The HTC One: A Remarkable Device, Anand’s mini Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 21, 2013 4:49 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- HTC One
Final Words and the Galaxy S 4 Comparison
The One is without a doubt the best Android smartphone I’ve ever used. HTC’s build quality and materials choices have been steadily improving over the past couple of years and I honestly don’t know a more fitting name for its latest flagship other than the One - it’s the one to get. Even iPhone users looking for something different might be tempted by the One.
For me it’s the camera performance and the highlights reel that really seal the deal. The fact that the One is an excellent looking device built out of top notch materials is just icing on the cake.
The rest of the spec list is equally fitting. I’m glad to see 802.11ac make the list. The great speakers and display are both useful and impressive.
Sense took a real step towards subtlety with 5.0, and it’s finally at a point where I don’t really mind the customizations. My preference is still for vanilla Android, but the latest iteration of Sense is far closer than it has ever been. The real trick is ensuring timely updates with major Android releases. If you’re an infrequent smartphone upgrader, the Nexus line is still the best option there.
Despite how well the One does in the build quality, looks and camera departments, HTC has an uphill battle ahead of itself. Samsung is clearly the dominating incumbent in the Android space, and it has the luxury of an order of magnitude higher quarterly revenues to support its smartphone business. If there ever was a David v Goliath race in the smartphone space, it would be between HTC and Samsung.
Zoe and the highlights reel are great features that need marketing to demonstrate and spread their word. The litany of new camera and interaction features that accompany the Galaxy S 4 will likely translate very well to cleverly crafted TV ads. I’d argue that HTC’s camera features (great low light performance, highlights reel) are more useful to me personally, but Samsung’s features (touchless scrolling, dual camera, smart pause) are easier sells to the mainstream smartphone market. Similarly, design and materials choices are obvious advantages for the One, but it’s easier to market a thinner and lighter phone.
Ultimately, HTC appears to have built a great phone for enthusiasts and one that can be marketed, with some effort, to the mainstream. Samsung, by comparison, seems to have its targets set squarely at the mainstream and it has the features and the marketing budget to really capture the attention of that audience. You can argue about the merits of features like the ability to automatically pause video based on whether or not you’re looking at it - personally I’d take better camera performance - but that’s a much easier feature to explain in a TV commercial than why larger pixels matter.
The One is expected to be widely available beginning next month.
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DEECEE - Thursday, March 28, 2013 - link
Pentile AMOLED at 1080P on a 5 inch display is ONLY a problem in tech spec, not in actual user experience. I normally don't look at a phone screen through a microscope, and neither should you to care about Pentile AMOLED.Montago - Friday, March 29, 2013 - link
I've owned a Nokia Lumia 800 that has an AMOLED Pentile display -- its HORRIBLE !the resolution might have been the real problem (480x800 pix) - text was jagged and unreadable - some pictures looked good, others didn't ...
The problem is that you don't notice this problem when testing in the store, it gets anoying over time when you start noticing... i don't know if the SGS4 monitor has the same problems, but i bet they are there.
KoolAidMan1 - Thursday, March 21, 2013 - link
Samsung puts among the worst displays in their smartphones. What are you talking about?Forget about 440 PPI making the Pentile drawbacks irrelevant, their color calibration and contrast are terrible as well.
danbob999 - Thursday, March 21, 2013 - link
their contrasts are the best, given that blacks are perfect (no backlight)B3an - Thursday, March 21, 2013 - link
Well yeah, the blacks are vastly superior on Samsung's AMOLED (as you literally can't get any more black being as theres no backlight) but that's not the same thing as contrast balance. The contrast on my S3 and my S2 before it was pretty badly calibrated, and it varys a lot with each phone as my friend also has an S3 and the contrast is different (poor quality control). Contrast on the One X and iPhone 5 are better calibrated, and colours too. I'm sure it's the same with the One.But then with AMOLED you also get better pixel response times. So theres trade-offs for both LCD and AMOLED. If Samsung just fix the colour and contrast calibration then their displays definitely have the potential to be the best as the underlying OLED tech is superior to LCD in so many ways. I don't think the colours and contrast have anything to do with OLED itself, just that Samsung do not properly calibrate their displays.
BTW the S4 has uses a new diamond shaped pentile display layout, meaning the gaps between each sub pixel are much smaller (the larger gapes caused the fuzzyness/jaggies on the S3 display and others). Meaning the S4's pentile display will look better than the S3's pentile display even if it was still the same resolution. This combined with 1080p res should make it irrelevant if it's pentile or not as i doubt you'd be able to see the difference with human eyes.
robinthakur - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
But that is what people said about the S3 when it first came out and I could see it immediately when I bought it. Coming from an iPhone the lack of quality display on the S3 is jarring. Text looks so much worse, it really ruins webpages and books.krumme - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
There is certainly room for improvement here, as text imho is not sharp enough. But as explained earlier, that will probably be history now for s4. Besides, the brightness seems to have improved a good deal also. Thats perhaps more important for most people.CeriseCogburn - Monday, March 25, 2013 - link
The galaxy note 2 looks better than both of them.krumme - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
As you have an S3, you might want to change the color profile to neutral. There is something besides the calibration and the black/white dynamics. There is dynamics of the individual colors, and thats what makes a lively picture and real world resemblance.You better get used to oled, because its comming to all high-end phones in the future.
piroroadkill - Friday, March 22, 2013 - link
Blacks can't be more black? Nope.I have a phone with a Super AMOLED 720p screen, and I'd wish for a good quality LCD in a heartbeat. My old Desire HD's screen has far, far better colour and appearance. Only the size and sharpness is better on my new one.
AMOLED degrades, horribly, leaving a tint.
Also, blacks aren't as black as you think. Turn on your AMOLED phone at night in a totally dark room, put a totally black screen up on it. It still has a faint grey glow, and infact, now you'll notice the horrible degradation of the screen - it manifests on mine as what look like "ink blots" only visible in very dark situations. Confirmed by many others around the internet.
Do not champion OLED. It's a technology leading us to planned obsolescence.