The HTC One is a smartphone for which a lot of Android and HTC fans were waiting for. Thankfully, there are several websites and authors who have already reviewed this latest fondle slab and the tech industry is buzzing with a lot of reviews.
All the reviewers do agree with one thing: the design of the phone is beautiful and it is one of the best Android phones on the market as of now.
The Body
The major advantage that HTC One has is the full aluminum body. The body is touted to be one of the major benefits of this phone. According to Gareth Beavis of techradar.com, “The HTC One is one of the best-designed phones on the planet. It’s even thinner than its predecessor, the HTC One X and as such slides nicely in the pocket. It’s not light either, weighing more than most of the competition, but rather than feeling overweight, combined with the metallic chassis is oozes a premium build.”
On the other hand, Brent Rose from Gizmodo.com describes the details that lie in the phone.
“On the front side of the device you find the Super LCD 3 screen nestled under Gorilla Glass 2. It’s 1080p (1920×1080 pixels) spread over 4.7-inches, which gives it a heretofore unheard of (in a smart phone, anyway), 468 pixels per inch (PPI), which is excessive bordering on silly. Safe to say, pixels are invisible to the naked eye. The bezels on the sides of the screen are very thin. Above and below the screen are speaker grates to give you actual stereo sound (more on that in a minute). At the top of the phone sits an 88-degree wide angle front-facing camera, so you don’t fill up the frame with your gigantic face when video-chatting. HTC opted to include just two capacitive buttons—Home and Back—though we would have preferred none. The micro USB port on the bottom doubles as an HDMI port (special cable required) for connecting your phone directly to a TV, though you’ll also be able to do this wirelessly via Miracast. Speaking of TV, the power button on top the device doubles as a IR blaster for using your phone as a remote control. All of the hardware buttons are flush (almost too flush) with the phone.”
The Audio Output
The HTC One boasts of dual high powered speakers. These stereo speakers are one of the best among phones and are even better than laptops and notebook computers.
JR Raphael from Computerworld.com says:
“The screen is flanked top and bottom by dual front-facing stereo speakers that deliver the best audio I’ve ever heard from a smart phone. Music played through the one sounds full and clear and lacks the tinny, muted quality so many smart phone speakers possess. And it’s loud, too: While the phone obviously couldn’t replace a full stereo system, it sounds better than most laptop speakers and could easily suffice for listening to tunes at your desk or in your living room with friends.
A notification LED is hidden within the top speaker grille; it lights up different colors to alert you of events like missed calls and new voicemails. You can customize how and when the LED illuminates with the aid of a third-party application called Light Flow.”
Cameras
The Taiwanese manufacturer has chosen to go with fewer but larger mega pixels. It says that this will improve the real world results.
“The HTC One’s camera uses 4 megapixels — “UltraPixels,” as HTC calls them. According to HTC, that configuration allows for 300% more light to be captured than what you’d get with a typical 13-megapixel smart phone shooter.
The One features a bunch of other fancy-sounding camera technology, like a dedicated image processing chip, an f/2.0 aperture and a high-frequency optical image stabilization system. In my real-world tests of the device, all that stuff added up to pretty solid performance.
The One’s most impressive images seem to be those captured in low-light environments: I found the One could take sharp-looking images in dimly lit areas where higher megapixel smart phones failed. At times, the One even produced lighter and more detailed images than I could see with my own eyes — and that was without the use of a flash.”
The Top Features
When it comes to the features of the HTC One, blink feed is something that has been discussed the most about this phone by almost all reviewers. It is a big visual feed of stories that serves stories on the phone display. According to Pete Pachal of Mashable, “The marquee feature on the HTC One is BlinkFeed. Once you set it up, it’ll show you updates — basically photos, headlines and avatars — from any social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Fickr, etc.), apps (such as the Calendar and TV apps) and partner publications (including Reuters and The Huffington Post).
If that sounds a lot like Flipboard, you’re not far off. BlinkFeed is designed to give you “snack-size” content that you actually care about from the moment you unlock your phone. In practice, it’s not quite as elegant as Flip board, although the scrolling animation is nice and inviting.”
There is more that Brent Rose from gizmodo adds about the changes to the features of this phone.
“There are other changes in Sense 5.0, too, like a more customizable lock screen, an overhaul of the classic HTC clock/weather widget, and a new layout in the app drawer. Visually speaking, it’s cleaner, more minimalist, and more attractive than the old Sense, but it doesn’t always work the way you want it to.”
Performance
The performance of HTC One is top notch and reviewers reach a consensus on this collectively.
According to Brad Molen of Engadget.
Outside of that stunning design, the star of the show is the One’s Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T) chipset, which pairs a 1.7GHz quad-core CPU with an Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB RAM. This particular piece of silicon is the next logical step up from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064). The CPU features Krait 300 — a bump from the S4 Pro’s Krait 200, which results in a 15 percent improvement in instructions per clock (IPC) and a “speed-enhanced” Adreno 320 GPU. The 600 is also built using a 28nm process, just like the S4 Pro, and offers support for LPDDR3 — even though the One uses LPDDR2 specifically — and 802.11ac support on the Wi-Fi side (in addition to the standard suite of a/b/g/n). This is the same chipset used in the LG Optimus G Pro and ASUS PadFone Infinity, and doubtless countless more over the next few months.“
He also adds “It runs buttery smooth and the screen is quite responsive. We strained our eyes looking for any sort of lag with no success and the graphics in games like Shadowgun, Asphalt 7, Real Racing 3 and Riptide are as quick and detailed as we’ve come to expect with high-performance phones, if not just a little bit more so.“
The bottom Line
JR Raphael from computerworld.com sums it up well by saying:
“The HTC One is one of the best made smart phones you can buy today. The phone has high-quality hardware and a beautiful, premium build. It has a stunning 1080p display, great-sounding stereo speakers, and a camera with outstanding low-light capabilities and interesting (if somewhat overwhelming) software features. If all of that’s not enough, it’s also one of the fastest devices around, with top-notch performance that won’t let you down.”
More over Nathan Olivarez-Giles, Wired: “Still, the One is largely a delight, especially if you’re the demanding sort when it comes to hardware finish and raw performance. If you’re looking for a new Android phone for use on a 4G LTE network, it would be a mistake if you didn’t consider it.”
