It's the battle of the unlocked, mid-priced, core Android smartphones as we compare the new HTC One A9 against Motorola's best play for the same market, the 2015 Moto X Style.

HTC One A9 vs. Moto X Style:

Design

It's hard these days to continue labeling smartphones like the third generation Moto X and the HTC One A9 "mid-tier," because it connotes compromises in design quality and brings to mind the bevvy of clunky plastic smartphones you'd find in the category just a couple of years ago.

That's certainly not the case for both the Moto X Style and HTC One A9. Both phones come from several years' worth of Motorola and HTC developing a strong, unique design language, though both break from tradition as well.

The Moto X Style, for example, keeps the curved back and Moto logo dimple where your finger naturally rests from previous generations. The front is also borrowed from the last generation, but the side bezels have been slimmed down even more while Motorola refined the aluminum sides to fit much more plush with the screen.

Most importantly for the Moto X Style, the Moto Maker customization engine continues to offer dozens of combinations of back panel and accent colors, as well as several premium wood and leather options. No matter how your Moto X is built, it'll stand out from the boring crowd of black slates.

The HTC One A9 has taken the all aluminum build from the company's flagship HTC One M line, but has flattened out the back, smoothed out the edges, made the phone much thinner, and placed a smaller camera lens at the very top of the phone, above the top grip line.

HTC had to lose the front-facing dual speakers on the A9 to make this design work, but if you want an Android smartphone that looks a lot like a newer-generation iPhone, the HTC One A9 is your best option.

HTC One A9 vs Moto X Style Hardware Specs:

Display

The Moto X comes with an incredible 5.7-inch IPS display sporting Quad HD (1440 x 2560p) resolution and covered by last year's standard, Gorilla Glass 3.

Being an IPS LCD means the phone creates brilliant, accurate colors, but it will be a little harder to get darker blacks. You'll probably notice that, for example, if you're watching a movie in an unlit room.

(Photo : Motorola Press Box)

Still, even with the 5.7-inch screen, the display yields an incredibly dense 520 pixels per inch. And even with the 5.7-inch screen, the phone is still useable with one hand for most, since Motorola created the phone with an incredible 75 percent screen-to-body ratio.

The HTC One A9's display is less impressive, spec-wise. It's a 5.0-inch AMOLED screen with 1080p HD, which still yields a quite-respectable 441 ppi. And it's covered in Gorilla Glass 4, which is brand new and hopefully more crack resistant than the previous generation.

Performance

Both phones come with a current-generation Snapdragon system on a chip (SoC). The Moto X 2015 sports a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 with the dual-core clocked at 1.8GHz and the quad-core clocked at 1.44GHz. It comes with an Adreno 418 GPU and 3GB of RAM, making it quite a snappy device despite the fact that Motorola shied away from using the troubled but top-of-the-line Snapdragon 810.

The HTC One A9 went for Qualcomm's mid-tier Snapdragon 617, which despite having a lesser GPU and a single clock speed of 1.5GHz, is a bonafide octa-core SoC. Depending on your One A9 model, it comes with either 2GB or 3GB of RAM.

Camera

The Moto X Style beats the One A9 on sheer sensor resolution, with its 21-megapixel main camera that includes phase detection autofocus, dual tone flash, and 4K video recording with HDR. But Motorola has been known for having issues with focus lag, and that's been greatly improved but remains an occasional annoyance with the 2015 Moto X.

Meanwhile, the HTC One A9's camera credentials are helped by the company's popular photography software, like HTC Zoe, but dampened by the fact that the smartphone only sports a 13-megapixel sensor. However, that comes with optical image stabilization, HDR, and dual tone flash, though you'll only be shooting video in full 1080p HD.

On the front, both companies have interesting strategies to make better selfies, especially in low-light environments. The HTC One A9 uses the company's proprietary 4-megapixel "UltraPixel" sensor, which uses larger pixel sizes to get more detail from low light environments. Meanwhile, the Moto X simply put an additional LED flash on the front of its 5-megapixel shooter, a first in smartphone design.

Storage

Depending on how much you want to pay, you can get either 16GB (with 2GB RAM) or 32FGB (with 3GB RAM) internal storage on the HTC One A9. If that doesn't sound like enough, the device also has a microSD card slot capable of expanding your memory up to 200GB more.

The Moto X also comes up strong with microSD card expansion up to 128GB. It has the same two internal storage options as the One A9, but also a 64GB internal storage tier, depending on your price range.

Battery

The HTC One A9 is too new to have extensive testing, but the company says its rather skimpy 2150 mAh battery can get up to 16 hours of talk time and 432 hours of standby. The lower-powered screen and processor probably helps.

Motorola wasn't frugal with its Moto X battery this year, after complaints that the previous Moto X couldn't last a full day in some cases. The company put in an enormous 3000 mAh battery that definitely lasts more than a day, and on top of that, made it the fastest charging smartphone battery in the world. You can get over a third battery life out of a 15 minute charge. It's worth noting the HTC One A9 features Quick Charge 2.0, which is firmware-upgradeable in the future to Quick Charge 3.0.

Bonus Features 

Both Motorola's Moto X Style and the HTC One A9 are poised to capture the attention of hardcore Android fans, because both are very close to the pure Android experience of Google's Nexus line.

HTC boasted that the HTC One A9 is the first non-Nexus device to run Android 6.0 Marshmallow straight out of the box, and further promised the handset will get major Android updates within 15 days of the Nexus line. Motorola's handset comes with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, but as last year's Moto X was the first non-Nexus device to get the upgrade, you can bet this generation will also get Android upgrades on a fast schedule.

Meanwhile, the HTC One A9 still comes with HTC Sense UI, which is a bonus or a drawback, depending on your preference. The Moto X runs a nearly 100 percent "pure" version of Android with zero bloatware, except it adds Motorola's excellent Moto Voice and Moto Display apps into the mix.

Release Date, Price, and Availability

The Moto X Style was released in mid-September, and due to its universal LTE banding, the device is one of the first to work on all four major U.S. carriers and their subsidiaries. Just pop in the sim card of your choice and you're done.

The HTC One A9 has to be ordered to either work with Sprint or T-Mobile/AT&T, with Verizon support coming soon after a software update. Still, if you decide to switch carriers in the first year -- or break your phone for any reason -- HTC will send you a replacement device. Pre-orders for the HTC One A9 have already started, and the phone is expected to hit stores in early to mid-November.

Both phones start at a $400 price point, with upgrades to storage (or premium back panels on the Moto X) costing slightly more.

That's an incredibly good price for either of these "premium-ish" devices, unlocked. And it's nice to own the device instead of making monthly payments or being on a single-device upgrade cycle for the rest of your life.