Look, it’s no secret that HTC knows how to put together a nice phone.
Despite the quality of its wares though, HTC spent most of 2012 releasing
disappointing earnings statements and being outflanked by much larger rivals —
what’s a company to do in a situation like that? The answer, according to CEO
Peter Chou, was to double down on innovation and design in hopes of creating a
device that would truly resonate with consumers that were already up to their
necks in Android phones. That device was the HTC One.
Even so, plenty of questions remain. Is it really all that it’s cracked up
to be? Does the One really have a chance at changing HTC’s fortunes?
To answer all of the above: yes. If you’re in a rush you can skip to my
final thoughts
here but
make no mistake: the HTC One is the sort of device that deserves to be talked
about.
The Basics:
- 4.7-inch, 1080p Super LCD3
display
- 1.7GHz Quad-core Qualcomm
Snapdragon 600 chipset with 2GB of RAM
- “Ultrapixel” rear camera,
2.1-megapixel front-facing camera
- Available with either 32GB or
64GB of internal storage, no memory card slot
- NFC
- Sealed 2,300 mAh battery
- 32GB model available for $199
with a two-year contract with AT&T and Sprint, while T-Mobile offers
it sans contract for $579. The $299 64GB version is an AT&T exclusive.
Test notes: Sprint has provided me with a pre-release version of the One
to review, and HTC has given me an unlocked international model to play with.
They’re nearly identical, but I’ll point out any pertinent differences as they
come up.
Hardware and
Design:
I was smitten with the One’s design from the moment I first manhandled the
thing back in February, and that feeling has never really gone away — the One
is a truly stunning device both to hold and to look at. Samsung could really
learn a thing or two from these guys.
Before I get too effusive with my praise, let’s take a quick tour around the
device itself. The One’s face is dominated by a 4.7-inch 1080p Super LCD3 display
that’s flanked on all sides by a thin black bezel. Sitting directly above and
below the display are the One’s unfortunately named Boomsound stereo speakers
(a small notification LED will occasionally blink at from the top grille), and
the 2-megapixel wide-angle front-facing camera rests on the top-right corner of
the device’s visage.
The One’s sides and bottom are fairly nondescript — the volume rocker,
microUSB port, and SIM slot are nestled along the right, bottom, and left edges
respectively, while the top edge hosts a headphone jack and a sleep/wake button
that doubles as an IR blaster for controlling your television.
Phew. Now that I’ve run through the laundry list, permit me to gush a bit
about how the One looks.
To say that the One is understated in its design would be putting it mildly;
the thing is terribly handsome in a stark, minimal sort of way. It’s worth
pointing out, though, that the One isn’t actually that big a step forward from
some of its predecessors when it comes to physical design. If anything, it
represents the refinement of a design formula that HTC has been working on for
the past 9 or 10 months with devices like the Butterfly and its American cousin
the Droid DNA. Familiar elements like elongated speaker grilles, textured volume
rockers, gently sloping backs, and highlighted camera pods seen in those
earlier devices all make appearances on the One, but HTC has clearly upped the
ante in terms of quality and construction this time around.
The first thing you notice as you pick it up is how light it is — at 143
grams it’s only a hair heavier than the Droid DNA, and (thankfully) the One’s
minimal heft belies just how sturdy it feels. That’s all thanks to the device’s
unibody aluminum chassis, which HTC says takes somewhere around 200 minutes for
a CNC machine to carve out the One’s frame from a single block of aluminum.
That’s a considerable chunk of time for HTC to spend while some of its
rivals spit out handsets like it’s nothing, but the end result is a device that
feels as reassuring in your hand as HTC’s would-be savior should. That said,
you still won’t want to toss the One around all willy-nilly. The white plastic
polycarbonate that runs around the device is flanked on both sides by polished,
chamfered aluminum edges that are prone to picking up scuffs and dings, though
some people won’t care nearly as much about that as others.
Samsung could really learn a thing or two
from these guys.
The One isn’t without its share of question marks, though. If you’ve used
pretty much any popular Android device before spending some time with HTC One,
then one little omission will probably stick out like a sore thumb. I’m talking
of course about the lack of a third soft key — the company opted to stick
solely with Back and Home keys separated by an HTC logo.
If you go by the company line, the choice was made in an attempt to simplify
how users interact with the One. I’d actually argue that dropping that extra
button is more counterintuitive than anything else since most current Android
users are likely familiar with the three-button layout, but it doesn’t take too
long to readjust to the two-button lifestyle.
And of course, HTC has once again seen fit to exclude a microSD card slot in
its latest flagship handset. I can’t really be surprised at this point
considering this is a recurring theme for HTC, and it’s not as big an issue as
it was in other devices since HTC offers 32GB and 64GB versions of the One, but
I’ve often looked to expandable memory as a hallmark feature of an Android
device, and I’m sad to see HTC skipping them completely on its top-tier
handsets.
Software:
Both versions of the One I’ve played with come loaded with Android 4.1.2,
but as always, HTC has done its level best to paint over the stock UI with its
custom Sense interface. The Taiwanese company has been diligently trying to
trim the fat from Sense for months now with largely positive results; Sense
isn’t the kludgy, overwrought beast it used to be, and Sense 5 represents HTC’s
biggest leap forward to date.
Put very simply, Sense 5 looks great. Stock icons and the once-bubbly
default keyboard and dialer have been designed to look flatter and less
skeuomorphic, and HTC has dumped its usual font in favor of Roboto Condensed,
which imbues the UI with a much cleaner vibe. The app launcher has gotten quite
a facelift, too — a persistent time and weather widget lives at the top of the
screen, and right out of the box you’re treated with a spacious 3×4 grid of
applications. Tinkerers can easily fiddle with those particulars should they prefer
a more densely packed grid like I do, and you can easily switch between
ordering apps by name, recency of use, or whatever other convoluted scheme you
can dream up.
Of course, some changes are more drastic than others. Take BlinkFeed for
instance — in one fell swoop, HTC has decided to try and reinvent the Android
homescreen. The concept is simple: the way HTC looks at it, smartphones are
content-consumption devices so BlinkFeed was designed to surface content based
on your interests and your social connections with as few steps as possible.
Getting Blinkfeed set up is painless enough — you can tailor your feed by
selecting from some broad areas of interest (think gaming, music, politics,
etc.), and by opting to receive content from your social networks, apps, and a
handful of featured sources like ESPN, Vice, and Reuters (disclosure: some of
Aol’s media properties are featured sources). From there, all of that stuff
gets splayed out into a vaguely Flipboard-y grid for your immediate perusal,
and all it takes to refresh your feed is a downward swipe.
It all makes sense on paper, but Blinkfeed in practice leaves much to be
desired. Why can’t I add my own content sources? Why can’t I just turn it off
rather than manually disable each content feed and switching its default
homescreen status off? The likely answer to both of these questions is a
familiar one: it’s all about simplicity.
BlinkFeed wasn’t necessarily designed with the power user in mind — we spoke
to HTC’s Jeff Gordon just prior to the One’s launch, and he made the feature
out to be a consummate time-waster, something people use when they find
themselves stuck in a queue somewhere. That’s about the only time I bothered to
use it to be quite honest; the rest of the time I would just fire up Flipboard
or Twitter and get my content straight from the sources I wanted it from.
Fortunately for me, more traditional Android homescreens are but a single swipe
away, but you can only have up to four of them.
The unlocked international model doesn’t have much in the way of bloatware —
just a few preloaded apps like TuneIn Radio and a Kid Mode courtesy of the
folks at Zoodles — but the Sprint variant doesn’t fare quite as well. Expect
oodles of carrier-loaded apps that range in quality from mildly useful (Lookout
Security is nice to have around) to the nearly pointless (do we really need the
Sprint Music Plus store when Google Play is right there?). Most of them can be
uninstalled without much trouble at all, and those that you’re stuck with (I’m
looking at you, Sprint Zone) can be easily hidden thanks to the revamped app
launcher.
As you’d expect from a device that sports a cleverly-hidden IR blaster, the
One also comes pre-loaded with a remote control app developed in partnership
with Peel. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no TV buff, so my experience
with the remote control feature was short and sweet — the setup process was
over in a matter of moments, and the One succeeded in turning my television on
and changing the channel and volume a few times. After popping in my zip code
and selecting my cable provider, the app also provided guide data for all the
shows I don’t watch. While it’s unlikely to replace your actual remote, it
works like a charm and that’s frankly a lot more than I was expecting.
With the One, HTC has officially bowed out of the megapixel race. It’s easy
enough to write off the word “ultrapixel” as a spurious bit of marketing fluff,
but the One’s camera manages to prove that pixel size really does make a
difference.
Photos taken with the One look phenomenal when viewed on the phone’s crisp
1080p display — they’re nicely detailed and colors were vivid (perhaps a little
too much so, more on that later). Sadly, a bit of that impact is lost when you
transfer them to PCs or televisions. The shift towards fewer larger pixels
instead of more smaller ones sounds like a good idea, and it mostly is, but
there’s a sort of fuzziness apparent in some of the One’s photos that keeps my
support from being full-throated. I suspect it’s an issue that won’t matter to
a majority of users — the results are definitely more than adequate for [insert
social network name here], and I’ve found the shots the One takes are still
more pleasing than many of its competitors. If anything videos seem to fare
little better; my test clips were all crisp and bright, and to my surprise the
microphones blocked out plenty of background noise.
Speaking of competitors, the camera sensors in most of them struggle in low
light but the One manages to dodge those issues rather nicely. It’s
surprisingly good at capturing light even when it’s in short supply and manages
to do so without introducing much grain into the situation. It’s worth noting
that the ability for the One’s sensor to pick up as much light as it does has
an impact on color reproduction. Consider the comparison shot with the iPhone 5
above — the One captures more of the scene, but some details (like the tree
branches in the bottom left corner of the photo) are lost because of
overexposure.
As far as the Camera app itself is concerned, it remains remarkbly clean and
easy to operate. Switching between the front and rear cameras takes a single
swipe, popping into Zoe mode takes a single touch, you see where I’m going.
Beyond the simplistic interface though is an impressing array of settings — you
can muck around with ISO, white balance, timer, scene modes, face detection,
and even the review duration for recently snapped photos. Honestly, I find the
idea of layering filters on top of perfectly good photos to be a little ridiculous,
but the One has plenty of them for you Instagram-types to fiddle around with
too.
And then there are the aforementioned Zoes, those peculiar little three
second video clips that HTC has started to push with the One. When I first
played with the One, I was downright dismissive of the concept. I’m still not
entirely sold on them, but I’ve grown just a little more appreciative of the
notion. My biggest issue with them is how you’re supposed to manage the things.
It’s simple enough on the One itself — the short clips are accessible from the
Gallery app and you can use the HTC Share service to post them online for 180
days, but the real problem emerges when you try to pull them off the device
through USB. Zoes are locally stored as very brief video snippets but as a
series of stills as well, so pulling them off the One en masse feels a bit more
labor-intensive than it should.
Display:
Goodness, it seems like just yesterday that finding a 1080p display on a
smartphone was a rare and wondrous event. These days nearly all the major
Android players have worked those sorts of high-resolution panels into their
new flagship phones — just look at the Optimus G Pro, Xperia Z, or Galaxy S4 to
name a few.
Even with such notable rivals to consider, the One’s 4.7-inch Super LCD3
panel is perhaps the best smartphone display I’ve ever seen. Text and high-res
images were remarkably crisp (not a surprise considering the display sports a
pixel density of about 474 ppi), and the colors are bright and accurately
reproduced. While some displays pump up color saturation to lurid levels and
others exhibit a pale cast, the One strikes a thoughtful balance between those
extremes.
I haven’t noticed any distortion or discoloration despite seeking out some
of the most awkward viewing angles — in short, the One’s display is a real
pleasure to ogle.
One of my biggest issues with the 5-inch 1080p panel found on the Droid DNA
was that it just wasn’t all that bright compared to the competition — it was
perhaps the most notable miss for an otherwise impressive display. Thankfully,
HTC has addressed that issue with the One. When screen brightness is cranked
all the way up on both devices, the One’s display is noticeably more
luminescent than its cousin and shines on the level of devices like the Nexus 4
and the iPhone 5. It may seem like a trivial upgrade, but the weather’s getting
nicer and that bump in brightness has definitely helped outdoor visibility,
too.
Performance:
Let’s just get it out of the way now: with a Snapdragon 600 chipset and 2GB
tucked away in its handsome frame, the One was able to handle every task I
threw at it with aplomb. Swiping back and forth between BlinkFeed and my more
traditional homescreens were utterly seamless, as was scrolling down long
webpages, and crafting ornate rococo structures in Minecraft Pocket Edition. If
you’re the type that prefers numbers to anecdotes, the One’s five-run Quadrant
average topped out in the low to mid 12,000s, handily blowing away devices like
the Nexus 4 and the Droid DNA. Running Geekbench on the thing yielded similar
results: the lowest of three trials was a 2728, which puts it on top of the
performance heap again… for now anyway. It won’t be long at all before other
devices start to catch up in terms of pure power, but there’s little question
that the One will be able to handle nearly anything you load onto it and that’s
really all that matters.
All that power comes at a cost though. The One managed to stick it out for
four hours and 21 minutes of our standard battery test, in which the device is
made to run through an endless cycle of Google image searches over the wireless
data connection with the screen lock turned off and display brightness set to
50%. Granted, less than 4.5 hours doesn’t sound all that great, but bear in mind
that’s nonstop usage — in my experience, the One always managed to make it
through a full work day’s worth of checking emails, firing off text messages,
playing music through the Boomsound speakers, and playing the occasional game
with at least a little juice left over.
I won’t dwell too much on network performance for two reasons: your mileage
will almost certainly vary from mine, and Sprint can be frustratingly sketchy
in my particular corner of New Jersey.
In case you were itching for a dose of schadenfreude for the day, I was never
able to pull speeds greater than 2 Mbps down and my upload speeds topped out at
3.5 Mbps — that’s not really the One’s fault but man, that really hurt. On the
upside, call quality was just peachy on both version of the device I tested
(you know, in case you actually wanted to use this thing as a phone).
I need to take a minute here and touch on one of the most impressive
features HTC has baked into the One, and it may not be what you expected. I’ve
reviewed my fair share of phones during my tenure here at TechCrunch, and with
few exceptions they’ve all mostly let me down when it came to sound
reproduction and quality. The One simply doesn’t — it’s got the best speakers
on any smartphone I’ve ever used. Granted, that’s not really saying much since
most smartphone speakers are downright wimpy, but the One’s BoomSound speakers
managed to pump out crisp, loud audio along with a surprising amount of bass
too. The jaunty bassline in Paul Simon’s
You Can Call Me Al was bright
and easily discerned, and not once during my testing did the One fall prey to
the dreaded muddy audio syndrome.
Bottom Line:
I can boil the preceding 3,000 or so words into a few brief sentiments for
you to chew on: the HTC One is easily the best device that the company has ever
crafted, and it’s perhaps the single nicest Android phone I’ve ever used.
Despite some minor faults, I haven’t so much as picked up any of the other
Android smartphones scattered around my office during my time with the One
unless I absolutely had to. It’s really that good.
And yet, after releasing a smartphone to near-universal acclaim, HTC’s
future is still unclear. As Matt pointed out a little while back, building the
perfect phone just isn’t enough anymore. These days it seems like technical
expertise and the achievements that stem from them can often be overshadowed by
lavish ad campaigns and the ability to churn out devices at a breakneck pace.
That said, the mobile industry has never really been what you could consider
meritocratic — the market is fast and unforgiving, and there aren’t many
companies that have learned that lesson as clearly as HTC has.
There’s no question that the One will be facing some very serious
competition in short order, but if you’re looking to pick up a new phone in the
weeks or months to come it’s definitely worth your consideration. Trust me,
you’ll find plenty to like here.
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