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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