The HTC One: A Remarkable Device, Anand’s mini Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 21, 2013 4:49 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- HTC One
Final Words and the Galaxy S 4 Comparison
The One is without a doubt the best Android smartphone I’ve ever used. HTC’s build quality and materials choices have been steadily improving over the past couple of years and I honestly don’t know a more fitting name for its latest flagship other than the One - it’s the one to get. Even iPhone users looking for something different might be tempted by the One.
For me it’s the camera performance and the highlights reel that really seal the deal. The fact that the One is an excellent looking device built out of top notch materials is just icing on the cake.
The rest of the spec list is equally fitting. I’m glad to see 802.11ac make the list. The great speakers and display are both useful and impressive.
Sense took a real step towards subtlety with 5.0, and it’s finally at a point where I don’t really mind the customizations. My preference is still for vanilla Android, but the latest iteration of Sense is far closer than it has ever been. The real trick is ensuring timely updates with major Android releases. If you’re an infrequent smartphone upgrader, the Nexus line is still the best option there.
Despite how well the One does in the build quality, looks and camera departments, HTC has an uphill battle ahead of itself. Samsung is clearly the dominating incumbent in the Android space, and it has the luxury of an order of magnitude higher quarterly revenues to support its smartphone business. If there ever was a David v Goliath race in the smartphone space, it would be between HTC and Samsung.
Zoe and the highlights reel are great features that need marketing to demonstrate and spread their word. The litany of new camera and interaction features that accompany the Galaxy S 4 will likely translate very well to cleverly crafted TV ads. I’d argue that HTC’s camera features (great low light performance, highlights reel) are more useful to me personally, but Samsung’s features (touchless scrolling, dual camera, smart pause) are easier sells to the mainstream smartphone market. Similarly, design and materials choices are obvious advantages for the One, but it’s easier to market a thinner and lighter phone.
Ultimately, HTC appears to have built a great phone for enthusiasts and one that can be marketed, with some effort, to the mainstream. Samsung, by comparison, seems to have its targets set squarely at the mainstream and it has the features and the marketing budget to really capture the attention of that audience. You can argue about the merits of features like the ability to automatically pause video based on whether or not you’re looking at it - personally I’d take better camera performance - but that’s a much easier feature to explain in a TV commercial than why larger pixels matter.
The One is expected to be widely available beginning next month.
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CeriseCogburn - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
Class 4 is fast enough actually. Just jayspew doesn't really know anything.eebrah - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - link
Why trust that " $COMPANY are not Apple, they probably won't do $BAD_THING " when you can guarantee that they won't fuck you over by getting some features out of the box? say expandable storage and removable battery?phillyry - Sunday, March 24, 2013 - link
Pylon757+1
jayseeks - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
I've never met anyone who actually purchased one of those battery packs on their own. 9 out of 10 people with those battery packs likely purchased it on a company account.CeriseCogburn - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
You don't know anyone basement dweller, or anything. Pure trollboy.SirSuperman - Thursday, March 21, 2013 - link
A USB battery pack, which usually requires you to carry a cable around and attach it to your phone and then use your phone with something hanging off it while charging is easier than simply slipping in a battery and instantly returning to a full charge?Pylon757 - Thursday, March 21, 2013 - link
You forgot the part about having to turn the phone off and on.acky2lum - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
I still don't get why ppl can't get off the grid for that 30 seconds or less. Are you saying your usb battery pack can instantly charge your battery to a full charge within that 30 seconds?Johnmcl7 - Thursday, March 21, 2013 - link
"When I had phones with removable batteries, the only time I ever removed them was to do a hard reset of the phone. Most people don't want to carry around extra batteries, and even if they do, a USB battery pack is easier to carry around than a bare battery."I find USB battery packs a fiddle to use as they're usually a lot larger than a bare battery and they need to remain connected to the phone for quite some time. I take a spare battery when I'm away travelling as it takes a matter of seconds to swap the battery over when the original one dies and then I have a fully functional phone again without having to leave it connected to anything.
Also the other reason I prefer a removable battery is that li-ion batteries don't last forever, they're unlikely to last the two years I expect a phone to last without losing performance if not outright failing and given the reasonably poor batterylife of these devices in the first place that's a prominent issue. Neither my N900 or Galaxy Note's original batteries lasted two years but it wasn't an issue as a couple of minutes later they were up and running with another battery.
"Most people also don't carry around spare memory cards, either. I can understand why someone might be worried about not being able to add additional storage space to a phone that only comes with 8 or even 16GB of storage, but do you really expect the average user to run out of space in a phone that comes with up to 64GB of flash? My desktop PC has only a 64GB SSD right now! Especially in the age of streaming media, memory cards are increasingly unnecessary in smartphones."
With increasingly powerful phones, higher resolution onboard video and increasingly higher resolutions, I disagree - why put up with lower quality video and reduced selection rather than have the option of being able to cheaply add storage. The Note's large vibrant screen is great for watching and showing videos, yes I could delete off the 1080p video files from its own camera and have a much smaller selection of videos but for the small cost of a microSD card I prefer to keep them onboard and take advantage of the screen Plus the price companies charge for storage is usually vastly more than it would cost as a microSD card, the cost difference between a Nexus 8GB and a 16GB over here would be enough to purchase a 64GB micro SD card. It also means the phone can take advantage of increasing flash capacities over its life.
As for streaming as a viable alternative, I also disagree for quite a few reasons. Firstly it may not even be possible either due to reception not being good enough, not allowed to have wireless radios enabled or congestion in the area, secondly data caps are frequently restrictive and third the phone needs a lot more power to stream wirelessly compared to just reading it off internal memory.
Plus there no gains from not having a removable battery or expandable storage with the HTC (aside from for HTC themselves), despite the praise in this article I don't count the metal body as a plus because if it's anything like previous HTC phones and most other metal phones on the market the metal is unlikely to be particularly durable and will easily pick up scratches and chips. There's a lot of complaining about Samsung using plastics but they're light and they're durable, I've seen some original S2's that have been used without a case and dropped a few times yet they've barely a mark on them whereas Sensations from the same time period were looking fairly battered in the same conditions after a few weeks despite the praise for the Sensation's supposed industrial build quality and the cheap build quality of the S2.
John
CeriseCogburn - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
The apple tards suddenly have no media - no music, no movies, no videos, no minutes and minutes of high resolution camera movies - the appletards don't like storage space, they yell at Siri to dial then they pocket their lead weight glass shatterbrick.I guess it was all true - apple users are inherently STUPID...