Hands on and Impressions from the HTC One - Formerly M7
by Brian Klug on February 19, 2013 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- HTC One
- Snapdragon 600
Software & Sense
The HTC One runs Android 4.1.2, a choice which might seem alarming, but was done for stability and quality reasons, although 4.2 is coming. I think it might sound bad to ship with 4.1, but even Google acknowledged that 4.2 was primarily a release with more tablet features than something for smartphones, after all both are still Jelly Bean. Sense 5 replaces Sense 4 or 4+ which shipped on the One X and X+, and brings a radically different themed UI this time. I was able to survive with Sense 4, and Sense 4+ brought a lot of improvements, what we’ve seen of the new Sense 5 looks like it follows more Holo design rules than any of the other OEM skins I’ve seen so far. All of the Sense UI fonts and system fonts are Roboto, the font Google made for Android 4.x, though it’s often one of the lighter condensed weights. In Sense 5, all the first party HTC applications now also use the pivot bar, which was a key design element introduced as part of the Holo guidelines. Icons and menus are now very flat in Sense 5, giving it a much more modern look, though there are still some gradients if you hunt around for them.
Probably the only huge deviation from Android is the inclusion of a completely new homescreen. Instead of having a grid of icons, the leftmost pane is home to a new feature called the Blinkfeed, which aggregates together content from a variety of online sources, media on the device (photos, videos, events), calendar events, and social media from linked accounts. The idea is to provide a quickly parsed visual menu of information to consume while glancing at the device. There are still widget panel homescreens, and the menus are sticky so that pressing home returns to the homescreen you were last on, in case you want to primarily use a widget panel as home instead of Blink.
The launcher also gets changed around in Sense 5. By default applications come sorted into logical folders, both to hint to users this is possible, and also to reduce anxiety for new users first diving into the launcher. The default view is a 3x4 grid which actually looks very refreshing, there’s still an option for a 4x5 grid for those wanting more density. Perhaps the biggest, most welcome improvement is that by default all operator applications will ship inside of a folder, rather than scattered all about the grid.
Another interesting choice is the decision to go with two capacitive buttons at the bottom of the HTC One instead of three. Last cycle, HTC got burned by following the Google guidance and doing away with the menu, err, “action overflow” button, leaving an on-screen action button in the overwhelming majority of Android applications that have yet to move away from this model. As a result, other players who included the menu button saw no black bar at the bottom. There’s also no app switcher button on the HTC One. Instead, just back and home. To get to an application switcher (which is now a 3x3 grid of thumbnails), one has to double tap the home button. Menu can be optionally enabled as a long press on the back button in a menu similar to what was added later in the One X. I think getting rid of a button is potentially risky, but probably simplifies things for new users.
Final Words
The HTC One industrial design is without a doubt the most striking I’ve seen from an Android phone to date. Unibody metal construction is something that at the high end we’ve only really seen out of Apple, and with the One, HTC has a major opportunity to set itself apart with a dramatically different in hand feel. Actively tuned antennas to make this possible without unintended attenuation, as well as improved CNC manufacturing volume are really the two enablers here.
Second only to the aluminum unibody story that is of the camera on the HTC One. HTC is taking perhaps the biggest risk of all with the camera, by choosing what is almost undeniably the right course of action and going against the prevailing trend of increasingly smaller and smaller pixels to drive the number of megapixels up. Megapixels is really the only number that has been sold to consumers, and with a 4.0 MP sensor, it’s instantly easy to see how the messaging will have to be set right for average consumers to appreciate that they’re getting around the same approximate size sensor as ship in other smartphones, if not slightly larger, but with dramatically bigger pixels. The result is, from my short time holding the HTC One next to a One X+, a dramatic difference in low light sensitivity, noise, and dynamic range indoors. The inclusion of optical image stabilization further improves things, and from a camera point of view the HTC One appears to be without a doubt the most serious Android smartphone camera experience.
HTC is announcing that in the USA the HTC One will be coming to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint as the HTC One. Notably absent from that list is Verizon, unfortunately. Internationally HTC has an impressive list of operator partners, which I’ll spare going over in excruciating detail. The problem with the HTC One X wasn’t so much hardware as it was marketing and the fact that it only existed on one operator in the USA by that name. This time around, it’s one name, one brand, with no adulteration.
To say that the HTC One takes some bold risks is putting it lightly, but the hardware I’ve seen is impressive and without a doubt the best out of HTC, or any Android handset maker for that matter, to date. It’s too early to call who will be on top after this next cycle, but HTC seems well positioned with the HTC One at the top.
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Tarwin - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Well, like you said, they only SEEM hijacked from the iPhone and anyone with experience with HTC phones knows that's completely exaggerated. They have been using aluminum and unibody designs (even "unibodies" that weren't truly that like with the sensation) and more than anything broke away from that last year. They have also been using curved backs for years (ones that come to mind are the sensation, butterfly, 8x, and to a lesser degree the touch pro 2). As for the camera, it would break up the design with the speakers as you mentioned and with their focus that wouldn't work all that well, that or place the camera above the speaker making the phone noticeably larger (and there are those who consider it too big or pushing the limits as is). Personally i prefer thenproper speakers to a centered camera as I tend to use the speakers a lot more than the camera for videochatting. Plus, the only way for someone to give the impression that they are trying to make jeye contact is for them to look directly at the camera means they're not really looking at the screen, take some self-portraits if you don't believe me. The integrated antennas are two strips along top and bottom but of the same material (with the iphone 5 they look different and top and bottom antennas have been used before).I am not saying thatit is the best phone. The front does remind me of the BB Z10 (but nicer in my imo). The camera does sound promising and the detail of the shots I've seen (on gsmarena) do seem quite nice do I do miss the larger of detail, but they are only three pics so we won't know the true quality and whether the trade off was worth it until we get moresamples. Also I would have liked for itnto use a snapdragon 800 but due to thenrelease time I knew that was impossible. I'll likely upgrade come summer or autumn so it might be this phone or something else depending on what else has been announced/released.
larockus - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Who are these people that continue to complain about non-removable batteries? If I bought a spare battery for every phone I have acquired recently they'd be lying around everywhere. Are people that incredibly stupid ? Buy 1 LiOn battery pack that is easily pocketable and it charges EVERY usb cable charged device on the planet. If you seriously need that much direction in life you shouldnt even be researching android phones.nerd1 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Spare battery costs $10 and weighs nothing, You can just swap and go.Battery pack costs $100ish, weighs a ton, and you actually need to plug in your phone for hours.
I think non-removable battery is the worst sin of apple devices - too bad other OEMs are copying them without thinking.
flyingpants - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
No, given the dismal battery life of every single phone on the market, removable batteries are 100% essential.Support for microSD cards are also 100% essential, for doing things like recording 10 hours of 1080p video on your vacation.
Tarwin - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Well, you have to remember the two reasons of using removable batteries:The first is that the phone does not last all day or the time away from a charger that one spends. A portable power pack is a viable solution but definitely more expensive than the replacement battery and requires connecting a cable for a prolonged period of time while a spare battery doesn't.
The second reason for replacement batteries is my mian concern for one, the valid lifespan of the battery as measured in recharge cycles. Normal batteries have 500 recharge cycles before they start to significantly lose their max charge held (and in my experience when they start hold less of ancharge it dimishes ever so quickly). A portable battery pack doesnt help with this, it itself is subject to the same degradation. Supposedly the new bbatteries from LG have a lifespan of 800 charges versus 500 but how do we know if a phone has it or not? I also assume that other battery makers will have similar advancements but I have not heard of them, making it even more difficult to make an informed decision.
repoman27 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
OK, so either you regularly cycle your battery more than once a day or you carry the same phone for more than 18 months. Both are foreign concepts to me. Seriously, who does that?I've replaced nearly every part of an iPhone for various folks over the past few years, but never had to replace a battery. It's never come up once. Which is odd, because I've seen plenty of iPod batteries crap out, but then again people tend to keep those in use far longer than most phones. I much prefer not having a battery door that becomes loose over time.
Tarwin - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Both should be concepts easy enough to grab. I've had vatious friends and acquaintances who charge their phone more than once a day (it SEEMS to be more prevalent with iphones but is definitely not limitednto them.) It also depends on just how much you do with your phone. I spend anywhere between two to six hours in public transport on a given day, plus time waiting for people, meetings, friends. During that time I either read on an ebook reader, or on days which I don't feel like reading a book I listen to music and browse the internet, MAYBE play a game. So yeah, it is easy for me to kill the battery in under a day and therefore need to charge it kore than once a day. Plus other uses I give it.And I don't buy a new phone every year nor every six months. I buy high end phones off contract sothey are not exactly cheap. So yeah, I like them to last, I dont like being wasteful. Plus I like there to be real advancements before upgrading. Recently there are BIG advancements in phones, be it screens, SoC's, Cameras (not as much recently but they keep improving). I didn't upgrade my second smartphone for four years (the first only lasted a year but because it wasnstolen) because I didn't see the point, they were still using ARM11 based SoC's with comparable speeds, and other factors...I went through seven batteries with it (in part because they never lasted a whole day) My next smartphone lasted two years...and the antenna died, plus everything but the screen had greatly advanced. Now my current ohone is ALMOST a year and anhalf old, its battery has been in dire need of replacement for a couple of months but I haven't gotten around to it.
I'll kost likely upgrade this year, but because I see real benefit in doing so. My point is that people who buy off contract, for whatever reason, are more likely to upgrade because of need or real tangible benefits.
peevee - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
" for dramatically better sensitivity in low light "How you figured that? If you downsize (on the camera, computer or simply through output device like display or paper) 8 (or 12) mpix image to the same final resolution as 4 mpix sensor, each final combined pixel will have as much light as on the 4 mpix sensor of the same physical size and efficiency (and nothing indicates that the 4 mpix sensor is made on more efficient technology, in fact, low res allows it to be produced on older, cheaper tech, like 500 nm). Moreover, if you display/print 8 (or 12) mpix image vs 4 mpix image on the media able to take every pixel (for example UltraHD screens or 300 dpi paper bigger than 6in x 8in, the noise from higher-resolution sensor will appear finer-grained, which is better.
And of course lower-res sensor loses when digitally zooming (i.e. using just central portion of the sensor where the lens is also sharper, when even 2x zoom loses 3/4 of pixels). And smartphones don't have any other zoom but digital, so it is important. Zoom 2x, and 4mpix become 1mpix, which is not even enough to fill desktop background.
Where 4 mpix sensor wins over higher res sensors (assuming the same technology) is speed of continuous shooting, amount of memory and power spent per shot, time to downscale the photos for display resolution and display them on the screen, time to e-mail or upload to the services taking full-res photos, consumes less bandwidth - all very valid advantages of lower resolution on a smartphone, all outweighing the (dubious due to super-small sensor and lens limitations) advantages of printing in better quality bigger than 6in x 8in. But just don't say lower res magically provides higher quality, because it does not. Especially on a BSI-CMOS sensor where all per-pixel electronics is on the other side of the chip.
The best approach is the one used in Nokia 808, with much bigger and high-res sensor, where pixels are automatically banded together when all the sensor is used (for low res advantages), but when "zoomed in", they start working individually to maintain resolution high enough.
flyingpants - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
This comment is directed at the people who say (or believe) things like:"The phone should at least last ALL DAY"
"My phone lasts 1.5 days with AVERAGE USE"
Or my personal favourite:
"The battery is great, I can talk for 2 hours, send about 15-30 texts, play about an hour of Temple Run and have 26% left by the end of the day"
No. There is no such thing as "it lasts all day". Unless you literally have your screen on all day, your phone goes to sleep and (assuming decent signal, and no dumb apps/widgets are running) uses only about 1% every few hours. This does not count as the phone battery lasting "all day". There is no such thing as "average use". Everyone's use case is different. Your personal anecdotal usage is irrelevant. And it's unreliable anyway because you probably did not measure your usage properly.
The proper way to measure smartphone battery life is with benchmarks. Anandtech doesn't innovate much in this area and I expect a lot more from my favourite tech website. Even ultra-nerd smartphone editor Brian Klug is guilty of the "It lasts me allll day!" blunder.
Until smartphone battery life during ACTUAL usage at least DOUBLES (let's say 16 hours, to allow for human sleep/phone charging for the other 8 hours of the day), there will be LOTS room for improvement. I look forward to that day.
And by 16 hours of "actual usage", I mean a 16-hour phone call, COMBINED WITH 8-10 hours of simultaneous constant light web-browsing/e-book reading/texting/data messaging, 3 hours of 3D gaming thrown in, an hour or two of 1080p HD video recording, while uploading/downloading a few gigs of data over LTE in the background, along with all the stuff (Bluetooth/NFC/GPS/LTE) enabled. That would virtually guarantee an end to battery anxiety.
All it would take is a larger battery. The DROID RAZR MAXX has a 3300mAh battery and is about 9mm thick, the EB40 battery thickness around 3.8mm. Double it and you get a 6600mAh phone which is 12.8mm thick. (The HTC Evo was 12.7mm when it first came out) It wouldn't add much to the cost of the phone. If no manufacturer does this within the year, I will modify them myself and sell them on ebay for $900.
Tarwin - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Most of your post seems logical and reasinable...until where you define 16 hours as a 16 hour phone call PLUS 8-10 hours of web/etc., PLUS 3 hours PLUS 1-2 hours.I understand that people tend to multi-task but the amount of simultaneous activity whilst on the phone is unreasonable and unrealistic. Personally I'd feel bad for anyone on the otther side of a phone call where the caller is doing all that. I understand you're trying to make a point, but your portrayal, despite the detail is just as unscientific as "it lasts all day" or "average use" (I am not trying to flame nor offend but just point out that we are all subject to the same vagaries and hyperbole)