Ultrapixels, Zoes, Blinkfeed and more: HTC is going all outVerdict :
A beautiful handset with an amazing screen and innovative camera - an Ultimate smartphoneTheVerge :
Heating up the race for the perfect Android phoneT3 :
The HTC One needs to be the best smartphone that HTC has ever made, and also has to compete with the the Samsung Galaxy S4
HTC One
HTC One Review - The Android market has changed radically in the past couple of years. Where we once had a spec war, with manufacturers racing to release ever-more powerful smartphones as quickly as possible, now it’s turning into a marketing battle — and Samsung is winning by a mile. HTC, by comparison, isn’t doing so well. The company has learned some important lessons about not flooding the market with iterative designs, and the culmination of that is the aptly-named HTC One. It’s HTC’s flagship, the one device it’s putting all its weight behind.
It might seem a little reductive to only consider the HTC One in comparison to Samsung’s as-yet unseen Galaxy S 4, but the truth is that the HTC One can only succeed if it can steal back some of the marketshare it lost last year when the One X, which we found superior to the Galaxy S III in many ways, failed to compete with Samsung’s device.
The playbook this year looks surprisingly similar. The HTC One has top-notch hardware design and specs that are as good or better than anything else on the market today. But that’s long been the case with HTC, and it hasn’t been enough. So instead the company is making two gigantic bets: a surprising camera that rethinks how you take photos, and custom software that reimagines the home screen. Both features are likely to be polarizing, but the real question is whether the buzzwords, features, and HTC’s technical “innovation” add up to enough to convince consumers to give the phone a chance.
The HTC One is a smarphone that has been built with one purpose, to revive the ailing fortunes of its maker by being not only the best Android smartphone out right now, but also by remaining the best handset in months to come (Samsung Galaxy S4 we’re looking at you).
To even stand a chance of doing this it’ll need to be as fast as the Google Nexus 4, as beautiful to look at as the Sony Xperia Z and then also boast the kind of feature set that we’ve now seen from the Samsung Galaxy S4.
This then all has to be wrapped up in a Full HD package that won’t weigh a tonne but still boasts a build quality that would make the iPhone bow its head in shame. No pressure then.
HTC One: Size and build
At first glance, it’s beautiful, but a bit cold and inhuman — lots of clean lines and sharp edges, plus at more than 5 inches tall it’s just a big phone. But the One is actually incredibly comfortable to hold: the slightly curved back nestles into your palm, and the chamfered edges slope from back to front, so your hands curl naturally around its sides. There are a couple of awkward ergonomic quirks, like the top-mounted power button that is always impossible to reach on such big phones, and especially the Home button that’s far enough to the right that it’s hard to hit unless you’re holding the phone in two hands. Even if I never did stop pressing the center-located HTC logo trying to go back to the home screen, the One feels a lot better than most phones this size, and I did eventually learn how to shimmy the phone up and down in my hand to reach the various parts of the screen and body. Luckily I haven’t dropped it while doing so, but even if I did I suspect the One could handle it better than many of its more fragile counterparts like the Nexus 4.
HTC keeps besting its own hardware efforts
By itself, the screen makes the One a great option for watching movies or playing games, but the front-firing speakers above and below the display take things to a whole other level. With the phone held sideways, the two create a surprisingly powerful and wide stereo effect. More importantly, they get loud enough that you don’t have to hold the phone up to your ear to hear anything — a pose I’m glad to no longer have to strike. There’s some Beats processing going on, and for once it does seem to help; the software adds some low-end where the speakers otherwise lack it, and fills out the sound profile a bit. The whole setup is called BoomSound, and while I despise the marketing term, I love the effect. Make no mistake, these are still phone speakers, and I still use headphones more often than not, but the One’s audio setup is a huge leap beyond virtually every other smartphone or tablet.
At the risk of repeating myself, I love the look and feel of the One. HTC gets what Samsung doesn’t — fit and finish really matter, and great hardware makes the One pleasant to use in a way Samsung’s slippery plastic frames just aren’t. I always try to use a device exclusively when I’m testing it, but nearly always come back to my iPhone because I just enjoy using it more. While using the One, I all but forgot I even had another phone.
Well to start off with the iPhone 5 can start blushing because in terms of build quality the HTC One is almost flawless. A precision machined aluminium body is then seamlessly joined to the rest of the phone using a technique which leaves no gaps, and we mean none at all.
It’s certainly on a par with Apple’s own standards and even though we’ve only had a short time with the S4 we’re going to go ahead and say that its got that safely beat.
All that aluminium must surely translate into weight then? Well at 143g it’s not the lightest smartphone being safely trumped by both the BlackBerry Z10 and the Galaxy S4. That said it never becomes noticeable instead giving the feeling of being sturdy. This is then carried across with the 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm dimensions which put it as being just slightly thicker than the iPhone 5.
On the top you’ll find the power/lock button and on the side is the volume rocker, which, from a design point- of-view is the weakest aspect of the phone. On the front you’ll notice two rectangular grills which is where HTC has managed to cram two speakers for stereo sound.
The HTC One wins out when it comes to web browsing performance. It has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, and completed our Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in a super-fast 1,123ms. This is far faster than the 1,890ms we saw from the Xperia Z, but we think much of this is down to the speed of the Xperia Z's browser. For comparison, we ran the same test using the fast Dolphin browser, and the HTC One remained ahead of the Xperia Z with a score of 1,120ms compared to 1,357ms.
This difference was borne out in our subjective web browsing tests. Both phones rendered graphics heavy web pages at a similar speed, but when zoomed in and panning around a web page, the Xperia Z would stutter when coming across a large image – a problem we didn’t have with the HTC One.
Luckily, HTC has provided a huge 2,300mAh battery to power the fast processor and bright screen. The handset managed 8h 32m in our continuous video playback test, which is a strong result and bodes well for all-day battery life.
An Android smartphone can be beautifully designed and have an amazing screen and top-notch chipset, but none of this will make any difference if the software is rubbish. HTC sails closer to the wind than most on this front, as it heavily customises Android with its latest Sense interface.
Sense has always divided opinion, but this time HTC has really pushed the boat out. Running on top of Android 4.1.2 is Sense 5.0, and with it comes the end of the traditional Android homescreen, with its mix of widgets and icons.
HTC One: Features
Instead, you get what HTC calls BlinkFeed. This consists of a rolling grid of tiles, containing information aggregated from various news websites and your social media feeds. You can add all the major social media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr, but the choice of news websites is quite narrow; you get the Guardian, the Independent and Reuters for news, and CNET and TechCrunch for technology. For those used to getting their content from a wide variety of sources the BlinkFeed selection will seem very narrow.
BlinkFeed replaces the standard Android homescreen, and shows you news feeds and social networks in chronological order
It looks like the BlinkFeed needs to be specifically supported by the corresponding news outlet or website, so it remains to be seen whether overstretched publishers will be keen to support yet another platform. We found BlinkFeed more useful for keeping an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, though, and often used Twitter links to find news stories anyway.
BlinkFeed is a clever idea which is in tune with how many people actually use their smartphones; to keep an eye on what's happening in the world and among people they know. Of course, if you prefer to use your Android smartphone to check your calendar widget at a glance on your homescreen before opening your email, you will most likely hate it.
The app tray is a smooth-scrolling lovely bit of design
The standard Android homescreen isn't completely dead and gone, though. Swiping right from the BlinkFeed takes you to a standard Android homescreen with space for the usual apps and widgets, and you can add up to three more screens if you need more room.
Most importantly, you can set a standard Android home screen as your default screen (the one that appears when you unlock the handset). BlinkFeed is still there, sitting to the left of the default screen, while your other home screens are off to the right.
Meanwhile, pressing the icon in the middle of the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen takes you to the app tray, which is rather lovingly designed; we like the way it scrolls smoothly through pages of icons rather than continuously, as this makes it easier to keep track of where you are.
HTC has made a big deal about music playback ever since it first stuck a Beats by Dr. Dre logo on one of its phones, and the One is no exception. It has what HTC calls BoomSound – a pair of stereo speakers at the top and bottom of the phone - or left and right when watching video in landscape orientation.
Amazingly, these speakers sound reasonably good. It's the best sound quality we've ever heard from a phone, but the bar is set pretty low. The speakers are loud and produce audio with some definition, but the sound is certainly harsh with a definite high-end emphasis, but that's to be expected from speakers this size. We're also not convinced that putting loud speakers in a phone is a great idea, as most bus journeys we take are hellish enough as it is.
The One also has built-in twin microphones, which HTC says are designed for recording gigs. We didn't have any upcoming gigs during our time with the phone, so we decided to simulate one instead. We played back a Crowded House gig from YouTube on our PC with our speakers turned up high, and recorded the result on the HTC One.
When we played back the recording and compared it to the original, the concert sounded clear with little distortion, but there was a marked lack of bass compared to the original. You can compare the original video clip and the version recorded on the HTC One in the two YouTube clips below.
The original Crowded House recording…
And the same clip recorded with the HTC One's video camera
BlinkFeed replaces the standard Android homescreen, and shows you news feeds and social networks in chronological order
It looks like the BlinkFeed needs to be specifically supported by the corresponding news outlet or website, so it remains to be seen whether overstretched publishers will be keen to support yet another platform. We found BlinkFeed more useful for keeping an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, though, and often used Twitter links to find news stories anyway.
BlinkFeed is a clever idea which is in tune with how many people actually use their smartphones; to keep an eye on what's happening in the world and among people they know. Of course, if you prefer to use your Android smartphone to check your calendar widget at a glance on your homescreen before opening your email, you will most likely hate it.
The app tray is a smooth-scrolling lovely bit of design
The standard Android homescreen isn't completely dead and gone, though. Swiping right from the BlinkFeed takes you to a standard Android homescreen with space for the usual apps and widgets, and you can add up to three more screens if you need more room.
Most importantly, you can set a standard Android home screen as your default screen (the one that appears when you unlock the handset). BlinkFeed is still there, sitting to the left of the default screen, while your other home screens are off to the right.
Meanwhile, pressing the icon in the middle of the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen takes you to the app tray, which is rather lovingly designed; we like the way it scrolls smoothly through pages of icons rather than continuously, as this makes it easier to keep track of where you are.
MUSO CORNER
HTC has made a big deal about music playback ever since it first stuck a Beats by Dr. Dre logo on one of its phones, and the One is no exception. It has what HTC calls BoomSound – a pair of stereo speakers at the top and bottom of the phone - or left and right when watching video in landscape orientation.
Amazingly, these speakers sound reasonably good. It's the best sound quality we've ever heard from a phone, but the bar is set pretty low. The speakers are loud and produce audio with some definition, but the sound is certainly harsh with a definite high-end emphasis, but that's to be expected from speakers this size. We're also not convinced that putting loud speakers in a phone is a great idea, as most bus journeys we take are hellish enough as it is.
The One also has built-in twin microphones, which HTC says are designed for recording gigs. We didn't have any upcoming gigs during our time with the phone, so we decided to simulate one instead. We played back a Crowded House gig from YouTube on our PC with our speakers turned up high, and recorded the result on the HTC One.
When we played back the recording and compared it to the original, the concert sounded clear with little distortion, but there was a marked lack of bass compared to the original. You can compare the original video clip and the version recorded on the HTC One in the two YouTube clips below.
The original Crowded House recording…
And the same clip recorded with the HTC One's video camera
HTC has been hard at work redesigning Sense once more, and the HTC One is the first phone to bear the fruits of that labour. Sense 5 (as it's colloquially, if not officially, called) is another step forward in the Android overlay story, but we think this is the biggest yet from HTC.
We're talking a whole new button layout, a new grid for the menu icons, geometric patterns replacing the over-complicated widgets of old; in short, it's simple, stark and we really like it.
There's no doubt that it's still as heavy on the old processor as ever - a quick trip to the battery usage settings will confirm that - but what HTC has done is bring the notion of Android (4.1.2, if you're interested, which you totally are, you naughty thing) to a wider audience by, well, making it less Android-y.
The option to add widgets and such has been brushed to the side to some degree, with BlinkFeed taking centre stage (and you can read our bigger rundown of BlinkFeed on its own, separate, section). Instead of the home button taking you to your collection of homescreens, BlinkFeed will pop up, in all its Windows Phone-like glory.
However, it only takes a swipe to the right to access the homescreens as you know them from Android of old, although you get a miserly five home screens to customise. And customising them isn't easy - you either have to long press on the home screen and choose the apps that way, or drag them from the menu via the shortcut icon at the top. More convoluted than on other Android phones, that's for sure.
But enough of that - how does the interface work under the finger? In short, blazingly well, as you'd expect from a phone rocking a quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. Add to that 2GB of RAM and you've got a phone that would be most fanatics' dream, and it really lives up to the promise.
From opening and closing apps to browsing multiple tabs on the internet, there's nothing that can slow down the HTC One, and you'll really appreciate that in day to day life.
You can also choose from a number of lockscreen types, be it productivity for emails, calendar entries or messages - and a swipe upwards while holding said missive will launch it directly too.
It's a little sad that we've lost the HTC ring that we grew to love so quickly, but the geometric simplicity of Sense 5 is enough to calm the urges to run back to a Sensation.
You can select a range of pictures to wander past your eyes, have some tunes on offer or simply have no lockscreen at all if you're convinced nobody is in there trying to get at all your precious smartphone data stored on the HTC One - and we're fans of the latter, as lockscreens are annoying if you have no need for them.
Once you're in and past BlinkFeed you can select whether to stick with the frankly under-selling 3x4 grid of apps ('People now want simplicity in an Android phone' say HTC rather unconvincingly.) If you want to have the right amount of apps, edit that instantly to show 20 on the screen at once, and you can order them in a number of ways too.
Widgets aren't locked away in the menu like on many other Android phones either, as all it takes is a long-press on any home screen and you're greeted with all the widgets on offer - which is admittedly rather few.
The dock at the bottom of the phone pervades through the homescreen and menu options, which means you can always launch the camera or internet browser from anywhere on the main screens - you can customise this with a long press, so if you only want the entire range of Angry Birds games at your fingertips, you can make that happen.
It's not obvious how this works if you want to change it - you'll have to be in the apps menu to do so. While you're there, you can also hide apps too, which is neat if you're stuck with a phone rammed with bloatware.
Compared to something like the Samsung Galaxy S3 the HTC One is a little under-powered when it comes to the interface, but where Samsung is all about the functionality HTC is about style and minimalism.
It doesn't chuck power options, connectivity settings and brightness adjustment in the notification bar (although we wish the option was there) so when you pull down to look at a message, you do just that.
It's annoying that the power saver option DOES live there, but then again given the battery performance of the HTC One, that's probably not a bad thing.
The interface on the HTC One is simple - really simple. It doesn't have a huge amount of peeking to see messages (BlackBerry, take note) nor does it do much more than telling you the time or the weather. But it does all this in a way that makes you feel like you're never missing anything and getting a stylish experience to boot that isn't like anything else on the market.
The closest we can equate it to is the LG Prada 3.0 phone's interface - and given that was designed by a fashion house, we'll call that pretty high praise indeed, if we don't say so ourselves.
HTC One : Specification
Details | |
|---|---|
| Part Code | 99HTT168-00 |
| Review Date | 19 Mar 2013 |
| Price | £504 |
| Rating |  |
| Award | Ultimate |
Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Main display size | 4.7in |
| Native resolution | 1,920x1,080 |
| CCD effective megapixels | 4.1-megapixel |
| GPS |  |
| Internal memory | 32768MB |
| Memory card support | none |
| Memory card included | 0MB |
| Operating frequencies | GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 850/900/1900/2100, LTE 800/1800/2600 |
| Wireless data | LTE |
| Size | 137x68x9mm |
| Weight | 143g |
Features | |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Android 4.1 (JellyBean) |
| Microsoft Office compatibility | Word, Excel, PowerPoint |
| FM Radio | |
| Accessories | headphones, data cable, charger |
| Talk time | N/A |
| Standby time | N/A |
Buying Information | |
|---|---|
| SIM-free price | £504 |
| Price on contract | 69 |
| SIM-free supplier | www.handtec.co.uk |
| Contract/prepay supplier | www.three.co.uk |
| Details | www.htc.com |
HTC One : Price
HTC One release date: 29 March 2013
HTC One price: £519.99
HTC One price: £519.99
Post a Comment