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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flyingpants - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
I didn't mean to imply my 16 hours thing was was a realistic workload. It's just an extreme example of the most you could possibly do with a phone. It's not necessary to go that far, but if any manufacturer did, it would put battery anxiety to bed permanently. No matter what you did, you wouldn't be able to kill the phone within a day unless you ran something that consumed 100% CPU the whole time.repoman27 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
"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."Whoa, what site have you been reading? I'm not sure there's anyone on the planet more obsessed with battery life testing than Anand. It takes time to do those tests, they're not completed yet. This article is titled "Hands on and Impressions" not "Brian Klug's Definitive Review". This piece is just to coincide with the media event earlier.
flyingpants - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Well... GSM Arena for one. They do a video playback test (screen-on time!) and a standby test. Anandtech does neither of these.As for someone out there being more obsessed with battery life testing than Anand (or Brian), I can safely say that I am. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten to charge my phone, or forgot to bring a charger, or had to make a quick stop to charge at a Starbucks or something.. Or the amount of times I've had to text someone "Hey, I'll talk to you later, I have 1% battery". Then I'm just unreachable.
Phones have already replaced GPS devices/iPods/Point & Shoot cameras for many people.. Soon they will in effect start to replace computers as well. Within 3-5 years we'll have Ivy bridge-like performance on phones, using them with wireless displays and keyboards.. Wouldn't it be great if we established a "16-hour actual usage life" precedent before all that, while it's still relatively easy?
I use an app called My Battery Analyser and it does nothing except chart each time the battery drops by 1% for easy readability, and give you a figure of % drop per hour. This is very useful for testing how much charge a specific app uses, or finding out if your phone is mysteriously losing 5% charge overnight when it's supposed to be perfectly idle. I've done some testing with interesting results. For example, using Skype over 3G on my SGS3 gives a consistent 23%/hr drop, or just over 4 hours of life. Terrible! But guess what? Heavy SMSing (0% Brightness, everything OFF) doesn't fare much better.
I'd like to see a test just sending SMS constantly every few seconds with the screen on. MANY people text more than talk nowadays.
A test that measures screen time while displaying mostly static content, like an e-book, would be nice. The Anandtech web browsing test is useful as a comparative tool, but if I were ever to spend 5 hours browsing the internet, most of it would probably be spent looking at the same page for at least minutes at a time, not loading new pages every 10 seconds.
And why not do a video playback test? I remember being really confused by this.
I'd also love to see a proper standby test, to see if the software pre-installed on the phone (widgets and Samsung apps and whatnot) causes drops in standby life, and exactly how much % you are losing per day to this nonsense. This could be done with My Battery Analyser or an equivalent app. You'd charge the phone to 100%, turn everything off but leave Wifi on, reboot it, put it to sleep, wait for it to discharge. Every modern smartphone should last at least a week.
I don't know what you refer to at the end, I didn't mention anything about the tests for the HTC One being complete or not.
xaml - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
"While the previous HTC One series’ industrial design and performance was top notch (...)"Well, my beautiful black One S peeled itself, all replacements seemed to, too and so I ended up with the silver version that was neither as nice looking or as comfortable to touch.
DukeN - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Once again I refuse to buy anything with Beats on it.Lame, HTC, lame.
bigboxes - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
So, you read the whole article, saw what an awesome phone it was, found out that it had Beats Audio and decided it was a deal killer. Hint: You can turn off Beats Audio.Lame, DukeN, lame.
themossie - Thursday, February 21, 2013 - link
You won't buy anything with an equalizer and higher line-out voltage? The line-out voltage is even useful... and if you don't like the equalizer, turn it off.repoman27 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Or you can simply make 1M devices in one year by having 1,000 machines in your factories. (52 * 6 * 12 * 1000 = 3,744,000 hours of CNC time) And your hourly rates have nothing to do with the going rates in China at the moment.flyingpants - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Yes, because I'm sure HTC manufactures only one phone body at a time, at a cost of $80 each. Are you out of your mind?noblemo - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
I am a huge proponent of attentive industrial design and incorporation of non-synthetic materials, so the machined aluminum body with front-facing speakers commands big love. Although the 2013 HTC One is presumably well positioned against the iPhone and Galaxy S4, my next smartphone purchase will likely be either the next Nexus or a pen-toting phablet. The tradeoff is fairly straightforward: either I save $300 on an extremely capable handset with rapid OS updates (i.e. Nexus 5/X), or I spend $600+ on a multi-tasker like the Note III. YMMV