UPDATE (12/2013): I have gone back to an iPhone. I was fed up with the many problems encountered with HTC One and their lack of support. Any time I would contact them, if their support page actually was working, their answer would be that I need to download a different app or that it’s the app’s fault. They took no responsibility for their product. Here’s a few things that happened: Google Voice was not able to work as my voicemail carrier, they said it was Google Voice’s fault. When I got the built-in call forwarding to go to my Google Voice number, it worked for a little while, but unknowingly for a week it just stopped working and anyone who called my number got a busy signal. GROUP MESSAGING DOES NOT WORK, of course it was convenient for them to say get a different app, but if I have a problem them it’s the apps fault, like the google voice example. They take not responsibility. Many times my sim card would would disappear on the screen losing all signal, I would have to remove it and put it back in. Writing text messages, if the screen went to sleep or you locked the phone in the middle of typing you would lose the entire message you were in the middle of typing. I have no patience for something that is supposed to make my life easier and it ends up making it more difficult. I just ordered an iPhone 5s!)
HTC whhaaaaat? HTC is a relatively new comer to the smartphone scene but it’s newest phone, the HTC One, is getting great reviews. It’s only been available for a few days but the HTC One has beaten the iPhone 5 here and Samsung’s new phone here.
I have owned the iPhone 3GS for 3 years and after researching and reviewing all the phones on the market, I grabbed the HTC One. You can read all the technical specs here, but what’s it like to use this thing?
Usability
After a few days of owning this guy, I am very impressed and will not regret buying this phone. It has a massive screen, great speakers, and a great camera with many built-in features.
In my hands, the HTC One is a bit awkward to hold after owning the smaller but heavier and thicker iPhone. The HTC One’s screen is so tall it is actually easier for me to type holding the phone vertically instead of long-ways where my thumbs have to travel further. The screen is so sharp, looking at it is like wearing corrective lenses compared to my old iPhone.
For the most part, the HTC One is as customizable as any other smartphone. The one negative I heard was the “Blink Feed” home screen, that it lacked customization. It only allows certain websites and newsfeeds to populate the home page (along with your personal facebook and twitter accounts). Ideally I should be able to populate stories from my Feedly account, but Blink Feed seems to work well enough so far and I just use the Feedly app to see the websites I follow.
The speakers are unlike any other phone in quality and volume. Unlike the iPhone speakers that shoot sound away from the viewer, the HTC One has two speakers that project out from the front of screen, what a novel idea! I am jamming out in the shower now!
Camera
One of the main reasons I upgraded my phone was for a better camera. The first photo I took with the HTC One was with Dave Matthews:
Dave is recording at the studio across the hall from where I work at Moonbot and he stopped to take a break and see what we are working on. Not a bad way to kick off some epic picture taking that is in store for this camera! Follow me on twitter to see what I’m up to next!
The “Ultrapixel” camera is fantastic! It has many built-in features like filters and ‘Zoe‘ that is a button to press before you take a photo and it will also take a 3 second video. This video can be used to create a slideshow later, or even cooler, in a group photo it can be used to choose what face each person should have for the final photo to ensure everyone’s eye’s are open and mouths are smiling.
You can set camera options like white balance and ISO and there are HDR and Sweep Panorama modes that you would normally need to buy an app to perform. The video can even be edited to do slow motion and can record in 1080p or 720p and the camera is great in low light!
Surprises
Yesterday I was in a meeting and opened the “Notes” app to and since the phone is synced to my calender, I was prompted with a screen that said “it looks like you’re in a meeting, do you want to associate your notes with this meeting?” Boom! Now that’s a “smartphone.”
I’m big on conserving battery power, so I turn off all push notifications. The HTC One has a ‘peak hours’ option for pushing email. For example, I do not allow push notifications on my personal, I manually update that to save battery. But I want to receive work emails in realtime, so I can set it to push those emails but only during a ‘peak hours’ time like weekdays between 7am and 6pm, otherwise it’s set to manual push and saving battery.
Switching from an iPhone?
Turn off your iMessage! After switching to the HTC One I was still receiving text messages on my wifi-connected iPhone through iMessage. It wasn’t until I disabled iMessages on my iPhone that I could receive text messages on my HTC One from contacts that own an iPhone.
HTC provides HTC Sync Manager to transfer all your music and contacts to your new HTC One. It isn’t a great application. It crashed a couple times and is slow, but it gets the job done. I did lose all the apps I had bought from the iTunes store and now I will have to re-purchase them using Google Play’s store. That cost is trivial compared to the cost of the phone so I really see it as an extra little tax and I won’t need to repurchase many camera apps since so many are now built-in to the phone.
I give the HTC One a 9 out of 10! Subscribe to my website in the top right sidebar to receive notifications of new posts.
Here are HTC’s videos describing some features:
Here’s CNET’s review: