The HTC One is “the best phone ever made” if you believe HTC’s Europe, Middle East and Africa president Florian Seiche. While the curved aluminium design makes it look the part, HTC’s claims at the launch in London this week seemed a little ambitious.
The event’s timing was no doubt an attempt to trump any announcements at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and to get in ahead of Samsung’s expected release of the Galaxy IV next month.
While many assumed HTC would release a “phablet” this time out, the 4.7-inch design is light, thin and still a smartphone. Indeed the size of the display is to allow more pixels-per-inch than would be the case on larger phones, creating a crisp visual experience.
The 1080p super LCD display with Gorilla Glass screen, which has become standard for HTC phones, welcomes users to HTC’s new BlinkFeed feature on the homepage which, according to Scott Croyle, HTC’s vice-president of design, is one of the major parts of ensuring that smartphones “go from being smart to being alive”.
The feature was referenced by HTC chief executive Peter Chou in London as he talked about how the HTC One represented a move away from previous smartphone designs in “old PC” models of user experience.
BlinkFeed is a visually appealing live feed of information customised to your preferences – be they Facebook updates, news headlines, sports results and more. The layout should be familiar to those who use the popular FlipBoard app, and users have the option to switch back to the more familiar applications-based homepage.
Big bet
Whether this aggregated approach to the interface will work is the big bet for HTC as elsewhere, while there are some impressive features, there isn’t anything revolutionary. The UltraPixel camera comes with an F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens allowing in “300 per cent more light” than previous models so it works better in low-light conditions.
According to HTC, the amount of pixels no longer matters with phones, rather it’s capturing “larger pixels” which has allowed HTC to make this three-fold improvement.
After seeing the theory tested in London against an iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III, there was noticeably more light in the images of a darkened display area. The dark conditions of the launch at the German Gymnasium in King’s Cross, however, didn’t allow for a test of how it compares against its rivals when more light is present.
The low-lit surrounds didn’t do the much-heralded HTC Zoe feature any favours either. Zoe allows users capture hi-res photos and short videos simultaneously. “You’re looking at a living gallery,” said Croyle, who says users can create “real-time highlight videos” which can be automatically set to music, as well as allowing you to edit out people or objects and edit in smiles, which should prove handy for that family member who always grimaces as the shutter is pressed.
It’s a nice feature but when you’re taking each image using the setting, it takes three seconds of footage, is bound to be data heavy and could cause a severe lag on the battery.
Sound experience
Sound-wise, the HTC BoomSound could also affect the 2300aAh battery. Featuring the almost ubiquitous link-up with Beats Audio, BoomSound delivers what Croyle said would be a sound experience miles away from the “tinny” and “distant” sound associated with most smartphones.
“Up until now, audio performance on smartphones has been pretty awful,” he said, and the two front-facing speakers may well offer the best audio experience of any mobile available, as HTC claims. But it’s still very recognisably coming from a phone and won’t have any one throwing out their sound-system to listen to their albums over the phone any time soon.
One area where the sound does look a little more revolutionary is when it comes to HDR recording where dual microphones and audio processing technology seemed to capture clean, crisp sounds (we say seemed to, as the noise at the London launch on Tuesday afternoon made it impossible to genuinely test out the feature) as opposed to the muffled recording heard on other smart devices.
Elsewhere, the TV Sense infrared “blaster” allows the phone to act as a TV remote as well. You can change channel, customise TV listings, record shows and get reminders when a show is on appearing on the BlinkFeed interface.
All powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, there’s 2GB of RAM, with connectivity options including wifi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, infrared, micro-USB and near-field communication.
The smartphone runs on Android 4.1 along with a new Sense user interface, while HTC has integrated the antenna into the metal back of the phone, allowing for a more seamless look to the “crafted aluminium unibody”, though it will be interesting to see if this creates any ill-effects to service when it comes into widespread use.
Initial reaction from Irish operators was positive with O2 calling it “one of the most elegant phones produced in recent times”, and Three’s head of sales, Simon Jones, saying the design “raises the bar” in terms of customer interface and camera performance.
Both, alongside Vodafone, will have the device for sale in mid-March, and while pricing is as yet unconfirmed rumours suggest it should run to about €580.
