REVIEW / PREVIEW GADGET
Review & Preview about Gadget, Smartphone, Tablet, Phablet, Hardware PC and Notebook.
Chitika
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Micromax Funbook P600 7-Inch Tablet Announced
Micromax added a new 7-inch tablet device Micromax Funbook P600 to
its Funbook tablet lineup recently. It has nearly similar feature that
we saw earlier in Micromax Funbook Talk P350 that launched last year.
However, the Android powered Micromax Funbook P600 is more powerful than
Micromax Funbook Talk P350 in hardware segment.
I9300XXUFMB3 – Galaxy S III Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean LEAKED firmware
We
of SamMobile would like to give you the latest I9300XXUFMB3 – Android
4.2.1 Jelly Bean test firmware for the Galaxy S III. Big Thanks to forum
member Saturn from XDA-Developers who made this possible by giving us the dump files from his device.
Android 4.2.1 is still under testing phase by Samsung and they will
release the official final Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean update for the
Galaxy S III after the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S IV. We wanted to
give Samsung’s hardcore fans a sneak preview of what Samsung is up to in
their dev center.
New enhancements in I9300XXUFMB3 FW:
- Android 4.2.1 – JOP40D
- Improved Ripple effect on Lockscreen
- New Android 4.2.1 Lockscreen with widgets
- Daydream (Settings>Display)
- New Additions in Notification Center
- Notifications are more actionable
- Voice Command (Let’s you control various parts of the phone using voice commands)
- Found more? Tell us about them in the comments below!
WARNINGS:
We have repackaged this firmware into an ODIN Flashable firmware
ourselves from the dump files we took from Saturn’s device. This
firmware will increase your binary counter, if you don’t know what this
means then don’t flash this firmware. This Firmware will also change
your device status to Modified. This firmware doesn’t contain any Modem
so the Modem you are using before flashing this firmware will
remain. This is a PRE-RELEASE version so not official from KIES. As this
is a PRE-RELEASE firmware some minor bugs are to expect.
Firmware Details
Android Version: 4.2.1 – JOP40D (Jelly Bean)
PDA: I9300XXUFMB3
CSC: I9300OJKFMB3
MODEM: N/A
Region: Middle East
Carrier: Unbranded
Changelist: 171637
Build Date: 19th February 2013
Download: I9300XXUFMB3_I9300OJKFMB3_ILO.zip
Flashing Instructions:
- Unzip the file
- Open Odin 3.04 (already included in the firmware package)
- Restart phone in download mode (Press and hold Home + Power + Volume down buttons)
- Connect phone and wait until you get a blue sign in Odin
- Add I9300XXUFMB3_I9300OJKFMB3_HOME.tar.md5 to PDA
- Make sure re-partition is NOT ticked
- Start flash, sit back and wait a few minutes.
- If you encounter any issues with the firmware (Any FC, Bootloop etc)
- Boot into recovery mode (Home+power+vol up)
- Choose to wipe/factory reset. (THIS WILL ERASE ALL OF YOUR DATA INCLUDING YOUR INTERNAL SD CARD!)
- Then choose reboot and you should be good to go!
Friday, April 5, 2013
Disgo 9000 Android tablet review
Price: £150
Tablets are
like most objects of desire -- you can pay a lot for them, or you
can get them relatively cheap, but ultimately you get what you pay
for. But is that the case with the Disgo 9000, the latest budget
tablet from the one-time flash memory manufacturer?
It's on sale now for around £150.Design
It's about £30 cheaper than the flagship
9104 and shares a few of its features, not least the 9.7-inch
screen that delivers 1,024x768 pixel resolution, which equates to
131 pixels-per-inch. It's HD, just about, but doesn't look quite as
sharp as some of its rivals, though it's sensitive enough not to
need much pressing and poking.
It doesn't have the same £100 software package as the 9104, so
there's no preloaded Office Suite or games, but the main compromise
has been made with the processor.
Features and performance
While the single core 1GHz processor (down from the 9104's 1.2GHz)
is backed by a full 1GB of RAM, it's noticeably lacking in the
speed department. Starting up from sleep mode takes a few seconds
and it never seems to be in a rush to open any apps.
Processing speed isn't an area we felt the 9104 could afford to
lose much ground on, but the 9000 slows things down still further.
Our AnTuTu benchmark test delivered a result of 3,026, which puts
it in line with low- to mid-range smartphones, not full-size
tablets.
It's running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich so it's not quite
the full Jelly Bean, but it's close. Like previous Disgo models,
there's no Google Play when you first switch it on. Licensing
issues mean that's it's not officially allowed to carry it, though
there are a few thousand apps available from Disgo Apps, the
SlideMe Market and the Amazon AppStore.
There is a workaround from wildestpixel.co.uk however,
where you can sideload a program from your computer that gets you
access to Google Play. We tried it and it worked without a hitch --
worth considering if you're suffering from app envy.
Extras are of course not of the first water. The two-megapixel
camera barely passes muster for emergency snaps -- it would have
been more useful on the front for video calls rather than the
grainy 0.3-megapixel camera Disgo actually used.
There's 8GB of memory on board (half what you get with the 9104)
but you can add another 32GB via microSD card, which is something
you still don't get on many tablets.
Conclusion The Disgo 900 is far from the top of the range, and is a disappointment in terms of performance with its underpowered processor. However, the screen's not bad and it's built pretty solidly, so as a low-cost family tool or additional computer, it might just be worth the few shekels. But considering the Nexus 7 from Asus is around the same price, delivering a superior screen and much, much faster performance, it's not quite the bargain it first appears.
Specifications
- Software : Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich
- Processor : Single core 1.0GHz Cortex A8
- Memory slot : Yes
- Display : 9.7in, 1024x768 pixels
- Connectivity : Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth
- Ports : Mini USB power/sync, 3.5mm headphone jack, HDMI
- Camera : 2 megapixel camera, 0.3 megapixel front-facingcamera
- Radio : No
- Battery : Lithium Ion 7000mAh
- Size : 194x127x11mm
- Weight : 310g
Lenovo ThinkPad Twist S230u review
Price: £1,060
Hybrid tablets try to bridge the gap between the convenience of a tablet and the capability of a laptop, and they've been becoming more popular since the arrival of touchscreen-optimised Windows 8. The Lenovo ThinkPad Twist doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it makes it turn rather well…
Hybrid tablets try to bridge the gap between the convenience of a tablet and the capability of a laptop, and they've been becoming more popular since the arrival of touchscreen-optimised Windows 8. The Lenovo ThinkPad Twist doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it makes it turn rather well…
The Lenovo ThinkPad Twist is on sale now from £850 for the basic
Intel Core i5 model with 500GB hard drive, rising to our £1,060
test model, which features an i7 processor and 128GB SSD drive.
Design
Let's get one thing straight, the ThinkPad Twist is essentially an ultrabook, but with one cool party trick. At 1.5kg it's a fair weight for a ultrabook, but as a tablet it'll soon start to wear you down.
The design and colour scheme, with its flashes of bright red on
rubberised black plastic, with a chrome band running around the
tablet part, doesn't give the impression of an upmarket device --
it's more Fisher Price than cutting edge. Fortunately the keyboard
feels better than it looks, with nicely springy keys whose slightly
concave shape invites your fingers to caress them, and responds
with a good level of travel and responsiveness.
The bright red Trackpoint button in the middle seems a bit
superfluous, with its accompanying red-striped mouse buttons,
especially since there's a perfectly good trackpad beneath it.
Features and performance
The 12.5-inch touchdisplay sits behind protective Gorilla Glass and
delivers a resolution of 1,366x768, not the full HD shilling
perhaps, but not bad at all. Full-fat 64-bit Windows 8 looks good
and the screen feels sensitive enough to make using it a breeze.
Above it sits a
webcam that can handle 720p video -- perfectly fine for
Skyping.
So far so laptop, but the Twist does have one pretty good party
trick up its sleeve: the screen is mounted on a single hinge, which
itself is mounted on a little rotating plate. Simply spin the
display around and lay it flat and hey presto, you've got yourself
a rather heavy tablet with a
display that shifts its orientation to match whatever way you're
holding it.
You can also arrange it in "tent" mode, so it stands like an
upturned V for viewing movies -- press a button on the side and the
display will automatically reorientate to suit.
The 1.7GHz dual-core processor is backed by 8GB RAM and does a
decent enough job of the performance chores. Ours came with a 128GB
solid state drive though you can also get it with a slower 500GB
hard drive and i5 processor for a couple of hundred quid less.
In benchmarking tests it delivered a PC Mark of 4,542 and during play of Portal it regularly managed frame rates around the 180fps mark, which is okay, but not outstanding. It encoded our test 11-minute move for iTunes in two minutes and 33 seconds, which again isn't bad, but not among the best.
Conclusion
The ThinkPad Twist ditches the usual ultrabook style in
favour of robust practicality. The screen resolution may be so-so
but there are no complaints about its sensitivity and the
responsive keyboard feels great too. The twist option is a tried
and tested form factor for switching between laptop and tablet and
works perfectly fine, as well as giving the impression that it can
keep doing so for years to come.
It's not a bargain, and its weight means you're unlikely to
carry it around as a tablet for long, but if you're in the market
for a few-frills, do-everything, portable computer, it's certainly
worth a look.
Specifications
- Software : Windows 8 64-bit
- Processor : 1.7Ghz dual-core Intel Core i7-3517U
- Memory : 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM
- Display : 12.5in 1,366x768 pixels
- Hard Drive : 128GB SSD
- Graphics : Intel HD Graphics 4000
- Webcam : 720p HD
- Wireless : Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.0
- Ports : RJ-45 (Ethernet), 2x USB 3.0, 1x HDMI, 1x Display Port, 1xKensington Lock, headphone/microphone jack, power connector,multi-card
- : reader, mini-card adapter
- Blu-ray player : No
- Size : 313x236x20mm
- Weight : 1.5kg
Acer Iconia W510 review
Price: £500
Design
The problem is that the tablet doesn't balance well with the keyboard, so it tends to keel over all too easily if you have it set up on a table or desktop. The keys are a little on the small side, and the touchpad buttons are marked by a thin line, but they're so slim that it's easy to miss them, leading to the cursor wandering off at regular opportunities.
Features and performance
Conclusion
Acer's Iconia W510 works just fine as a standalone Windows
8 tablet, but comes with a slimline keyboard with secure
docking system for those times when you need a bit more -- and
that's where the problems start.
It's on sale now for around £500.Design
It's a good-looking piece of work, with its silvery aluminium
livery (not real though, it's plastic, which helps keep the weight
down) and neatly curving edges. The tablet weighs a perfectly
acceptable 570g on its own (well below the lightest
iPad 2's 652g) and it's got a pretty good line-up of
connections, including micro USB (there's a full-size one on the
accompanying keyboard), micro HDMI, microSD memory card slot and
3.5mm headphone jack. There's also an eight-megapixel camera with
LED flash on the back and a two-megapixel version on the front for
video calls -- both can record 1080p video.
The 10.1-inch "CineCrystal" display is protected by Gorilla
Glass and offers a not-quite-full-HD resolution of 1,366x768
pixels, around 157 pixels-per-inch, which still looks decently
sharp and detailed. It supports five-point touch rather than the
ten-point which is becoming increasingly common -- a problem for
piano apps perhaps, but not too much of an issue in general
use.
The accompanying keyboard is extremely slim too, or at least it
would be if it wasn't for the chunky dock that twists to
accommodate the tablet. It looks a
bit like a Mothercare accessory but at least it's practical -- the
dock clips in neatly and feels very secure, whatever angle you set
it to, with a release switch for when you need to cut it loose.
The problem is that the tablet doesn't balance well with the keyboard, so it tends to keel over all too easily if you have it set up on a table or desktop. The keys are a little on the small side, and the touchpad buttons are marked by a thin line, but they're so slim that it's easy to miss them, leading to the cursor wandering off at regular opportunities.
Features and performance
It's running the full-fat Windows 8 so you can add pretty much any
software you like, without having to rely on the app store. As
we've said elsewhere there's a bit of a learning curve involved
with the touch-centric Windows 8 interface (
no Start button, unfamiliar menus), but once you get the hang
of swiping to access functions and menus it's a pretty good
interface.
That's not a problem, but the 1.5GHz dual core processor is. On
paper, it should be a perfectly fine workhorse, but in practice we
found it unforgivably slow in operation. Loading programs seemed to
take forever, even browsing was an unattractively sedate
experience. In benchmarking tests it struggled to get a PC Mark of
1,439 -- which makes it the lowest ranking tablet we've ever
tested. In actual performance terms, it did no better, taking
over 13 minutess to encode our test 11-minute movie for iTunes (two
or three minutes is the norm) and play of
Portal was unforgivably sluggish, with frankly
pathetic frame rates of just 10fps.
However, the sluggish processor probably played its part in
helping the battery keep going long after many others would have
bitten the dust --you'll easily get more than a day's solid use out
of it.
Conclusion
The Acer Iconia W510 is a good-looking tablet with a securely
fastening dock on the accompanying keyboard that gives you instant
laptop capability. It has a good array of ports and full-fat
Windows 8 but it's let down badly by its underpowered processor
which just about copes with light tablet duties, but struggles
severely when it has to deal with standard laptop drills.
Specifications
- CPU : 1.5GHz dual core Intel Atom Z2760
- Operating system : Windows 8 64-bit
- Memory : 2GB RAM, 32GB Flash storage
- Display : 10.1in Active Matrix TFT Colour LCD
- Audio/visual : Microphone,
- Wireless : Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC
- Ports : 1x micro USB 3.0, 1x micro HDMI; headphone jack, multi-cardreader
- Battery : 3540mAh
- Size : 259x168x19mm
- Weight : 1.26kg (tablet and keyboard)
BlackBerry 10 OS review
The
BlackBerry 10 operating system -- widely seen as the
company-no-longer-known-as RIM's last chance to turn its sliding
fortunes around and keep itself in the top tier of smartphone
manufacturers.
The good news is that it's slick, easy to use, and looks
distinctly different from any of its rivals. The bad news is that
if you're not already a BlackBerry user, there may not be enough to
entice you to step across the floor and go BB. True, there are some
legitimate appeals for business, particularly relating to security,
but with some firms allegedly holding back on committing to BB just
in case the firm goes belly up mid-contract, there's clearly still
quite a bit of convincing and reassuring to do.
Swipe city
So what do you get? Well, based on the full touchscreen Z10 (the Qwerty keyboard-packing Q10 should be with us in the next few weeks), it's a ground-up rebuild, stepping cleanly away from past incarnations to deliver something very new. New is a relative term here though. It might not look much like past BlackBerrys, but it clearly owes something to iOS's neatly structured rows of icons, rather than Android's jumble of shortcuts and widgets.
So what do you get? Well, based on the full touchscreen Z10 (the Qwerty keyboard-packing Q10 should be with us in the next few weeks), it's a ground-up rebuild, stepping cleanly away from past incarnations to deliver something very new. New is a relative term here though. It might not look much like past BlackBerrys, but it clearly owes something to iOS's neatly structured rows of icons, rather than Android's jumble of shortcuts and widgets.
That's no bad thing in itself, but it's the swipe-based
interface that marks it out as something else. BB refers to the
system as "Flow", with the idea being that you flow between apps
and pages, without hard back or home buttons to disturb the
smoothness of the user experience.
You open the lock page by swiping up from the bottom of the
screen, and can then brush right to left to reveal several pages of
icons. When you want to come out of an app you slide up from the
bottom again, and the app shrinks to an "Active Frame" (it'll show
up to eight, four to a page) which you can then either close, or
keep running so they're handy for later.
At the bottom of the screen when you're not in an app are three
shortcuts, similar to the later Android layout, but this time it's
phone, search and camera. There are some nice animated effects as
one page of apps fades into the next as you scroll, which isn't
terribly practical, but it does help it to look like a
sophisticated, well thought out interface. Swiping down when you're
within an app often gives you access to more menus or additional
info. Counterintuitively, scrolling up when you're in the camera
app won't switch it off -- you'll simply take a picture. To exit
the camera you'll need to swipe from the left -- it's an unusual
lapse in consistency that betrays just how new this system is.
It's all quite a leap from standard smartphone behaviour, and
there's definitely a learning curve to get used to swiping in
general, as well as its various subtleties. For instance, swiping
only halfway up while you're in an app reduces the screen, and
gives you a "Peek" at any messages you have waiting. You can then
scroll right to instantly access your messages via the BlackBerry
Hub. When you're finished you simply swipe to the left to access
the app you were just in. Neat. Once you've got the hang of it, it
quickly starts to feel very natural, helped by the fact that it's
very smooth, with no sign of lag or jerkiness. We can expect to see
at least some of this functionality appropriated by BB's rivals in
the not too distant future.
BlackBerry Hub
Swiping left from the home screen takes you to the BlackBerry Hub, from which you can check and update your emails, texts, BBMs and social network. It's a neat solution that only requires you to enter your various account details to keep you posted.
Swiping left from the home screen takes you to the BlackBerry Hub, from which you can check and update your emails, texts, BBMs and social network. It's a neat solution that only requires you to enter your various account details to keep you posted.
Messages can either be shown all together as a single timeline,
or you can view each of your different sources by pressing the Hub
button at bottom left. Pressing and holding a particular message
also brings up a menu of options from the right, including the
usual reply, forward and delete, but also, flag, file, invite to
meeting and search by sender or subject. Flick down from the top of
the message list and you'll also see today's calendar entries. It's
a very slick system overall, and well designed to save you extra
seconds throughout the working day.
Regular users will be pleased to note that despite a bit of a
facelift, BBM remains intact, though now BBM Video has been added
to BBM Voice to unify all types of communication. All free of
course if you're connected to Wi-Fi, though messages come off your
data allowance if you're not, which soon clocks up if you're using
video
Keyboard, browser and Balance
The keyboard has something new too, with its predictive text that populates the keyboard as you type, with each word next to its respective next letter. When you want to use one, you flick it up to the typing pane and hey presto! Cleverly (and a little spookily) it will also predict new words before you've started typing them, based on what you've already written. Again, there's a learning curve, but it's very intuitive once you've got used to it.
The keyboard has something new too, with its predictive text that populates the keyboard as you type, with each word next to its respective next letter. When you want to use one, you flick it up to the typing pane and hey presto! Cleverly (and a little spookily) it will also predict new words before you've started typing them, based on what you've already written. Again, there's a learning curve, but it's very intuitive once you've got used to it.
The browser is neat and easy to use, with slide-in menus
available to both left and right when you need them. It's very fast
too, and includes a Reader option, that pulls out the text from a
webpage and lays it out in clear, ad and banner-free ebook style
for easier perusal. Flash video capability is on board, even though
the format is on the way out and Adobe has said it won't be doing
any more upgrades -- but at least you shouldn't have any trouble
viewing sites that still use it.
Cascades is BlackBerry's new navigation feature, which helps you
to multitask without having to come out of the application you're
in. So if you're reading a message, you can pull it to the right to
check if any new messages have come in while you've been reading,
then release to flick back to where you were. In the calendar app
you can pull to the right to show a bit of yesterday, or to the
left to get a glimpse of tomorrow.
BlackBerry Balance is the feature that the company hopes will
endear it to business users. This in effect allows you to have two
phones in one, with your "home" details including calls, emails and
web details, kept completely separate from your corporate identity,
which takes its cue from your company's BlackBerry Enterprise
Server and only shows the apps and info that you need for work.
That's a very neat option too, but then if a company already has
mobile device management (MDM) software, the same can be done with
pretty much any type of smartphone -- and in these days of BYOD,
you still need to persuade the punters that a BlackBerry is the
device they really want to use.
Fewer apps
So far, for the most part, so good. But BlackBerry (don't call it App)World is the company's Achilles heel. Apps have the power to make or break the BlackBerry OS, and so far they've been a bit underwhelming. There are currently a little over 70,000 apps on there, which doesn't sound too bad, and it's certainly much more than you're ever likely to use. But with Apple and Google each offering ten times that number, it does seem a bit lacking.
So far, for the most part, so good. But BlackBerry (don't call it App)World is the company's Achilles heel. Apps have the power to make or break the BlackBerry OS, and so far they've been a bit underwhelming. There are currently a little over 70,000 apps on there, which doesn't sound too bad, and it's certainly much more than you're ever likely to use. But with Apple and Google each offering ten times that number, it does seem a bit lacking.
So while there are many of the big boys available from
BlackBerry World, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Angry
Birds, but there are also a few high-profile omissions (so
far), such as Spotify, Pinterest, Temple Run and many
more. New additions are coming all the time, but there is the
danger that BB may be at the back of the queue for any essential
apps of tomorrow. The search options aren't quite as well developed
as its rivals either, with no option to show the best free or
paid-for apps separately.
Conclusion
Was it worth the wait? Yes -- just about. BB10 certainly offers a system that's distinctly different (the swiping) with some of the best elements of both iOS and Android. It's smooth and sophisticated as well as being very practical and easy to use once you get your head around the new way of doing things. It also has some attractive out-of-the-box security options for corporate users.
Was it worth the wait? Yes -- just about. BB10 certainly offers a system that's distinctly different (the swiping) with some of the best elements of both iOS and Android. It's smooth and sophisticated as well as being very practical and easy to use once you get your head around the new way of doing things. It also has some attractive out-of-the-box security options for corporate users.
But whether it succeeds will be a bit of a chicken and egg
exercise -- if enough punters like it, the apps will follow, but if
it can't guarantee the level of flexibility and capability you get
from a well-stocked app store, it's likely to whither on the vine,
which would be a very great shame.
HTC One review
HTC's been bombarding us with a variety of
Ones for the past year, but it's saved the best until now --
following the One C,
One V,
One X and all the others, it's time for the HTC
One, with the highest spec we've ever seen on an HTC
handset.
It's on sale now for around £520.
Design
HTC clearly sees nothing wrong with the aesthetic appeal of the flat black slab, and minimalism is a key factor with the look of the HTC One. Most of the front is taken up by a single pane of Gorilla Glass topped and tailed by a slim plastic band that holds a microphone and loudspeakers, plus a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera.
HTC clearly sees nothing wrong with the aesthetic appeal of the flat black slab, and minimalism is a key factor with the look of the HTC One. Most of the front is taken up by a single pane of Gorilla Glass topped and tailed by a slim plastic band that holds a microphone and loudspeakers, plus a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera.
There's no access to the battery inside the sealed metal casing
and no way to augment the memory via microSD card. Fortunately it
comes with a hefty 32GB or 64GB already on board, which should be
more than enough for most. There's a slot in the side for your
micro SIM card, plus volume and power/sleep buttons, a 3.5mm
headphone jack and microUSB power/sync slot, but that's your
lot.
The metal casing certainly gives it the feel of a premium
product, and a good step or two up the quality scale from the
plasticky features of many other high-end Android handsets like the
Samsung Galaxy S3. But lovely as it is, the matte black surface
on the back -- paint on metal, basically -- seems to be unduly
prone to scuffs and scratches.
Features and performance
The 4.7-inch touchscreen looks gorgeous, with its high resolution of 1,080x1,920 pixels, which equates to a retina-assaulting 468 pixels-per-inch (ppi). That's way ahead of the iPhone 5's 326ppi and just about every other smartphone out there. Still, even though the figures are big, at this level, the law of diminishing returns is very much in evidence, and it's a tough call to say that it actually looks better than the iPhone's display or those of other high-end handsets -- they all look beautifully sharp, with rich contrast and vibrant colours, and although the One looks terrific, it doesn't actually look like the clear leader its specs would suggest.
The 4.7-inch touchscreen looks gorgeous, with its high resolution of 1,080x1,920 pixels, which equates to a retina-assaulting 468 pixels-per-inch (ppi). That's way ahead of the iPhone 5's 326ppi and just about every other smartphone out there. Still, even though the figures are big, at this level, the law of diminishing returns is very much in evidence, and it's a tough call to say that it actually looks better than the iPhone's display or those of other high-end handsets -- they all look beautifully sharp, with rich contrast and vibrant colours, and although the One looks terrific, it doesn't actually look like the clear leader its specs would suggest.
It's fast though. The quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon 600 processor backed by a full 2GB of RAM absolutely
rips through the apps at a lightning pace. Switching between apps
and screens feels as quick as thought, with virtually no delay at
all. It delivered an AntuTu performance benchmark score of 22,420,
the highest we've yet seen from a smartphone, comfortably faster
even than other quad-core powerhouses like the
Sony Xperia Z or the
Google Nexus 4.
Android
It's running Android 4.1 version of Jelly Bean rather than the very latest 4.2, but we're promised an upgrade soon. It looks different from other Jelly Bean handsets though, because this is the first we've seen of version 5 of HTC's justly lauded Sense interface. The UI is lush, and can be a bit processor-heavy, but the One can cope with it and then some. There's just one other home page on the HTC One out of the box, but you can add others as you need them (up to five) and fill them with a variety of shortcuts and widgets.
It's running Android 4.1 version of Jelly Bean rather than the very latest 4.2, but we're promised an upgrade soon. It looks different from other Jelly Bean handsets though, because this is the first we've seen of version 5 of HTC's justly lauded Sense interface. The UI is lush, and can be a bit processor-heavy, but the One can cope with it and then some. There's just one other home page on the HTC One out of the box, but you can add others as you need them (up to five) and fill them with a variety of shortcuts and widgets.
HTC has lost the Android multi-tasking button from the bottom of
the screen. There's just home and back buttons, and for
multi-tasking you'll need to press twice on the home button, or
hold it down to bring up the intuitive Google Now search
feature. You can also double press the HTC logo in the middle to
bring up the shortcuts menu. All well and good, but not very
intuitive -- there's a bit of a learning curve to get the hang of
this phone.
HTC BlinkFeed offers a
Flipboard-type service that pulls together your favourite media
and social networking updates into a magazine-style interface,
which displays in various sized tiles for you to scroll through.
It's a fun way to keep up with what's happening, but the news feeds
are limited -- you can only use the ones that HTC has approved --
and it doesn't really offer any improvements on Flipboard, which is
available for free from Google Play. It's not bad, but weirdly,
you've got no choice in the matter, since you can't take it off or
replace it with something else.
Camera quality
HTC has been putting more effort into its cameras of late and this "UltraPixel" model shows the benefits. It has a large F2.0 aperture and wide-angle 28mm lens, though the megapixel count is lower than we might have expected -- four in all. The company is apparently hoping that less, but bigger, pixels on a larger sensor will let in more light and so enable it to take better pictures.
HTC has been putting more effort into its cameras of late and this "UltraPixel" model shows the benefits. It has a large F2.0 aperture and wide-angle 28mm lens, though the megapixel count is lower than we might have expected -- four in all. The company is apparently hoping that less, but bigger, pixels on a larger sensor will let in more light and so enable it to take better pictures.
And on this evidence, it may well have something. Pics are crisp
and detailed with realistic looking colours -- not too saturated or
artificially vibrant. Of course, they might have looked even better
with more megapixels, but at least this shows that there are more
elements to taking good shots.
The video camera can shoot in full 1080p HD resolution and unusually, the HDR effect is also available here, though the picture quality drops noticeably, making it seem like more of a gimmick.
The HTC One packs a lot of power, and it's good to see a sizeable battery on hand to help maintain the high performance for longer than a few blinks. Unfortunately, though it does well, the 2,300mAh power pack doesn't excel -- it should just about get you through a day's worth of heavy use, but not much more.
Conclusion
The HTC One is a lot of smartphone, with a terrifically powerful processor, a stonkingly good screen and pretty good camera. But its premium spec comes at a premium price and with other high quality Androids like the Google Nexus 4 coming in at half the price, how many will want to stump up the extra ackers for just a few extra attributes?
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