HTC One is a sleek supercharged smartphone. We all are obsessed by Smartphone now a day. Amazing screen, video games and pc like features had made them very important in our day to day life. When Apple started working on their iPhone device they had revolutionize the regular mobile into something much better. Following the trend, different smartphone manufacturers started adopting different ways making their model more unique. A major contribution is done by Google; by offering Android as open source mobile OS. A platform to develop. Today high mobile phones are called as Smartphone. They offer portable design, good hardware and features. We will checkout one among them today with the new HTC One Smartphone. It offers aluminum body, vibrant 4.7 inch HD Display, BoomSound and lots of great and innovative features. If you check this mobile closely you will be able to figure out that this model is a value for money product. Whoever bought this phone gave a positive feedback. Leaving HTC One aside, I had tested many other high end models, like Xperia Z1, Galaxy Note 3 and Blackberry Z10. Each one of them is unique but somehow HTC One is able to overtake them in terms of audio, image quality and design. One thing which I did not like in HTC One is unnecessary application that comes pre-installed and many of them did not work. In simple words they can be called as unwanted bloatware. HTC One is comfortable to hold also. High end hardware configuration makes it amazing in terms of multi-tasking and gaming.
It fulfills all your needs. If you need a Smartphone which has features like a PC then HTC One is a great choice. HTC emphasizes on design and audio more and later on photography. Some models in the market have high mega pixel camera on their phones, but when you capture photos the image processor does not utilizes the lens completely. The result at the end is a low grade photo. But in HTC One, the ultra pixel camera captures detailed and crisp photos. The camera is capable of capturing around 300% more light that makes pics very clear in any condition. After Note 2, HTC One is the second model to impress me in terms of photography. Audio quality is also awesome here. Big size speakers placed on the corners provide amazing sound output due to HTC Boomsound technology. HTC added an additional notification screen which can be assumed as a rich message center. It is called as HTC Blinkfeed. This screen offers you all update associated with social networking, rss feeds, news, etc and you can customize it from a web browser.
The OS inside is smartly designed. HTC Sense 5.0 makes it blazing fast. Unlike others, HTC also tried to add proprietary software to increase the productivity. Like HTC Zoe, HTC Blinkfeed, HTC Share and for audio HTC BoomSound technology with Beats Audio. We will checkout this features later on in our review. The latest HTC model is HTC One Max. This is released in the market now. This is the most high end model after Desire 601, Desire 300, and One Mini & Desire 500 featuring a Snapdragon 800 series processor. HTC One Max is a phablet which has similar features, but it comes with a fingerprint scanner. This scanner offers security lock as well as a simple gesture option to launch and control apps. The cost of HTC One Max is Rs. 53,490. HTC One comes for Rs.42,230. After comparing this model with others I found it overpriced. The reason can be competition. Before moving ahead lets checkout the specification in details.
Specification:
- Display: 4.7 inch, Full HD 1080p, 468 PPI
- OS: Android 4.2.2 with HTC Sense 5.0 (Android 4.4 Kitkat update pending to be released next year)
- CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, quad-core 1.7GHz processor
- RAM: 2GB DDR2
- Storage: 32GB / 64GB.
- Camera: HTC UltraPixel Camera at the rear side with 2.1 MP front cameras.
- Audio: HTC BoomSound. Beats Audio
- Network: 2G/2.5G – GSM/GPRS/EDGE. 3G – UMTS/ HSPA. 3G/4G – CDMA. 4G – LTE
- SIM Slot: Single Micro (Dual Sim version also available)
- GPS: Internal GPS antenna + GLONASS.
- Sensors: Gyro, Accelerometer, Proximity & Ambient light sensor.
- Connectivity: 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, DLNA, HTC Connect, Infra Red & micro-USB 2.0.
- Battery: 2300 mAh. 500 hours Standby time and 18hours Talktime.
Design:
HTC One features a full metal body design, with no gap structure. The body is sealed. The battery is not removable. Sim slot and ports are placed on the side. In terms of looks, HTC One is a masterpiece. It has a diamond cut edges, with a full metal body at the backside and a no-gap design. This makes it unique and impressive. The back panel is less flashy and HTC One has less disturbing design. Due to a lock body, it can be counted under durable series. Instead of using plastic, the back panel is build for an Aluminum metal plate through special cut and it is further attached to the front screen through strong adhesive. The body offers great grip to hold. It is not slippery from any angle. There is no screw or opening panel on any part. The design is quite innovative and rugged. It looks like HTC has done extensive research on the body part making it the best smartphone compared to all other. Zero gap construction offers a very rich look and that can be the reason why it is so costly. To make something like this requires intensive research, creativity and above all, features which an end user can enjoy. HTC One is a pocket powerhouse device that can beat other high end phone in the market. The model which we are testing is complete black edition.
There are 3 more colors available, Blue, Red and Silver. The black edition here looks less flashy. Unlike other oversized Smartphone’s, HTC One is more compact. The dimension of this device is 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm. It is thin and in terms of size also reasonable enough to keep it in your pocket. The screen size is around 4.7inch. Compared to HTC One, two high-end smartphone models like Note 3 and Xperia Z1 are quite bigger. The biggest is Note 3 having a 5.7inch screen and Xperia Z1 which we had reviewed recently having a 5" screen on the front. They are bit complicated to carry. The device remains visible outside the pocket. Compared to them HTC One looks smarter. The solid construction makes it long lasting device. Rich elements are used to make it durable, but this increases the repair cost. I was watching some teardown video on YouTube where I found that it is very complicate to open the device. Anyone who tries to do it can damage it easily. So if in future the phone has issue then you have to carry it to the official repair center and the cost on that is also high.
Front Side:
The front part is covered with screen and speakers. HTC One has a full HD screen. The screen size is 4.7inch, good enough to view web pages, videos, photos and chatting. Due to HD support the screen offers a full HD resolution at 468PPI. This is the highest ppi we are getting which even beats Apple’s Retina display. IPhone 5C offers us 326ppi, Xperia Z1 gives 441 ppi, Note 3 offer 386 ppi and S4 offers 441 ppi. You can easily see that HTC One is a winner here. High PPI adds more detail in the images and videos. It is amazing. The screen offers you a full 1080p video. Watching movies and playing games is fun on HTC One. It is hard to get the kind of display quality in any other Smartphone.
Two big size speakers are placed on the top and bottom. This is big size speakers that are based on HTC BoomSound technology and Beats audio for headset. They have high volume output. Even after having a very sleek design HTC has smartly placed good quality speakers which fulfill your audio/video requirements. I am really impressed with the sound quality. I had not found this kind of high and clean audio in any other high end Smartphone.
On the top side with speaker we have a Proximity sensor on the left and a 2.1MP front camera. There is a notification led integrated with the speaker design. At the bottom we have 2 dedicated touch keys with backlit. First one is Return key and the second one is Home key. Also when you double tap on it, the device shows all the background application.
On the left side we have a SIM slot. The version which we are testing is a Single SIM edition. The sim is placed inside a tray and it is then inserted in the slot. From outside you have no option to remove it. To insert the sim, use a tiny pin and insert it gently in the hole at the top side. This will push the tray out. HTC One has a MicroSIM slot.
The back panel has a rough finish instead of glossy. It offers great grip while holding. It is not at all slippery on wet hands. At the backside we have a LED flash with Ultra pixel camera. Now this is something different. We all know about Megapixel. But HTC One did a major innovation in this part. It has an Ultra pixel camera. HTC One is the first mobile to have this camera. I am really impressed with the autofocus feature. Here the megapixel thing is not applicable. But as per the specification this new ultra pixel camera is capable of beating 13MP camera phone. This technology captures 300% more light per pixel. Here you get a nice vibrant and detailed image. There is a new sensor used in this phone which is HTC's proprietary technology. F/2.0 Aperture gives you bigger angle to capture. The image is great due to Optical Image Stabilization. Technically speaking HTC One has a 4MP camera only, but being made on Ultra Pixel technology it beats other camera phones in the market. It is capable of capturing bigger and brighter images. And a noise cancellation mic also lies on the backside.
Overall HTC One is an amazing phone and is quite unique. A solid body with fast responsive HD screen and big size speakers makes it a complete entertainment pack. Even after having all this stuff the phone does not disappoint you in battery life. Due to compact size it fits well in your hand. It is not slippery nor is it complicated to operate with one hand. 4.7"screen is reasonable enough to give you good readability experience. It is also great for multimedia. But this phone is very costly when it comes to repair. It is very complicated to open this phone and replace any part. That is one of the major drawbacks of any device which comes with unibody design. The repair is limited to manufacturer.
User Interface:
HTC One has the new updated HTC 5.0 UI. This UI is optimized to save battery. Last time we had reviewed HTC One X+ (LINK REVIEW) which was a bit different compared to this one. HTC One is limited in terms of customization. You get the regular wallpaper, widget and other stuff. Primary attraction of HTC Sense 5.0 is HTC Blinkfeed which is a real-time streaming home screen where you can hook your favorite website, rss, social networking feeds, etc. It gives you live update of everything and also provides amazing performance. It can drain battery quickly also. I had explained about that in details in the below section. We will try to test out the UI to find whether HTC One is easy to use or not. HTC Sense 5.0 UI makes the phone impressive in terms of touch support. The screen is fast responsive. You can add icons and widget on the home screen but you cannot disable Blinkfeed. It remains active all the time. I am always impressed with the HTC UI. It is simple and organized and does not lag. Just by tapping on the screen for few seconds you can add widgets, icons, additional home screen, and change wallpapers.
For changing the screen wallpaper you have to go in settings. While in other devices you get the same thing directly from the home screen. One impressive live-wallpaper I found was Weather. This live wallpaper changes the weather images on the basis of time. The wallpaper which you use is applied to the lock screen also. The internal menu offers you vertical scrolling. To get apps you have to swipe to the down side. This is sometimes confusing when you have too many applications installed in the phone. HTC One comes with the Android 4.2.2 Jellybean OS.
For changing the screen wallpaper you have to go in settings. While in other devices you get the same thing directly from the home screen. One impressive live-wallpaper I found was Weather. This live wallpaper changes the weather images on the basis of time. The wallpaper which you use is applied to the lock screen also. The internal menu offers you vertical scrolling. To get apps you have to swipe to the down side. This is sometimes confusing when you have too many applications installed in the phone. HTC One comes with the Android 4.2.2 Jellybean OS.
HTC Apps:
We have some really impressive applications for the device. This is proprietary application that helps you to boost your phone productivity and get more benefits over others. They are HTC Blinkfeed, HTC Zoe, HTC Share and an audio boosting technology called HTC Boomsound.
HTC Blinkfeed:
HTC Blinkfeed is a new introduction to the UI that adds streaming content right on the home screen. Just by swiping towards right you get all updates instantly. SocialLife is an app which is used in Sony Xperia series offering a similar output. But it is a dedicated app that does not link on the home screen. In HTC this thing is designed in different manner. HTC Blinkfeed is an innovative way to get new updates. It is capable of streaming anything you want. It is ideal for those who need instant updates on their screen. The screen handles everything. It can be an ideal location to get your all social networking updates. You can add your facebook and twitter account on that and instantly get a glimpse of new feeds. It keeps on refreshing the content on its own. Other than this HTC has tied up with many other website that delivers fresh information daily. Whether you are sports fan or movie fan you can get relative news on your phone. You have a choice to select what you want. HTC Blinkfeed can be easily customized. You can do that through the web based platform and choose any website or add your own.
HTC Zoe & HTC Share:
HTC Zoe is a gallery app. This adds more life to your photos and videos and gives you an instant way of sharing your photos with others. We all love to click photos and share them with friends. But what about life images. HTC Zoe is similar to Cinemagraph in Windows. Here you can create live gif photos and share them with your friends. You just have to enable it before taking a picture and record live events. It creates a tiny video which is lightweight and can be shared instantly. It also offers sequence shot where you can get a five action picture and you can merge them instantly creating a dynamic image. There are different filters available through which you can capture amazing photos. Like the sequence shot through which you can get a range of images and merge them together instantly. HTC Share helps you to share an image instantly with your friend on social networking website. After taking a photo you have to tap on it and choose the photos you want to share. A web link is generated through which all can access the photos.
Camera:
HTC One is the first phone to come with new Ultra Pixel camera. This smart camera captures 300% more light offering you great image quality in dull condition. While other high end Smartphone relies completely on light. The camera fills up darker part offering very clear photos with vibrant colors. I was really surprised to find photos captured through this phone. Most of the mobile phone with 8 or high MP camera tries to rebuild the image by adding more color and clarity, while the camera of HTC One tries an additional thing which is filling up more light. This is one of the finest quality cameras I had seen. You can capture true life like images. The camera features a completely new design which has more pixels. It features F/2.0 which is the highest aperture available. Optimal Image stabilization on the other hand allows a clear image even when you are moving. It is hard for any model to beat HTC One in terms of camera quality. The camera menu is simple and straight forward. You can choose from 9 different scene effects from the camera menu. This includes Portrait, Landscape, Backlight, Night, HDR, Panorama, etc. You can capture a slow motion video or a live image through 3 additional scene modes.
The maximum video resolution that you can get on this device is 1920×1080. And you can go ahead with modifying settings like ISO, White balance, Continuous Shooting, Camera & Shutter options. At the right panel you can find a set of different on-screen effects. There are in total 16 effects available. At the left you can see a tiny camera icon which belongs to HTC Zoe. When you tap on it you can enable HTC Zoe and get more impressive photos. The camera app offers you common image editing features which are used by both HTC Zoe and normal model smartphones. To use it you have to tap on the image and then choose Edit. You get a various set of options to modify and enhance the image output. It is also possible to remove objects from the image.
So here you can see that HTC One camera has amazing features. You can create your own videos, edit them, apply a slow motion effect, etc. You can do a number of modifications and play with the camera settings. It is really fun to use different modes and share them instantly on facebook. The camera is loaded with an amazing ultra pixel technology that adds more enhancements in the photos. The images produced are impressive and great.
Multimedia:
HTC One is ideal for multimedia usage. The video and sound quality is amazing. 4.7inch HD screen is enough to produce great picture quality. Viewing angle is also fine here. From no angle the screen goes dark. If you play HD videos you will get the best output. The screen cannot fix low resolution videos. The same is applicable for images. You can zoom in through simple gesture control and get clear images. The video player is integrated in the gallery while for music we have a standard audio player. There is nothing special in them. In Gallery you can tap on album to get a grid view of videos and images. You can play the images on media player which supports wifi streaming. The image album looks plain and simple. Gallery has option to connect to media server from where you can directly access shared files. You can add your songs in Windows Media Player library and access them in phone directly.
Video playing is decent. A full 1080p image gives great output on the screen. Gallery is further supported by HTC Share which is an online service. You can share your videos, photos through it. It creates a web link. You have to be on a good internet connection if you are sharing videos. All content is first uploaded online and then shared through a link. For images this is impressive. For audio we have an amazing sound technology called as HTC Boomsound further supported by beats audio. Boomsound features a big size dual speaker which is situated on the front side. The audio production is awesome. Maximum audio volume reaches to 86.5db. Along with volume HTC has taken special care about keeping audio clear. You can enable and disable beats audio from settings panel. It is an audio technology which enhances the sound quality. Compare to every high end phone HTC One rocks in speaker audio. At maximum volume the sound is crisp and clear. You don’t really need a headphone to watch movies on it.
Gaming:
This is everyone's favorite part. When it comes to gaming, HTC One offers a pocket size gaming platform. It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core 1.7GHz processor. Along with this 2GB DDR2 ram supports maximum apps and game at a time which is further boosted by Adreno 320 gpu. I had tested many games on it. The phone works fine. It does not lag or freeze. You can still do ample of things in the background. Through a tiny test I had found that games like Real Racing 3 consume around 45% of the total system resource. You can minimize the game, check your mails and launch it back. It will resume back smoothly without crashing or failing. In the same way games like Iron Man 3, Deer Hunting, Asphalt 8 Airborne, Man of Steel, Real Racing, etc; runs smoothly on this device. The phone has amazing hardware config which meets every games requirement and works smoothly. HD screen and fast responsive control makes it very easy to use. I play Real Racing a lot. The issue lies with heating. It heats up fast when you are playing. Within 20 minutes you can feel the back panel getting hotter. That is disturbing. Second issue is common which is battery drain. While playing games within few hours the battery drains out completely.
Leaving HD games aside other standard games like Plant vs. Zombies 2, Where is my Water, Angry Bird, etc; works really fine. You can install any game from Google Play in HTC One and get a flawless gameplay. In terms of gaming performance, HTC One gets high score. Adreno 320 gpu does a good job in giving lag free performance and smooth graphics.
Performance:
In terms of performance I am really satisfied. I can use different applications in the background and still it is able to manage everything. Even if you kept the game minimized in the background it will not slow down. You can upload/download files, play games, check emails/social networking feeds, etc; at the same time. The phone works smoothly. Well optimized HTC Sense UI adds more to the performance. Lag free performance matters a lot when you are going to spend a huge amount on a high end Smartphone. HTC One is blazing fast from all corners. Benchmarking test has provided impressive results. We had run two apps on it. The first is Antutu and the second is Quadrant. The score we got was higher compared to Galaxy S4, Xperia Z, LG Optimus, Note 2, HTC One X+ & Galaxy S3. The device beats them all with big difference.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 is second highest series cpu offering you 4 cores supports. The latest one is Snapdragon 800 which is used in Sony Xperia Z2, Sony Xperia Z Ultra, LG G2 & Google Nexus 5. Snapdragon 600 other than HTC One is also used in Galaxy S4, HTC One Max, & LG Optimus Pro. This series is improved in terms of output and also consume low power. It is optimized to deliver better 3D gaming output and better web surfing experience. Snapdragon 600 offers an impressive and blazing fast platform to Smartphone. In support with Adreno 320GPU the graphic output boosts upto 300% compared to the older series. The gpu offers advance graphic support for OpenGl ES 3.0, DirectX, OpenCL, Renderscript Compute and FlexRender.
Battery:
HTC One has a 2300 mAH battery. The maximum standby time it offers is 500 hrs and talktime is 18hrs. The battery life is not so impressive according to me when you are using this phone only for gaming and multimedia. But if you are using it for photography, emails, social networking, chatting, etc; then the phone works nicely for entire day. 2300mAh battery fells short for gaming purpose. Compared to HTC One, Galaxy Note 3 has the biggest battery. It is 3200 mAh followed by Xperia Z1 3000 mAH. And then comes the Galaxy S4’s 2600 mAH battery. I was expecting atleast 3000mAh battery in the device. The phone can only give you entire day usage if you are using it for internet and calling purpose. A huge amount of battery is drained out instantly on uploads. You can connect your Dropbox or Google drive account to upload and backup your photos and videos. This quietly works in the background. I think it will be right to say that this phone is capable of giving you a decent 4 to 6 hrs of constant usage for multimedia and internet and if you go for gaming only then the time will be reduced to lesser than 4 hrs. The phone has big size dual speakers on the front. If it was possible to turn off some internal apps like HTC Zoe and Blinkfeed then the battery life can boost 40% more. Blinkfeed is linked to website which downloads real time updates. A small part of battery is always in use.
HTC One Price Competitors:
The cost of HTC One lies between Rs. 40,000 to Rs.43,000. Flipkart is selling it for Rs.42,251 while Snapdeal is selling it for Rs.41,120. The cost varies on different e-Commerce website. So here I am going to list some close priced competitors. In HTC One we get a Quad Core processor with 2GB RAM + Adreno 320GPU and 32GB storage. We have Ultra pixel that comes with full HD Screen. The features at this price are impressive because we also get a Boomsound audio technology. Compared to that if we look on Windows platform we have Nokia Lumia 1020 @ Rs.47,200. This device gives you 41MP camera with amazing photography features. The front screen size is 4.5inch and the phone is durable. It is powered by 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Dual Core Processor with 2GB ram and 32GB internal storage.
Conclusion:
No doubt HTC One is an amazing phone. You might try some other models, but you will not be satisfied. HTC One is an innovative product. This time HTC brought up some real ideas. You get an amazing screen quality, extreme hardware, great audio and ultra pixel camera in this model. This makes HTC One unique. The overall mixture makes it a must to have device. But also this makes it costly. At a price of Rs. 42,251 you are getting something different. HTC don’t look to be emphasizing in increasing the hardware. They instead concentrated more on making their model different and productive. Ultra pixel camera offers life like images. Every pixel here is capable of capturing more light which makes dark photos brighter. Boomsound fulfills your multimedia needs. HTC one delivers premium audio experience which is hard to find in other phones. HTC's proprietary applications are effective but battery consuming. There must be some way to turn them off when not needed. Like the Blinkfeed. The screen is a centralized location to receive updates. With one single tap you view what’s going on around you. HTC Zoe adds more life to the photos. Rugged design, adds durability. Zero gap construction over full metal back panel makes it strong but also adds more to the repair cost.
It is fun to use HTC One. It looks you are carrying something really special. An ideal model to show off among your friends. Gaming output is amazing. The thing which is not good is battery life. If you try to use the phone at maximum you will get disappointed with the battery consumption. That can be resolved by carrying a portable battery extender with you. This is very cheap nowadays and gives you around 2 to 4 hrs of extra battery power. HTC One will be a satisfying phone only if there is a bit relief in the price. Or else for music and game lovers it is a big treat.
Pros
- Durable Design
- Great Performance
- Ultra pixel Camera
- Amazing Sound Quality
- HTC Blinkfeed & HTC Zoe Apps
Cons
- Low on Battery
- No SD Card Slot
- No way to disable HTC Apps
