I started my series of posts on the HTC One with a brief post with my initial impressions. I’m following that up with a more in depth look at the various aspects of the device.

Design

The HTC One is gorgeous. It has a premium look and feel that is matched by very few other smartphones. Of course comparisons with the Samsung Galaxy S4 are prevalent but that phone’s plastic body cannot compare in looks and styling to the One, with its aesthetically far superior aluminium chassis. The very stylish looking Sony Xperia Z with its excessive amounts of glass also can’t compete with simplicity of the One. The Apple iPhone 5 would come the closest, but its design is beginning to get somewhat dated now.

I’ve had many people see me using the phone while out and about and come up to me ask if it was in fact the new HTC One. Most also commented on how much better it looked than the Galaxy S3/S4 or iPhone, an excellent reflection on the hard work HTC have done in making this a truly great looking phone.

The one drawback to the design is that it doesn’t allow for a replaceable battery but both HTC and Qualcomm have taken steps to ensure maximum battery longevity.

The HTC One has weight of 143g and surprisingly, considering its aluminium body, it does not feel too heavy and sits very nicely in the hand. It is also very well balanced and doesn’t feel like it could slip easily from your grasp.

There is also the widely reported manufacturing issue where the speaker grills on the top front of the phone aren’t flush with the top which then throws out the placement of the screen glass and the bottom speaker grill. This has been fixed with the most recent production runs according to HTC, but if you are buying one of these phones, make sure to inspect the unit before handing over your money just in case.

Android and Sense

The One ships with the Sense 5 skin for Android which is a dramatic improvement over previous versions and I have to say that it is really the first OEM Android skin I like. It looks great and nowhere is this more apparent than navigating through the various settings menus.

HTC have toned down the excessive gradients and garish icons from previous versions and settled for something a little more refined. There is a lot more colour than stock Android which in my opinion is too black and too plain. This strikes a happy medium.

There are a few little bugs, like popup dialogs having the stock Android look and some of them don’t look right since HTC haven’t used the stock fonts and sizes. Hopefully this is something that will be addressed in the upcoming 4.2.2 update.

I touched on Blinkfeed in my previous post. It is a very nice aggregator of many of the services I use. It is no longer my default homescreen but I find myself checking it many times throughout the day, saving me the time of reading through multiple apps. There are plenty of customisation options and 100’s of sources to pick from but I would like to see the ability to add your own choice of RSS feeds to it.

Blinkfeed is what Facebook Home should have been.

With Sense 5 HTC have reduced the number of widgets on the default home screen. Other than the Blinkfeed screen, by default there is only a single home screen with the sole widget on that screen being a Google search box. You can add all the widgets you want, but this is a departure from HTC’s strategy in the past and it is a lot cleaner.

I was disappointed that the One only shipped with Android 4.1.2 and not 4.2.2 given that 4.2 has been available since November, making at this point 4.1 nearly a year old. However HTC sources have said a 4.2 update should be available by the end of May.

The one thing lacking from previous HTC devices and as a former Samsung owner is toggles in the notification drawer. These can be replaced by various apps or the homescreen widgets but it can by a bit annoying to have to leave your app to adjust settings. This will be fixed when we see the 4.2 update with its quick settings panel.

Also one other thing that needs repeating from my previous is the menu softkey that appears in apps that have no menu overflow button (looking at you Facebook). This an annoyance but knowing that HTC have planned a fix for it with the 4.2 update makes it much easier to deal with.

Overall I am very happy and pleasantly surprised with Sense 5, seeing that after previous versions I did not have high hopes. HTC have put in a lot of work and come out with an excellent product which has enhanced the Android experience and taken nothing away from it. For the first time since acquiring an Android device I have no desire to look into an AOSP based ROM as I feel I would lose out on the many refinements and useful features Sense provides. If I had to give the user experience a rating it would score 8.5/10.

Specs and Performance

The HTC One is one of the highest spec’d devices to date and shows it in everyday tasks.

• Network: GSM/WCDMA/LTE (to be enabled by Telecom New Zealand in a future update)
• OS:Android 4.1 with Sense
• CPU:1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600
• Screen:4.7-inch 1920x1080 Super LCD 3 (468PPI)
• RAM:2GB
• Storage:32GB
• Camera:4MP rear ("UltraPixel")/ 2.1MP front
• Battery: 2300 mAh Li-Ion

Thanks to the fast Snapdragon 600 SoC, the UI frame rate is incredibly smooth. I have never seen the system lag or hang on anything and moving through homescreens loaded with widgets is smooth. The overall experience is very polished and very fast which is more than can be said for the One’s rival the Galaxy S4.

I am not a huge mobile gamer, having a high end PC and PS3 for that, but I did install a few games like Temple Run 2 to try out. Again there was no stuttering or lag in any of the games, the One took everything I threw at it and didn’t skip a beat. If you’re a mobile gamer then there will be no cause for disappointment here. In fact the HTC One has come out ahead of the Galaxy S4 in gaming benchmarks.

The One has been criticised for its lack of removable storage but I have found the 32GB to be more than ample. HTC have also integrated cloud support (Dropbox and Flickr) very well. Obviously this is an area where everyone will have a different opinion due to their specific needs for storage. But for myself I find those 32GB to be plenty for music and photos.

Battery Life

Given the large screen and quad-core processor and the relatively average battery size, I was not overly optimistic about battery life. After two weeks of some fairly heavy usage I have been thoroughly impressed.

My daily usage can vary but I frequently send and receive a large number of emails, read and post to forums, stream music and I’m also heavy Viber user.

On average I have been seeing battery life of between 24 hours (6 hours screen time) and 30 hours (4 hours screen time). Compared to previous devices I’ve owned (mostly Galaxy’s) this is far ahead of what I would have expected and is more than satisfactory.

After a little over two weeks with the HTC One, I am more firmly convinced that it is the best smartphone we’ve ever seen. It is not without its small issues but none of those cannot be fixed with a software update.

My next post will look at the excellent camera and HTC Zoe.

About the author

My name is Brad and I’ve been a member of the Geekzone community for nearly nine years including three as a moderator. I was a long time Windows Mobile (yes Windows Mobile, not Windows Phone) user before deciding to try out Android a couple of years ago. I quickly fell in love with the openness and freedom that Android provides and have built and customised my own ROMs from source. I am a web developer, gamer and all round gadget junkie. I hope that my TelecomTech posts will be informative for potential HTC One owners.

The more I use the HTC One the more I realise various mobile OS have much in common. They all have the same basic job to do and in many cases there's only so any ways to to do certain functions. It's very often in the small details where the differences are and even then I'm sure each OS could be configured to do a particular job the same way.

To illustrate this point the HTC One has features that replicate the exact same features in Symbian and Meego. Both the Nokia E7 and the HTC One have a notification blind. Both the Nokia N9 and the HTC One uses a similar swiping action to close apps. The music player on the HTC has a familiar appearance to the music players on both the E7 and N9 and in the case of the N9 some very similar features

Where am I going with this? To me it would seem that most of the differences between various OS is as much to do with what features/actions the design team decided incorporate rather than what the OS can or cannot do or some of the hardware like the camera or in the case of the HTC One the excellent stereo speakers. With this in mind many of my comments in these blogs are not so much a reflection on the OS and more as to how it has been used.

Back to the HTC One. There is no doubt this is one very very nice looking phone. I like the screen size. I had thought that a 4 inch screen was about the biggest practical screen for a phone. However with design improvements allowing the screen to extend almost to the edge of the phone has meant screen sizes increase without a major change in form size. The reduced thickness has also meant a net decrease in bulk meaning it still fits well into my shirt pocket without a problem.

However while bigger is better so far as the screen size goes there are some downsides. The power/lock/unlock button is a stretch to reach especially one handed. Perhaps it would have been better placed on the side. Also I find the phone gets uncomfortable to hold on longer phone calls. It's a fraction too wide for my hands which I'd say are normal size. Also due to the width of the phone I find I have to be careful where I position the phone against my ear otherwise the proximity sensor doesn't work and my ear triggers the screen.

I often use the phone with it lying on a desk. The very nicely curved back does not lend itself well to using a phone in this manner and the phone rocks about as you tap away on the screen. One other drawback of such a clean design is the way some apps work, e.g. there is no dedicated camera button. Also the flash light app which I use a bit but not enough to warrant putting on the quick launch tray requires the phone to be unlocked with demands two actions: the power button then the unlock swipe. The N9 suffers the same problem, you pay the price for a nice clean design.

There has been a lot of comments around forums about a “gap” between the back and the plastic body on some phones. There is no gap on my HTC One. The finish is very good and exudes a quality befitting a flagship phone. The only comment I can make about the finish on mine is there is a small ridge on the top and bottom edges of the phone where the metal plates above and below the screen mate against the plastic body. It’s as if the screen is about 2 thicknesses of paper lower than the plastic body, hardly something most people would notice. If this is all people are complaining about then I think they are being a little bit too fussy.

Looking at the OS and apps now, I find the back function inconsistent. There's often two back buttons but not always. One on the lower left of the screen and depending on the app in use another back button at the top left. One back button would be much better in my opinion. To add to this the “Home” and “Back” button on the lower part of the screen (actually below the actual screen but still on the glass) are not always lit making it difficult to see where to tap the screen for these functions. It appears they only light up in darker conditions however there are plenty of occasions where they need to be lit when there’s plenty of light.

As I mentioned in my last blog I tried using HTC Sync Manager to synchronise with Outlook on my computer. I have given up trying to get Sync Manager to work, while others report it works well for them. It appears that it doesn’t work well on Windows 7 64 bit. My solution so far has been to use Exchange Active Sync with my Windows Live account and use this calendar on my laptop. It’s working pretty well but doesn’t sync my Outlook Notes which is a bit of a pain. It’s a pity HTC don’t provide a reliable syncing software.

Battery life seems OK. Some days I’m just getting through one day, which to me for the battery size isn’t all that much. I guess you have to pay somewhere for the fast smooth OS that the HTC One has. Though to be honest I think the screen rather than the OS is a big hog of power. As can be seen in the screenshot there are two places where the battery level drops sharply when I used the Maps/Navigation. I’ll cover more on the Maps next time.



Let’s talk about the Clock app. There are two things I miss with the Clock. First is not having an analogue option. And second is not being able to display the time when the screen is in standby mode. I’ve got used to using the phone as a clock and I’ve looked to see it there’s an app but cannot find one that does it. I have the phone on the bedside cabinet as my alarm clock and it’s even more of a nuisance having to wake up the phone at night to see the time.

Speaking of the alarm function, the alarm isn’t as refined as what I’ve been used to with my other phones where the alarm tone starts off quietly and slowly increases in volume. The HTC One starts off at full volume which is a bit of a rude wake up call.

Otherwise the built-in Clock app is very good. As well as a clock with alarm there is a World Clock, a Stopwatch and a Timer. It’s a well thought out app that is very functional and easy to use. The alarm time is easy to set, plus there is a list of previous alarm times giving you the option to choose a time without the need to go through the whole process of setting the alarm again. You do have to be careful though that you also choose what days of the week you wish to use a particular alarm. It would be easy to choose a previously set alarm and not have it go off because you haven’t chosen that day for the alarm to be used.



As I was writing this blog the phone died. I went to unlock it to try something and no response. Eventually the vol down + power button brought up a screen that gave me a reboot option so all was good again. I’ve had phones lock up and die before, but only when I’ve been doing something that precipitated it, never while the phone was sitting idle. Let’s hope it was a one off event.

Next time I will blog about the Maps/Navigation, the Calendar and the Camera.

About the author

My name is Alan. I’ve been a Geekzone member for almost eight years (as Technofreak) and have enjoyed contributing and helping people on the site and have also gained a lot of help here myself at the same time. My involvement with technology goes back to another life when I was a Technician for NZPO/Telecom. I still remember the first cellphone I used, a Panasonic, which was the size of a handbag. I was an avid user of Palm handhelds for many years, having owned a 515, a T5 and a TX, all fantastic devices, I only recently pensioned off the TX.  These days I find smartphones extremely useful devices for keeping me in touch, especially being out and about with my job. The HTC One is the first real foray into the world of Android for me, it going to be an interesting and learning experience.

I was very happy to agree when invited to take part in this TelecomTech blog series on the HTC One. I like new toys and playing with technology.

As a result last Tuesday a package arrived in my letter box and inside it there was a white box with a couple of stickers on the side. Very non descript. Inside was a bubble wrap bag containing a phone and a thin metal tag labelled HTC with a sharp pointer to open the SIM tray. Certainly not exciting to look at, however the bubble wrap cleverly disguised a very very sharp looking piece of engineering, the HTC One.

4.7 inches of gorilla glass screen that extends edge to edge with matte finish aluminium panels top and bottom, with a solid matte finish aluminium back panel that is nicely curved to fit your hand. The edges of the aluminium nicely polished. Sandwiched between the glass screen and the back panel is a thin white plastic body. The design is in my opinion very tasteful and gives the phone a nice solid feel. My words certainly don’t do it justice.

Other than the SIM tray there’s only two ports: a 3.5 mm headphone jack and a USB port for charging and computer connections. I did read that this can also be used for HDMI. There’s also an IR port in the power button.

Basic specs for those that don’t know already:

• 4.7 inch gorilla glass screen
• Android OS, v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean), upgradable to v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
• Chipset Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600
• CPU Quad-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300
• Micro sim
• Non-removable Li-Po 2300 mAh battery
• 4 MP camera, LED flash, 1080 HD video 2.1 MP front facing camera
• WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC Infra Red
• Stereo speaker with Beats Audio

First impressions were of a very slick, good looking device and to a large extent those impressions have proved to be spot on. The OS is nice and smooth and generally easy to find your way around. This is the first time I’ve really used Android so in some ways a bit of a learning curve, in as much when something doesn’t work as expected is it me or is it the OS. It’s been my experience that most devices do the same or similar things it’s just a matter of finding out how it’s done on a particular device.

 

By nature I’ve always prodded and poked any new device to find out how things work and as result generally find my way around without too much trouble. Finding my way around HTC One has been pretty straight forward for an Android newbie. Some of the actions/functions are quite similar to both the Nokia E7 and N9. The notification blind on the E7 and the swipe to close on the N9 for example.

The things I like so far: Firstly kudos to Telecom New Zealand. The setup onto the Smartphone Network was simple and straight forward when the SIM was inserted. The phone is unbranded, and the “Your Telecom and Y! TWorld logos installed automatically and away I went. A seamless experience.

No, the 4G option isn’t activated and while it would be good to try out 4G I can understand why it’s not currently available on the phone (Telecom’s 4G network is currently under trial, not open to the public yet).

I like the 4.7 inch screen and the thin profile of the phone itself, it just over 9mm thick. My other phones look small and or chunky (the N9 is 12mm and the E7 13.5mm). I like the way the apps screen scrolls up one “page” or one screens worth of viewing at one time instead of having to watch how far to scroll. The stereo speakers provide a great sound.

However there is one big thing I don’t like: there is no reliable way to sync the Outlook calendar on my laptop to the HTC One. I don’t work the same days each week nor the same time each day and every day can have a different schedule. I rely on having my roster on my phone and my laptop. Outlook is my calendar of choice and I don’t wish to go away from Outlook. Right now the HTC One is really only good as a phone and I need to carry another device with me for the calendar. HTC provide software to sync the calendar (HTC Sync Manager) which continually crashes. I’ll keep exploring avenues to solve the Outlook sync problem.

The camera is only 4 megapixels but does a good job. As with most phones the flash is LED. HTC are using what they call ultrapixel to improve the quality of the photo well above that expected for the pixel count. So far I’ve been very happy with the pictures I’ve taken. The focus function works well by tapping the screen to tell the camera which part of the picture you want to be in focus. These pictures were the first ones I took with the phone, as yet I haven’t had a chance to fully explore the camera to its fullest.





Battery life is a bit over two days between charges. Considering it’s nearly twice the size of the battery in the E7 I would have expected better than that though it’s early days and batteries sometimes have a habit of improving after the first few charges.

So far I’m enjoying the HTC One experience and look forward to putting it to work over the coming few weeks and reporting further on my experiences.  

About the author

My name is Alan. I’ve been a Geekzone member for almost eight years (as Technofreak) and have enjoyed contributing and helping people on the site and have also gained a lot of help here myself at the same time. My involvement with technology goes back to another life when I was a Technician for NZPO/Telecom. I still remember the first cellphone I used, a Panasonic, which was the size of a handbag. I was an avid user of Palm handhelds for many years, having owned a 515, a T5 and a TX, all fantastic devices, I only recently pensioned off the TX.  These days I find smartphones extremely useful devices for keeping me in touch, especially being out and about with my job. The HTC One is the first real foray into the world of Android for me, it going to be an interesting and learning experience.

I have played with a few HTC devices over the years and owned some of the HTC Windows Mobile ones before, but never liked their Android offerings. I found the Sense UI skin to be ugly and the devices to be less than attractive. When I first heard about the HTC One I didn’t have high hopes for it and was more interested in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4 which I thought would be a far superior device.

Fast forward to 30 April when the HTC One arrived in my mailbox. I had seen the images of the One around the web but they did not do it justice. It is a beautiful device.

The design evokes thoughts of an Apple device in its high quality build and styling but it is not as plain as I find the iPhone. I can say without a doubt it is the best looking phone I have seen. It has a good solid feel to it but it is not too heavy with the curved back. It feels very nice and fits well in your hand. It doesn’t have the harsh square feeling of the iPhone 5 and doesn’t have the flimsy plastic feeling of the Galaxy series.

Upon turning on the phone it was clear that HTC had made some big changes from stock Android. The setup wizard has been completely revamped:

Once you finish the setup you are presented with HTC’s new home screen, called BlinkFeed. It is a nice social and news feed aggregator in the style of Flipboard. It supports Facebook and Twitter as well as a large variety of news and info sites across a range of categories.

BlinkFeed is set as the default home panel although this can be changed to one of the more traditional style panels for shortcuts and widgets which I have done. I love Blinkfeed and feel it is one of the best implementations I have seen (Facebook take notice) but I also like quick access to my most used apps and have a preference for a cleaner home screen and it is just a swipe away.

One of the other big changes HTC have made is to the app drawer and it has caused a bit of debate. The drawer no longer has horizontal pagination but is now vertical. The clock from Blinkfeed is also firmly positioned at the top of the drawer and options for the layout can be exposed under the clock by pulling the drawer down slightly. The only issue I have with the new layout is the default grid arrangement of 3x4 which makes no sense, it was quickly changed to 4x5.

Another change HTC has made has been to the typical capacitive buttons. There is no menu button, only back and home, which also serves as search (long press) and recent apps (double tap).

As a result, apps like Facebook (shown left) that do not have a quick menu button result in a Nexus style softkey area with just menu appearing at the bottom of the screen. It is not a great implementation and gives an inconsistent feel. Some of the blame must lie with app developers who don’t conform to Google’s standards but this is something HTC needs to resolve.

Pre-release firmware gave users the option to make the back button via long press or double tap act as a menu button. I would like to see the return of this option ASAP.

Upon reflection this is the only drawback to the HTC One I have come across so far.

There is a lot I want to cover in depth, such as the excellent Ultrapixel camera, apps, the revamped UI, audio and connectivity. These will come later in my next blog posts here on TelecomTech.

I will finish off this post by saying that from the three days I have been using the HTC One I am more impressed with it than I have ever been by a mobile device. Usually after getting a new device I will have rooted it flashed a custom kernel or even ROM. Obviously I can’t do this while reviewing this one (to keep it “stock”) but this is the first time I haven’t even had the urge to do it.

Without a doubt the HTC One comes closer to perfection than any device before it. My Galaxy has been permanently replaced and as I told somebody else, my love affair with Samsung is over.

The HTC One is coming to Telecom New Zealand and will be available online and in Telecom stores from 7th May.

About the author

My name is Brad and I’ve been a member of the Geekzone community for nearly nine years including three as a moderator. I was a long time Windows Mobile (yes Windows Mobile, not Windows Phone) user before deciding to try out Android a couple of years ago. I quickly fell in love with the openness and freedom that Android provides and have built and customised my own ROMs from source. I am a web developer, gamer and all round gadget junkie. I hope that my TelecomTech posts will be informative for potential HTC One owners. 

In this short video Daniel Jundt, HTC Creative director explains how the came up with the design for the new HTC One smartphone:





About the author

Mauricio Freitas runs Geekzone and blogs on freitasm.com. He loves anything related to technology, specially in the mobile space.