***The Official HTC One Thread***

[kona786]

Taking the SLR to playschool is a bit of an overkill isn't it jonney?

 

[jonneymendoza]

Taking the SLR to playschool is a bit of an overkill isn't it jonney?

play school indoors? good luck taking a decent image of your child running around in poor lite light

 

[Robbo]

I am certainly not using a tiny 5 inch screen to read and reply to your post LOL

It's dead easy. Not sure how you can struggle unless you have eyesight problems.

Yes most places i take my DSLR, psp no and laptop or tablet no because when i go out i dont go out and read this forum 24/7 like some others do(each to their own) and browse the net and read such threads here when i am at home.

So you never go out and need internet access?

Games? i dont play much nowadays and certainly dont play games while i am out. If i do i use my ps vita which is tiny and easy to carry around.

Yeah, it's "tiny" - it won't go in many pockets.

You go have fun taking rubbish images on your awsome s4/One/iphone device and i will use a proper DLSR to capture stuff.

Way to miss the point again, but I'd wager my phone pictures would still look better than any you take on a DSLR.

I'm totally baffled by your position, it's completely and utterly ridiculous and strange. Then again, it is you so I'm not at all surprised. Hardly anyone carries around a DSLR camera with them, even photographers don't tend to unless they think they'll need it. Professional photographers will comfortably advocate the use of a phone anyway as it's infinitely more convenient day to day.

This is before we even factor in the price issue.

Taking the SLR to playschool is a bit of an overkill isn't it jonney?

 

[dasyad]

I use mine for phone/SMS, MP3 Music and receiving emails. i don't reply to them and i certainly don't read peoples essays in forums.

A sentence or two i can read fine but essays i do not.

I don't use the camera on my one x or any phone because they are crap. simple as that. The keyboards on all mobile devices are also crap compared to a proper full desktop pc keyboard, hence i hardly reply or type stuff on it.

I am certainly not using a tiny 5 inch screen to read and reply to your post LOL

If that's the way you roll then fair enough

But why read emails if you won't reply to them?

Seriously get a Nokia 100 and an iPad Nano and live in battery nirvana.

 

[Nexus18]

Wow this thread is just continuing to go down hill now but it is rather amusing at the same time


Regarding the menu tweak/google, I posted a link or something way back in this thread but supposedly google want the menu button to be "visible" and that is why HTC removed it, not confirmed though but it kind of makes sense.... Will try to find it again....



PS don't **** of man bags!

Spoiler

They are mojo!

 

[jonneymendoza]

If that's the way you roll then fair enough

But why read emails if you won't reply to them?

Seriously get a Nokia 100 and an iPad Nano and live in battery nirvana.

Some emails i reply by calling the person.

All i am saying is that PC's, dslr's etc are items i use more specific to my needs and dont care about camera quality on a mobile phone.

The screen i care about but not on the amount of text you can see on the screen but how clear the text is.

These devices have reached there limit in terms of screen size. i cannot read essays on a 5inch screen. i can read on a 10 inch tablet all day long.

I dont know about you but i have multiple items for specific purposes.

Who in here honestly lives with just there smartphone? No one. You all have pc's, tablets and some point and shoot dedicated camera.

No one here lives with just a smartphone lol

 

[jonneymendoza]

Wow this thread is just continuing to go down hill now but it is rather amusing at the same time


Regarding the menu tweak/google, I posted a link or something way back in this thread but supposedly google want the menu button to be "visible" and that is why HTC removed it, not confirmed though but it kind of makes sense.... Will try to find it again....



PS don't **** of man bags!

Spoiler

They are mojo!

this is my man bag

 

[Robbo]

Some emails i reply by calling the person.

All i am saying is that PC's, dslr's etc are items i use more specific to my needs and dont care about camera quality on a mobile phone.

The screen i care about but not on the amount of text you can see on the screen but how clear the text is.

These devices have reached there limit in terms of screen size. i cannot read essays on a 5inch screen. i can read on a 10 inch tablet all day long.

I dont know about you but i have multiple items for specific purposes.

Who in here honestly lives with just there smartphone? No one. You all have pc's, tablets and some point and shoot dedicated camera.

No one here lives with just a smartphone lol

Hardly anyone has all those items with them at all times, which is our point. It's not hard to understand.

Just because you choose to lug them all around with you in a bag wherever you go is irrelevant.

 

[dasyad]

Some emails i reply by calling the person.

All i am saying is that PC's, dslr's etc are items i use more specific to my needs and dont care about camera quality on a mobile phone.

The screen i care about but not on the amount of text you can see on the screen but how clear the text is.

These devices have reached there limit in terms of screen size. i cannot read essays on a 5inch screen. i can read on a 10 inch tablet all day long.

I dont know about you but i have multiple items for specific purposes.

Who in here honestly lives with just there smartphone? No one. You all have pc's, tablets and some point and shoot dedicated camera.

No one here lives with just a smartphone lol

I don't live with just my smartphone but many times it is the only device I will have available to me, therefore it's important to me that it can do various tasks reasonably.

 

[Oxide™]

I'm one of those sad okes who has probably read all the posts in this thread...

(and I must admit Nexus18 has been an oracle of information)

however...

Sheezuz guys! 90% of the posts in here are about a camera on a mobile device yes I get it! you want good pics while out and about and don't want to have to carry around your dedicated DSLR - so do I! take away the 'slightly' below average camera quality compared to other phones for a sec - it's a great phone otherwise!

OK, I have the small gap at the top but you know what? it's still a great phone!

I think the problem is - you guys are proper on the ball with mobile phone upgrades - so maybe the jump from an HTC One S or Iphone5 or SGS3 to a ONE isn't that big - but think of the children coming off 2 year contracts and DHD's - for them (like me) this is a big step up!

Maybe our upgrade cycles are just out of whack - my cycle is 'Get the best phone when my 2 year contract is up' (but do my research and maybe wait a bit longer for the right phone - which I've done since September when I heard 1080p screens were near) so for me this is a big jump.

But for you guys getting the latest and greatest every 6 months, maybe this isn't a big jump for you - this doesn't mean it's still a big jump in the greater scheme of things though.

Could we please re-focus this thread on the general greatness of the HTC One rather than specifically that it's camera isn't as good as the last greatest phone? (Am I in the minority because I think low light pictures taken at raves/concerts/pubs posted on facebook are more important than uber resolution quality daylight images?)

 

[TheOtherOption]

Having just read Brian Klugs review in full I'm glad to see someone who has taken the time to be as thorough and honest about his experiences with the One!

Really great review - the best I've read thus far to be honest ...

 

[Em3bbs]

Well that is interesting if true?? Link?

It's true, Nexus18 is spot on.

 

[dasyad]

Could we please re-focus this thread on the general greatness of the HTC One rather than specifically that it's camera isn't as good as the last greatest phone? (Am I in the minority because I think low light pictures taken at raves/concerts/pubs posted on facebook are more important than uber resolution quality daylight images?)

It's not that it isn't as good as the latest but rather some of the images we've seen show it to not even be as good as things from last year or the year before. My personal issue with the camera is that it seems to miss out on some detail due to having less pixels, yet something like the 920 can keep the detail and have good low light performance.

I do appreciate though that there is some software issues outstanding, and in some cases it seems hardware too hence earlier I said I would wait a little while and see if it improves.

Overall I think it is a great phone but the camera feels a bit hit and miss. I'd rather they would have gone for 8 "ultrapixels" and just made the phone a little thicker or whatever they would have had to do to get it in

 

[Oxide™]

It's not that it isn't as good as the latest but rather some of the images we've seen show it to not even be as good as things from last year or the year before. My personal issue with the camera is that it seems to miss out on some detail due to having less pixels, yet something like the 920 can keep the detail and have good low light performance.

but my point is, who cares if it's not the greatest picture quality right now - software updates may well correct it? it's still good enough and besides, the 920 is a dedicated camera on a mobile (and 1.4mm thicker) rather than a mobile with a camera (imho I'd prefer the latter)

I do agree though that - to play it safe - HTC should have used 8MP ultrapixels but then mobile thickness may have been an issue so maybe 4MP was the best compromise all things considered - I honestly think this camera issue is being blown far too much out of proportion guys

 

[Robbo]

I honestly think this camera issue is being blown far too much out of proportion guys

This happens with all features on all phones that are released nowadays. Your average person shouldn't worry too much about it.

 

[Oxide™]

This happens with all features on all phones that are released nowadays. Your average person shouldn't worry too much about it.

Well then consider me average

 

[Nexus18]

Well put oxide, the camera is most definitely the heat of the discussion so far in here, it seems to be the only thing that people are talking about and tbh it needs to stop (we are all just going around in circles now) as all the other important/good things are being overlooked. I won't be repeating myself or going into any more serious debates about the camera any more as I am tired of posting the same stuff over and over again and tracking down the same articles to back up my points and Brian has pretty much combined all the info. in this thread regarding the camera in his review so people can read that if they want to understand the camera and see the pros/cons of what HTC have done.

You either like what HTC have done with the camera or don't.


Oh and I am with you on that first part (have the most posts in here by a **** load too )



For people who don't want to read all the anandtech review (I can see why some wouldn't! ), here are some other important aspects of the phone, have tried to keep the main key points:

Spoiler

Design, build, perceived quality:

The HTC One’s fit and finish are phenomenal. There, I said it. You almost don’t even need to read the rest of this section. In my books, fit and finish goes, in descending order of quality, metal, glass, and finally plastic. Or instead of plastic, polymer, or polycarbonate, or whatever overly-specific word we use to avoid saying plastic.

There’s no matching parts together from different cuts to achieve an optimal fit, everything in the main chassis is cut as one solid unit. It’s the kind of manufacturing story that previously only the likes of Apple could lay claim to, and the HTC One is really the first Android device which reaches the level of construction quality previously owned almost entirely by the iPhone.

The only place there’s some fit and finish weakness is in the top and bottom front facing aluminum pieces, which aren’t part of the CNC machining that the rest of the chassis undergoes. Instead I suspect these are adhered onto the rest of the phone after the display, PCB, and battery are inserted into the back case. The result is that there is unfortunately a small gap between where those parts come together, but we’re talking about a tiny, tiny gap.

HTC won’t disclose exactly the alloy of aluminum used in the One, however it feels well hardened and not as prone to deformation as other aluminum devices. That’s of course the tradeoff with going to aluminum – to make the material easily machinable, it needs to be more malleable. Of course, more malleable is great for making machining easy, but not so good for longevity or resistance to deformation when dropped. In the case of the One, HTC says it is using an alloy of its own composition which it believes is the optimal balance between the two.

An obvious benefit to aluminum construction is that there is no flex in the HTC One. With the One X and One X+, I developed a fidget with those devices where I would pop the display out of the plastic unibody all the time when standing idle or needed to do something with my hands, which is literally the way to disassemble them. That or I would flex the thin backside of those phones by pressing on them to take up the gap between the plastic frame and battery. With the One there is no opportunity for me to fidget and semi-disassemble the phone, no flex if I push really hard on the back, or anywhere on the device. This is what build quality is about, making an actually solid device.

The HTC One industrial design is striking and unique, and that’s an understatement. There have been other largely-metal phones in 2013, and for that note, other largely-metal phones from HTC in 2012, but to call them similar looking or remotely similar to the HTC One is nothing short of a hilarious oversimplification. The HTC One feels unlike anything else on the market and marries just the right display size to just the right material choices and industrial design. The HTC One is without a doubt the first Android phone I’ve felt since the Nexus One that blew me away in terms of fit, finish, and materials choice. There’s something inherently valuable about metal that I can’t convey, and those materials choices drive the rest of the experience so strongly that I can’t help but get stuck on it every time I pick the phone up.

Battery life/screen brightness:

The thing about HTC and battery life specifically is that as of late they’ve been penalizing themselves on the display side of things, which is the single largest consumer of power in a device. A number of other OEMs artificially clamp display brightness just to set a better higher bound for battery life, and for example HTC’s display auto brightness function doesn’t have as much dynamic range as the slider being actuated manually. The result is a phone that’s brighter than it needs to be a lot of the time. On the software side HTC does have system optimizations that do things like batch up network traffic so that the phone isn’t going into a constant cellular connected state and burning power for an app written by a developer who doesn’t know anything about cellular connection state tables, and strategies like suspending the cellular data connection when on WiFi or when the phone is in standby for long periods.

Sense V5:

The combination of that pivot bar UI pattern, Roboto Condensed, as well as overall flat design, really make Sense 5 feel the most like Android 4.x of the skins I’ve seen in this last cycle or two. I have been using Sense 5 for a while now and don’t have a problem with it, in fact, it’s just about the cleanest and most sensible skin I’ve seen on Android to date. If you don’t like BlinkFeed, you can basically configure the home screen so that a widget panel is what you’ll see instead, however I’ve found myself discovering content from BlinkFeed far more often than expected. Now if only AnandTech was included as of the feed sources…

Charging:

The HTC One definitely takes a while to charge. What’s interesting however is that the charge curve gets the One to 85–90 percent under the normal 3 or so hours, it’s that last ten percent that takes forever. I also have confirmed that Qualcomm’s Quick Charge is not being used on the HTC One, for whatever reason, possibly to maximize compatibility with the portable USB battery chargers that are now proliferating. The PMIC is there, it just isn’t enabled. My guess would be that HTC wants to prioritize battery longevity and minimize any even potential extra wear since the battery on the One is sealed inside.

Regarding audio recording:

I’m very impressed with the audio recording quality of the HTC One. I took the One out and recorded video in a setting so loud (~155 dBA) that it would cause hearing damage without protection and absolutely positively saturates just about every smartphone camera I can throw at it, and even higher end microphones on dedicated video cameras. You just don’t hear anything other than clipping on most devices. The One doesn’t saturate at all in this setting, amazingly. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what setting this was based on the spectogram.

I ran a frequency sweep in front of some very loud speakers from 20 Hz to 20 kHz and recorded the output on the iPhone 5 and HTC One to see if HTC’s claims about frequency response also are valid. Turns out, they are, and I didn’t realize it but Apple cuts microphone output at around 16 kHz and can’t resolve above it, in addition we can see lots of power which is entirely just noise. The HTC One meanwhile goes up to around 22 kHz, also encodes more lower frequency components as well during the beginning of the sweep, and has less noise. There’s a definite audible difference in the recording made by the iPhone 5 and HTC One if you can resolve these frequencies on your speakers.

Display:

By the numbers the HTC One is better calibrated (lower Delta-E is better in the table) than the One X or DNA, and the color space comes very close to sRGB out of the box. It is demonstrably better than the predecessor in every way, and amazingly gives the iPhone 5 a run for its money in saturation and the GMB color checker card. Inexcusable however is the 8000K+ white point, which is blue, although during use I never have looked at the One and thought wow this is really blue.

Regarding throttling:

The good news is that none of the thermal throttling we saw on the APQ8064 based Nexus 4 was present on the HTC One. Curiously enough, the thermald.conf file is now stored as a binary file - which means we can't get direct access to it. Either way, although the One can get warm during heavy CPU/GPU workloads, it doesn't throttle while running GLBenchmark which meant our freezer can remain on food cooling duties for this review.

Antenna, signal, wifi stuff:

In my time with the device, I’ve been very impressed with cellular RF performance and haven’t ever seen the handset be affected by detuning from holding it. The combination of receive and transmit diversity along with active tuning means that deathgrip is basically a thing of the past in metal phones like the One.

Interestingly enough the One is actually more sophisticated than the iPhone 5 in this regard by combining both 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi/BT and transmit/receive cellular into this top antenna.

Speakers:

Beats as of late has started to translate to substantially different hardware with real improvements. The One includes a number of audio features that make it stand out from the norm, starting with an obvious industrial design feature — dual front facing speakers.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to state that the dual front facing speakers on the One are phenomenal. Without even making any audio measurements, it was obvious immediately that they represent a substantial audible improvement over just about every other smartphone purely because they’re stereo, and they’re good speakers at the same time.

With the One I am equally shocked at just how much of a difference stereo makes on a smartphone, even given the small separation distance that the size of the One provides. Consuming media on the device or showing a video to a friend is so much better with stereo sound, and it’s hard to characterize just how noticeable the difference is since you need to be in front of it to experience it.

 

[Oxide™]

In other news - battery usage has been superb

2 days and 2 hours I have 13% battery left

with usage details of...

 

[dasyad]

I don't think it's being blown out of proportion, for all the people saying they're not happy you've probably got an equal amount saying it is fine. Hell I'm not even happy with the S4 because the field of view appears rather narrow

Yeah I agree the performance might improve that's why I'm willing to wait a while. Right now I still prefer the HTC One because I prefer the aestethics of it. Although I think with the Jelly Bean update for my SII I reckon I could squeeze another year out of it

 

[Nexus18]

Nice oxide

Any idea as to how long screen was on for? GSam battery is a good app as well as better battery stats.

That is my biggest and only annoyance with the new sense, the battery graph (the power saver notification in the notification tray is annoying too.....), utterly stupid, it looked and worked far better the way it was before (pretty much stock android layout), why did htc have to change it

BTW how do you extend the notifications i.e. show the more detailed look? Is it like stock android, where you swipe down with one/two fingers on say an email or missed phone call etc.? With sense V4+/4.1.1 on my S, you have to swipe with two fingers diagonally and it sucks as it is hit and miss and awkward to do given the size of the bars, iirc this was changed to the 1/2 finger swipe down instead with the android base version of 4.1.2 or 4.2 so it should be the same for you on the one, assuming that change was implemented in 4.1.2