One of the striking attributes of the new HTC One A9 smartphone is that it looks very similar to Apple's iPhone 6.
When asked to comment about this during a press event at the new handset's launch in Taiwan, an HTC exec said they did not copy Apple's phone design and it was the opposite, in fact, because Apple copied theirs.
"We're not copying," Jack Tong, president of HTC North Asia, said. "We made a unibody metal-clad phone in 2013. It's Apple that copies us in terms of the antenna design on the back."
Tong's defense that HTC's phone to be of unibody metal-clad in 2013 is actually true. One M7 came with an aluminium body and the unsightly antenna lines in the back, even Beats Audio.
All execs at HTC agree that One A9 is an evolution of their phone designs, with Tong saying, "The A9 is made thinner and more lightweight than our previous metal-clad phones. This is a change and evolution, and we're not copying."
Jeff Gordon, senior manager of global online communications of HTC, tweeted that "HTC handsets in 2013 paved the way for the iPhone 6 in 2014."
In fact, HTC's website boasts about One A9 as a "design worth imitating," though the handset is a copycat of iPhone 6, said MacWorld. Like the most recent Apple smartphones, One A9 puts its antenna lines in the back, has a protruding camera lens and an all-metal design.
PCMag hinted that the One A9 has similar Home button depression and rounded corners, but actually looks more like a Galaxy S6 with its home button or fingerprint scanner at the bottom, a speaker on the bottom edge and a small earpiece grille at the top.
The site hopes that HTC One A9 being compared to Apple's iPhone will not spark a legal battle between the two OEMs just like between Apple and Samsung which costs the latter hundreds of millions of dollars.
