HTC is offering an alternative for its One M series smartphones with the HTC One A9. Although this smartphone shares the One name, it is not an HTC One M9.

The HTC One A9 is a cheaper version of the HTC One M series smartphones, CNet reports. Even though the specifications are lower, the price is still pretty high for the One A9.

The HTC One A9 comes with a full-HD display at just 5 inches. The phone will also offer a 13 megapixel (MP) camera.

The HTC One A9 actually looks very similar to the Apple iPhone 6 with its all-metal design and inset lines on the back of the device. There is also a physical home button also capable of being a fingerprint sensor, just like the iPhone 6.

The size of the HTC One A9 is in between the iPhone 6 (4.7 inches) and the iPhone 6 Plus (5.5 inches). This makes it easy to carry, but still offering a nice display to watch videos and view photos. The HTC One A9 will not feel as premium as an iPhone 6 or the HTC One M9 though.

A good thing about the HTC One A9 is the fact that it will come with the latest version of Android, Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This makes it one of the first smartphones besides Google's own Nexus series to have Marshmallow.

To keep the phone cheap, HTC is using a low-end processor in the One A9. Instead of using a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, HTC will use just a Snapdragon 617 chip. This is a much lesser processor than the Snapdragon 810 that HTC uses in the One M9. This means heavy computing tasks like shooting raw camera images and gaming will be noticeably slow.

The price is where HTC goes wrong with the One A9. For $489, buyers are missing out on specs they deserve for the price. Similar phones with slightly better specs can be purchased for much cheaper.