On the OS front, you get Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with HTC’s Sense UI 7 skin atop it. The HTC One M9+ features a 20.7MP rear camera and a 4 UltraPixel front facing camera. The HTC One M9+ features a 4G LTE connectivity along with Wi-fi ac, Bluetooth 4.1, infrared port, DLNA, NFC and so on. It is powered by a 2,840mAh capacity non-removable battery. The phone will come in three colours – Gunmetal Grey, Amber Gold and Silver Gold.Looks like, gone are the days when companies were busy accompanying their devices with a 'mini' variant. While companies like Samsung and HTC had launched mini versions of their flagships with a smaller display and watered down specs, Sony brought its mini variant with the same powerful specs but with a smaller display for those not-so-comfortable with large screens. However, in the past couple of years, there's been a greater demand for phones with larger displays or phablets. In fact, phablets are also known to be one of the factors canabalising tablet sales. Now, users no longer find a larger display uncomfortable or hassle to carry around.The mobile industry has seen a shift of pattern in the way devices are being used. It isn't just to merely keep in touch with others, but widely used to get information, browse, entertainment and so on. It is this demand for larger screen that even compelled Apple to dish out a larger varaint of its iPhone 6. Needless to say, Apple iPhone 6 helped the company achieve some record-breaking numbers.