How do you go about selling and marketing a smartphone in the current climate? It's a question that every manufacturer has to address. As I noted yesterday, there needs to be a certain amount of confidence and arrogance, but it also requires a focus and vision on the hardware and software.

Which is where I want to turn to HTC. Its latest handset - the HTC One M9 - is a perfect example of taking the basic handset as the starting point, building up a coherent vision and market targeting, and coming up with a really nice smartphone. HTC has pushed the boat out, has created a vision that reaches a certain number of users, and ensured that it builds enough to satisfy the demand created without building up excessive stock.

I've been using the HTC One M9 for a week now (it is on loan from the PR team at UK network Three) and I'm in agreement with Jay McGregor who reviewed the handset at launch here on Forbes. It's competent, delivers a solid experience, but suffers from the same issue as many high-end smartphone suffer in the current climate... the battery life is poor.

What I want to look at is not the numbers and the performance of the handset, I want to take a step back and look at what HTC is trying to achieve with this handset.

HTC has spent a lot of time on the design. While it does follow the usual mantra of large touch-screen with minimal bezel, and the volume and power button keys on either side (the usual 'boring' design of the modern smartphone), the One M9 manages to capture a unique look.

Part of this is down to the design choice of using as much anodised metal as possible. The tint of gold on the front panel and the edging certainly stands out next to a sea of glass covered slabs from other manufacturers. The rear of the unit with its gentle curve sits comfortably in the hand and allows a lot more skin contact that the Galaxy S6 - and cheekily it feels like a mirror image of the S6 Edge with a flat screen and curved rear in opposition to Samsung's futuristic design.

That said the step effect between the front screen and edges might add a distinctive shape to the One M9, but it does give the impression that the handset is simply not put together correctly. I have an urge to try and push the screen further into the chassis until it clicks into place.

One issue that HTC has had to deal with in this design is the trend to push new handsets out to the market every year. That means the direct comparison for the media to the One M9 is the One M8. Even a casual look at the specifications and the styling of the M9 is an iteration on from the M8 - there simply isn't a huge jump from last years model, which has led many to question what happened.

Two things are at play here. The first is that the real audience for the One M9 are the users who purchased the original HTC One (now known as the HTC One M7). As the two-year contracts end, HTC's goal is to recapture those users with a new handset that is both comfortable and reassuring to One M7 owners, but also offers the latest hardware and software.

HTC is clearly locked into a yearly product cycle, and this contributes to the relatively small update to the hardware in the One M9. With a reliance on third-parties for the major components, if those parts are delayed or not sufficiently advanced on the model from twelve months before, then the product suffers.

This appears to be the case here, with the delightful tale of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 impacting on the performance of the One M9. Yes, the handset is now running on 64-bit architecture, and yes it is run-on the latest hardware... but that hardware is under strict controls to prevent it overheating. This means that the CPU speed does get throttled back, and the One M9's metal exterior can get warm to the touch when there is a lot of computational work going on.

HTC has decided that the annual release cycle will take precedence, and over-the-air updates will likely be used to unlock the full potential of the Snapdragon 810 over time. Even though performance is similar to the M8, it's a step up from the M7, and that's the main target audience.

And this approach does seem to pervade the One M9. Rather than push the specifications to the limit, it seems to be one step behind the ultimate pace. Just as the Snapdragon 810 processor is dialled down to stay within limits, so other areas of hardware feel like they are just shy of the best performance. While everything stays perfectly serviceable and usable, everything feels 'slightly above average' but no more.

Take the screen. It's a Super LCD running at 1920 x 1080 pixels, giving a 16:9 aspect ratio, and on paper that matches many of the leading handsets. Yet reflections in the screen from strong light sources can be overpowering, the viewing angles are not as wide as other flagships, and the color reproduction is not as bright or vivid as you can see in the competition.

The camera sports some big numbers, but optics and image processing has long been HTC's achilles heel. The same is true in the One M9. HTC has focused on capturing more light into the sensor, and has worked hard with the lens and backside illumination to achieve that. Outdoors the results look crisp and even, but the quality drops off significantly when you move indoors and into low-light conditions. There may be more information being captured but the processing of the raw data into an image introduces excessive levels of noise in the picture, and both colors and details are quickly washed out in the saved images.

Balancing those weaknesses out, HTC has placed a lot of focus on audio, with some striking effects that can be added to music playback. The audio circuitry on the One M9 is some of the best I have heard. This is paired up with HTC's 'boom sound' technology, which looks to create a better loudspeaker experience on the handset. Give the physics of a speaker, any fashionably thin handset is going to struggle to create a solid musical experience - but the goal here is not to out-sound a regular speaker stack, but to rival bluetooth speakers so the One M9 stands alone.

(Now read how the HTC One M9 stacks up against the iPhone 6).

So why consider buying the One M9 when there are handsets out there that can deliver better screens, better pictures, longer battery life, and more performance?

Not everyone is looking for peak performance, and to get that performance you do have to pay for it. Here in the UK the HTC One M9 has a lower upfront cost than the Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 handsets that are the natural comparisons, and the SIM-Free price can be up to £100 cheaper than the rivals.

When you put this alongside the distinctive style and high-quality feel of the device, you do get an attractive package. Yes the edges are dulled by the numbers, but how often do the majority of users really push their smartphone to the limit? In the real world the One M9 delivers enough performance to be a great daily smartphone to use, it looks fabulous, and it stands out from a crowd of Galaxys, Xperias, and iPhones. For many people, the looks are an important consideration.

Then there is the software. HTC's Android skin is called Sense, and with the update to Android, it is tightly integrated into version 5.0 of Google's mobile operating system. This means that HTC's additions to the platform feel like they belong there, rather than being bolted-on bloatware. HTC is looking to present a smart side to the smartphone through these apps - providing you business themed apps when you are at work and more leisure focused apps when you get home, the article aggregator Blinkfeed takes into account time and place to present you with relevant information, and you can stream media from the smartphone to connected devices around you with ease.

(Read more about the rising levels of bloatware in the Android ecosystem).

HTC's goal seems to be to create an everyman smartphone. Rather than strive for perfection, or excel in one or two areas, the focus seems to be on doing a good job in every area of the handset. Ensuring that the 'average' is brought up on a handset is a different approach to other manufacturers who will concentrate on making the key selling points as highly rated as possible and using that to boost the 'average'.

That makes for a good all-round handset, but also means that the key flaw in the handset, the lower battery endurance, stands out. The other issue with this approach is that it gives away a fair bit in the marketing war. It's not the newest, it's not the fastest, it's not the most capable. The lion's share of the press is going to look elsewhere, and that makes it harder to market the phone, to build up awareness, and to get the word out that the One M9 really can do everything you need it to do.

Which is where the fan base comes in. Moving to the M9 designation clearly marks this handset out as the current 'new' handset in the HTC range. Strictly speaking it's more like the One M8.5, because it doesn't offer a huge amount over the previous generation (but then neither did the iPhone 5S over the iPhone 5). But it allows HTC owners at the end of the contract to upgrade to a solid and competent experience.

The One M9 shows HTC's design skills, it gives the fan base something to upgrade to, and while it might not be a home-run, it should keep HTC in the smartphone business during 2015 with ease.

Disclaimer: UK network Three provided a HTC One M9 handset for review purposes.