As desperate and sad as it is, I really can’t blame HTC for ripping off the iPhone with its new One A9 smartphone. The company needs to boost its sales, and obviously its own designs are failing to that, so why not try and copy the world’s most successful smartphone? That being said, they way the company is handling the accusations that its blatantly ripping off the iPhone is pathetic. Rather than downplaying it or owning up to it, HTC has decided to completely deny that it’s ripping off the iPhone, and even went so far as to claim that Apple is the one ripping of HTC’s smartphones.
The new HTC One A9 smartphone showed its face to the world earlier this week, and many, including techradar, couldn’t help but notice that face looked awfully similar to an iPhone. Now, HTC is firing back at the copycat comments: an executive on Wednesday said that the tables should be turned when it comes to design rip-off accusations. “We’re not copying,” said Jack Tong, president of HTC North Asia, according to Want ChinaTimes. “We made a uni-body metal-clad phone in 2013. It’s Apple that copies us in terms of the antenna design on the back.” In our hands on review of the HTC One A9, we found it easier to highlight what’s different between the two phones rather than list out the similarities. We pondered whether litigation-prone Apple wouldn’t find enough to take HTC to court over (it wouldn’t have to look too hard). We also noted, however, that 2012’s HTC One S featured a ceramic-like surface, one Apple didn’t introduce until the iPhone 6 much later. In his comments, Tong was referring to the HTC One M7, a 2013 phone that not only features the two lines going across a single-colored back piece but also brought forth a new way to orient the antenna on a metal-clad phone.