I decided to jump ship from the Apple iPhone and move to the Android world after the lack of innovation and the high price on Apple's part. Here are my observations on the HTC One phone and on making the jump to Android.
THE HTC ONE
The good --------
I like the design. A lot. The phone looks and feels great. This is only the second phone I have bought sight unseen and have not been disappointed.
The screen is awesome. Occasionally, though out of the corner of my eye I notice a bit of flicker. Not enough to bother me though.
Ran pixel test -- screen is exceptionally clean -- no dead/stuck pixels that others may be seen
LTE works well and is fast. Telephone reception is as good as my iPhone 4S. Both are on AT&T.
Best sound you will get on a cell phone. Good enough for listening to music in a hotel room, but not as good as devices like Monster Clarity or the Jambox which will fill a hotel room nicely. It's as good as one can realistically hope for in the form factor.
I have observed none of the other manufacturing defects others have noticed like gaps between pieces or rough edges.
Included a set of decent looking headphones -- an unexpected surprise.
The Not so Good --------
Battery life is ok, but not awesome. This may be due to the fact that I am messing with the phone a lot as I figure it out and have not tuned the apps/settings.
Tried using the HTC Sync Manager on my Mac and can't get it to work. I have my iTunes files and music and movies stored on a network server. I keep getting the "Choose a folder on your computer" error and it refuses to then connect to the server. Even though I use Google Music, and I can download it to the phone through the app, I can't gain access to them in the HTC music app nor can I use an mp3 as a ringtone. Overall, my impression is that Sync Manager is worthless as a result.
Blinkfeed needs a lot more options other than the limited selection. Kind of worthless right now, but would use it if they had the content I wanted. Flipbook on iPhone is superior.
HTC backup is not working. Instructions are non-existent. I will just buy one of the others like Carbon or Titanium.
Unable to get the 25gb of Dropbox in the promotion. It's supposed to somehow appear after you sign in through the HTC One.
The swipe keyboard is crappy, but the default one is decent enough for starters. Will probably upgrade later.
Lot's of confusion with Letstalk when ordering -- delays and mis/non - communication. This experience was subpar and need not have been -- just like the flakiness of the extra "features" above that are subpar. They won't beat Apple with these, but may be above other Android sellers.
ANDROID
With the display/sleep setting set to "auto sleep" it quickly locked the phone and turned off the screen. It took a while to find the settings to prevent immediate locking. Until then, and when using the face unlock, it would not allow me to unlock the phone without disconnecting calls I was on. I assume this is an Android problem and not unique to the One.
It took a while to figure out the desktop and how to arrange apps. The combination of widgets also seemed somewhat confining in terms of which widgets could be put on which pages -- it's not obvious why 1 can be on a given page and not another.
Still have not figured out how to make sure apps are not needlessly running in the background. On the iphone, it was easy. Still not clear to me in Android how to do this. All I have found is to stop the processes, which I am guessing is the only answer, but would seem to introduce instability in to the OS.
Really wish there was a way to configure the screens from a laptop as opposed to the device itself. Apple iTunes lets you move screens, put apps in folders, etc. on the phone, doing it from within iTunes. Having to do that all on the phone screen is a bit of a pain.
Summary.....
I really like the HTC One. It is the best phone on the market. They have a ways to go though in the whole order, apps, etc. experience. I like Android because of all the configuration possibilities. After I get the phone exactly the way I want it (as opposed to the way Apple says I should want a phone to work) I am sure it will be great, and I am happy with making the jump. Those seeking simplicity and just a decent, working phone will probably be disappointed because the out of the box experience is not as good as Apple's.
THE HTC ONE
The good --------
I like the design. A lot. The phone looks and feels great. This is only the second phone I have bought sight unseen and have not been disappointed.
The screen is awesome. Occasionally, though out of the corner of my eye I notice a bit of flicker. Not enough to bother me though.
Ran pixel test -- screen is exceptionally clean -- no dead/stuck pixels that others may be seen
LTE works well and is fast. Telephone reception is as good as my iPhone 4S. Both are on AT&T.
Best sound you will get on a cell phone. Good enough for listening to music in a hotel room, but not as good as devices like Monster Clarity or the Jambox which will fill a hotel room nicely. It's as good as one can realistically hope for in the form factor.
I have observed none of the other manufacturing defects others have noticed like gaps between pieces or rough edges.
Included a set of decent looking headphones -- an unexpected surprise.
The Not so Good --------
Battery life is ok, but not awesome. This may be due to the fact that I am messing with the phone a lot as I figure it out and have not tuned the apps/settings.
Tried using the HTC Sync Manager on my Mac and can't get it to work. I have my iTunes files and music and movies stored on a network server. I keep getting the "Choose a folder on your computer" error and it refuses to then connect to the server. Even though I use Google Music, and I can download it to the phone through the app, I can't gain access to them in the HTC music app nor can I use an mp3 as a ringtone. Overall, my impression is that Sync Manager is worthless as a result.
Blinkfeed needs a lot more options other than the limited selection. Kind of worthless right now, but would use it if they had the content I wanted. Flipbook on iPhone is superior.
HTC backup is not working. Instructions are non-existent. I will just buy one of the others like Carbon or Titanium.
Unable to get the 25gb of Dropbox in the promotion. It's supposed to somehow appear after you sign in through the HTC One.
The swipe keyboard is crappy, but the default one is decent enough for starters. Will probably upgrade later.
Lot's of confusion with Letstalk when ordering -- delays and mis/non - communication. This experience was subpar and need not have been -- just like the flakiness of the extra "features" above that are subpar. They won't beat Apple with these, but may be above other Android sellers.
ANDROID
With the display/sleep setting set to "auto sleep" it quickly locked the phone and turned off the screen. It took a while to find the settings to prevent immediate locking. Until then, and when using the face unlock, it would not allow me to unlock the phone without disconnecting calls I was on. I assume this is an Android problem and not unique to the One.
It took a while to figure out the desktop and how to arrange apps. The combination of widgets also seemed somewhat confining in terms of which widgets could be put on which pages -- it's not obvious why 1 can be on a given page and not another.
Still have not figured out how to make sure apps are not needlessly running in the background. On the iphone, it was easy. Still not clear to me in Android how to do this. All I have found is to stop the processes, which I am guessing is the only answer, but would seem to introduce instability in to the OS.
Really wish there was a way to configure the screens from a laptop as opposed to the device itself. Apple iTunes lets you move screens, put apps in folders, etc. on the phone, doing it from within iTunes. Having to do that all on the phone screen is a bit of a pain.
Summary.....
I really like the HTC One. It is the best phone on the market. They have a ways to go though in the whole order, apps, etc. experience. I like Android because of all the configuration possibilities. After I get the phone exactly the way I want it (as opposed to the way Apple says I should want a phone to work) I am sure it will be great, and I am happy with making the jump. Those seeking simplicity and just a decent, working phone will probably be disappointed because the out of the box experience is not as good as Apple's.
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