By now, HTC One M9 specs - and in some way the HTC One M9 Plus - should have flooded the market as expected since it was officially unveiled at the MWC 2015. What has constantly risen to the top of the rumor mill, however, is one HTC Marketing Department may not have expected. More likely than not, the products are perceived as old-school:reminiscent of the HTC One M8, with little new to offer on the table.

Quite understandably, any pundit worth his salt should fall into thinking this is the reason perhaps, why it decided to get its sales act going mainly in China - forwarding the HTC One M9 first to the Western world only and not its heftier bigger version, the M9 Plus. Or is it?

Right from the get-go and up to today HTC One M9 has been plagued by criticisms of not being too innovative enough. A recent tabular spec by spec comparison done by Know Your Mobile only serve to justify what Vlad Savov from the Verge described as "the world's most beautiful disappointment."

What is immediately apparent to most loyal HTC fans, is that this newly-introduced flagship product looks erringly similar to its direct predecessor, the HTC One M8. But what is even more cringe-worthy is there may not be much of an over-all improvement to separate it as a big overhaul from the M8.

It's no secret, HTC One M8 did well as a product, giving HTC a considerably huge share of the Android-sales pie worldwide. But keeping itself stuck to a tradition that has worked may be in direct contradiction to what its biggest competitors in the Android universe are doing.

No doubt, this latest HTC approach is reminiscent of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s strategy: making strides in power and imaging, and software but nary a major overhaul. But as a whole it runs smack into the spectacular Android strategy that is fraught with an Olympian flair, going for thinner, faster and better models 99.9% of the time.

A list of similarities between the flagship products,      

HTC One M9 vs HTC One M8:

• 5-inch SLCD3 1920x1080p 440ppi (exactly the same)
• machined aluminum unibody
• color and over-all design

Where they differ slightly:

• better 2,840mAh vs old 2,600mAh
• 5-inch SLCD3 1920x1080p 440ppi vs old 5-inch SLCD3 1920x1080p 440ppi
• 144.6 x 69.7 x 9.6 mm, 157g dimension vs old 146.4 x 70.6 x 9.4 mm, 160g

UI also sees a bump as HTC One M9 utilizes Sense 7 while M8 Sense 6, code that is upgradable to Sense 7. And of course, you have some curvature and edges change with the M9.

A big improvement may lie with the camera which for the M9 is stretched to 20MP while M8 has two cameras, a dual-4MP. Both flagship products are run by a Qualcomm Snapdragon version, not the same but closely similar.

And both are running Android, Lollipop 5.0 for the M9 and Kitkat for the M8. Additionally, the HTC One M9 Plus is the 5.5-inch version of HTC One M9, with a dual-camera like the M8.

HTC could be cooking something awesome as we speak. But given that  HTC One M9 is pricey when compared even to Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or Google Nexus 9, it's a bit of a hard sell. It may have to do but the Android world may not be all smiles to make the most of HTC One M9 and HTC One M9 Plus.