The HTC One (M8) Review

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• thedenti5t - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link

  Got this phone today and absolutley love it. It is the best phone Ive ever used hands down. To answer 2 questions I keep seeing. 1) It does have blinkfeed but you can remove it from you screens. 2) The 3 buttons have been moved to the screen but dissapear when actually using an app or watching a movie. I dont care about the camera as much as others, but it does take nice pictures. You can also crop which is another point I keep seeing people make.

• vv007420 - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link

  Ok I have HTC One (M7) which is around 9 months old.....its still fast and zippy but do you guys think it will be a worthy upgrade to M8...(mind you Im in India and there are no contracts here...we have to pay full price for the phone downright)

• HangFire - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link

  I'm sticking with my M7. It gets down to, is there feature of the M8 you can't live without?

• asaini007 - Saturday, March 29, 2014 - link

  I wouldn't say it's worth the upgrade. Wait till the M9 imo

• synaesthetic - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link

  I'm going to reserve judgment until iFixit posts a teardown. The last HTC One was virtually impossible to disassemble without destroying it. I realize I probably sound silly, but I don't buy anything I can't repair myself.
  
  I feel very strongly about our electronic waste problem and I believe a good way to help reduce e-waste is to encourage manufacturers to make things that can be (relatively) easy to take apart and repair. Unfortunately this flies in the face of "planned obsolescence," so it'll take a lot of people to actually make it happen... :/

• HangFire - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link

  Do you rebuild your own automatic transmissions? Just curious.

• synaesthetic - Tuesday, April 1, 2014 - link

  I don't own a car. :P When I did own a car, I had a manual and yes, I either did the work on it myself or had someone else repair it for the stuff I couldn't fix. Cars are still something of a durable good (less so than they used to be, though) and aren't nearly as steeped in planned obsolescence as consumer electronics...
  
  Anyway it's just a personal preference, especially since I tend to keep the same phone for two years on average. It's nice to be able to, at the end of those two years, clean everything up, replace the battery, wipe the device and sell it to someone. Keeps the device out of a landfill for a while longer and helps me pay for a new one. :)

• Alexey291 - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link

  I am really confused.
  
  When sammy (we all dislike sammy so fair play i suppose) makes a rehash - its boring and crap and so on.
  
  When HTC essentially makes a larger, less comfortable version (top button? really?) of last years phone (which didn't sell) - it's doing things to design that nobody else does! It's great and amazing! Righto.
  
  And if one remembers that last year's One (m7 or whatever) scratched off the metal finish and turned ugly in literally a month... Yeah design...
  
  Essentially: Camera's meh. Screen's pretty standard, battery pretty normal for the recent crop of devices. Benchmarks are "optimised". Ergonomics are worse. This is going to be a boring year for droid smartphones....
  
  And I love a bit of anecdotal evidence at the end. Very fitting for a serious review. /s

• HangFire - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link

  You're wrong about the "metal finish". You must be thinking of one of the One variants, because the One doesn't have a finish to be scratched off, it's solid metal (over a plastic sandwich), anyone who read the M7 review knows that. I've had mine for over 3 months and it still looks new.
  
  Personally I prefer a top button, I can silence a ringing phone in my breast pocket without even looking at it, my pen prevents me from doing that with a side button, but I realize this is a matter of personal preference.

• Alexey291 - Saturday, March 29, 2014 - link

  My mate's one was black (you know the usual anodized bs) and yup it scratched off in literally 2 or 3 weeks.
  
  And yeah I agree the silver-metallic version is certainly difficult to scratch (well at least not via rubbing it lol) but I personally would have gone for the black one. If I was going to support a dying company that is :)
  
  As for the top button well that really is a matter of preference naturally. Except ofc after however many years of using a side power button one gets used to it. (And that's aside from having to really REACH for it whenever u want to shut the screen off.)
  
  Either way. Not enticing. Neither is S5. Z2 looks ok but is likely meh too. Good thing I still have a year on my contract xD