HTC One — Review

It’s crunch time for HTC. After a disastrous 2011 in which they released a boatload of devices that were pretty much the same phone but a bit less dodgy, they decided to focus on one ‘hero device’ that would carry their brand. That device was the HTC One X, and to HTC’s credit it was actually a very good phone – better, some would say, than the Galaxy S3. Unfortunately for HTC though, a combination of a tarnished brand image from the previous year, an underwhelming marketing campaign and HTC’s baffling decision to then muddy their own waters with the One S, One V, One SV and One X+ meant that Samsung’s flagship went on to become the ruler of the roost in 2012. The Taiwanese manufacturer finds itself in a situation where they’re almost down to their last roll of the dice, and CEO Peter Chou has confirmed the gravity of the situation by claiming that he will step down from his position should the HTC One not meet the company’s goals. This time around, HTC have actually committed to a single hero device, and their all-in approach to the One shows in pretty much every aspect of the phone, from its industrial design to truly unique features such as its camera hardware and software and Boomsound audio. Without any further ado, let’s take a closer look at the HTC One.

Pros Top notch design and build quality Excellent camera and photo editing features BoomSound dual front speakers are a huge plus Snappy performance with no lag HTC Zoe changes the way you capture and share moments

Cons Capacitative buttons and button layout leave much to be desired Ships with Android 4.1.2, which sucks once you’ve experienced 4.2 Lack of quick/notification toggles

Light/proximity sensors & front-facing camera Baby got back Volume rocker Charging port and microphone Power button/IR blaster and headphone jack

Build Quality and Hardware HTC have spared no expense or effort in the manufacturing process for the One. The phone is crafted out of a single block of aluminium (a process which reportedly takes 220 minutes for each phone), with a curved back that makes it fit nicely in the hand. Unfortunately I wasn’t given the liberty to perform a drop test on our review unit, but it certainly feels like a solid device, and has that ‘premium feel’ that people seem to care so much about. There is a downside to having so much metal, though, as it does feel a little bit slippery compared to the plastic that most of us are accustomed to. While the aluminium unibody is naturally resistant to fingerprints and smudges, there is the danger of increased visibility when it comes to scuffs and scratches. Props must be given to HTC for departing from the tired design aesthetic that they had tried to stick with a few too many years, and with the One they’ve truly come up with a bold and unique design that has proven to be an instant eye-catcher when pulled out in front of friends and strangers alike. The power button, though a little too recessed into the phone’s body for my liking, is ingeniously integrated into the IR blaster that allows you to control your TV and various living room media devices. This obviously had a big influence on their decision to place the power button at top-left, with the trade-off being that it’s awkward to reach when using the phone one-handed (both left and right). The brushed metal volume rocker on the right side of the device fits in nicely with the design of the phone, but also sits quite flat and can take a little effort to find. The headphone jack is situated at top of the phone, which makes it uncomfortable to put into your pocket upside-down, but that’s mostly a matter of personal preference. HTC have finally budged on their insistence upon placing the charging port on the side of their phones, though device manufacturers still can’t seem to agree on which way the micro USB port should face (the One’s is ‘wide side up’, the opposite of the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4, but the same as the Nexus 7. I know, right?) A notifcation LED is hidden in one of the small holes that make up the top speaker grille, letting you know when you have missed messages, calls or e-mails. Unfortunately the light is quite small and not the kind of thing you’d see out of the corner of your eye, which kind of defeats the purpose of it. Buttons The buttons get their own separate heading because they’re one of the few cons I could find on the HTC One. Firstly they’re capacitative rather than on-screen, meaning they don’t conform with Android standards. But before you go and accuse me of being some kind of stock purist, there’s much more to it than that. Firstly, the buttons have a rather small touch target, making them seem unresponsive and difficult to press. Secondly, there are only two of them: back and home. Because of the presence of the dual front speakers and subsequent shortage of real estate, there was a clear choice to be made: keep the task switcher button or sacrifice it to stick the HTC logo at front and centre. HTC went with the latter, which is completely understandable from a branding point of view, but the user experience suffers as a result. The home button is shifted to the right side of the device, which makes no sense regardless of which way you look at it. When it comes to trying to access the task switcher, new users will be completely lost, while seasoned Android users will instinctively long-press the home button, but doing so brings up Google Now. The task switcher is accessed by double-tapping the home button, which is completely unintuitive and annoying because of the difficulty in pressing the buttons. Display The HTC One rocks a 4.7″ Super-LCD 3 display at 1920×1080 resolution, giving it a pixel density of 468ppi (for reference, the iPhone 5’s screen is 326ppi). The screen is just gorgeous, with great colour reproduction that gives vibrancy without having to be over-saturated like Samsung’s AMOLED displays. The viewing angles are also very impressive. If you try to rotate the screen away from yourself to make the viewing angle smaller, you’ll end up looking at the side of the phone before the screen fades out. The auto brightness on the HTC One works really well too. I never found myself having to adjust the brightness manually because it was too dim or bright, which hasn’t been my experience with many other phones. You’ll end up looking at the side of the phone before the screen fades out. Video and text are both delightful on the One, and I had no qualms about watching movies or reading eBooks on long train rides. In short, the display on the HTC One is better than any you’ll find on the market today, and I don’t expect that to change even when the Galaxy S 4 hits shelves. Audio Every now and then, a company does something that makes you think ‘why hasn’t it always been like this?’ The dual front-facing speakers on the HTC One (cheesily named BoomSound™) fit into that category. Once you experience the audio on the One, you’ll feel like a schmuck for all the years you spent cupping your hand around the back of your other phones. See below for a quick comparison with the Nexus 4: