HTC One reviewed by Ted LeBlond
May 27, 2013
I previously had an iPhone 4 so this may be comparing apples (no pun intended) to oranges. A more fair comparison would be iPhone 5 to HTC One, but I didnt have a iPhone 5.
After using iPhone 4 for three years and being a devoted iPhone user since 2008, it was sadly time for iPhone and me to part ways. I found my 4 to be too heavy, too thick, too slow and way too small! I?m, well was, no fan of google and iPhone synced great with my macbook, but android phones were bigger (screen), thinner, faster, and light weight. The slogan for HTC One is ?everything your phone., isnt.? And i sadly (or not) found that to be true.
I got my upgrade credit with ATT in May (this month).. oh back track I should mention that I had twice tried Samsung phones and that experiment was a disaster LOL.. So after looking at many phones, I ruled out iPhone 5 (to small despite the slight increase in screen size), and despite the retina display (whatever that is) I felt the display wasnt good enough. It gets washed out in day light. Any Samsung phones were out of the question which left Motorola (which ATT only has one model, the Atrix), or HTC.. there was growing talk in tech circles about this new HTC One phone coming out and the demo model at ATT was NICE! For one week I would go to ATT and play with the demo model to make sure it was the right phone for me. I got the HTC One for $199.oo on May 3rd. I have been using it daily, even hourly every day since then. Here?s the specs for it:
HTC One Overview - HTC Smartphones
My comments are:
if you want to judge a book by its cover, you know you will be getting a quality phone by the stylish box with rounded corners. you also get two HTC stickers.. the only branding on the phone is the HTC logo discreetly on the front and back. And you get all the usual cables, ear phones etc. There?s a quick start guide but I didnt need that, and if I didnt I dont think anyone would haha.
the slogan for the HTC One is definitely true. It is everything the iPhone isnt. It is faster, way faster (thanks to the quad core processor), thinner, and lighter. The touch screen is very responsive and you barely need to touch the screen. It scrolls quite fast. Something I am not used to and often scroll past the point I want to. Thats not a bad thing, just shows how use I was to iPhone's slow scroll.
the only category I found the One equal to the iPhone was in build. iPhones, like most apple products are a good, solid, quality build. The HTC One is too! It stands out tho because the back and entire casing is made of metal. Stunning and dramatic. Not cheap plastic nor glass. (The One comes in two colors: black and silver) I got the silver one. It definitely is a stylish and different looking phone.
the screen is amazing and anything looks great on it. I can even use it in broad daylight and it doesnt get washed out like iPhone. And its a lot bigger than iPhone ever was or possible will be.
i am not a big picture / video taking person but the camera with its ?ultra pixels? takes great pictures especially in day light. I have not tried it yet in low lit areas or at night. One thing that I found was there are TWO settings for the camera and video. BOTH need to be set to camera for the camera to work. If not it will take video even tho only one button is set to camera.
i like the LED indicator light. again another thing iPhone doesnt have. Blinking green means i have notifications (Facebook, email, SMS). Constant red means charging and constant green means fully charge. While I like this I also wish the One had an audio indicator for charging (like iPhone and Samsung phones do).
one unique feature of the One is blink feed. At first I was afraid I wouldnt like this but its quite a nice feature. What you do is sign in with all your social network log ins (but not G+ for some odd reason), you also tell it what news feeds you would like to read (AP, Reuters, CNet, etc). When you unlock your screen it will show all this plus any events you have for that day in one feed that you scroll thru. You can also post directly to Facebook from the Blink Feed. It also displays the weather and time in a large font. You can swioe left to get to your home screens.
the One runs jelly bean with HTC Sense 5.0. Sense is very light and doesnt hamper the phone in any way. I also find jelly bean to be much better than Froyo which was on the two Samsung phones I used. It has all the Google stuff when you sign in: Gmail, Drive, GMusic, etc. I would have to switch everything (To Do, email, notes, calendar, contacts over from Apple to Google but it wasnt too bad. And everything syncs good now too. Also while there is some ATT bloatware its all in one folder in your app drawer.
my iPhone 4 did not have 4G LTE. i didnt know what I was missing. The One has it and boy is it fast! I get better speeds on 4G than I do on wifi. Pages load instantly. Again, I am used to waiting for iPhone is load pages haha. This also adds to how responsive the phone is.
another feature touted by HTC is the speakers. The One has 4 speakers, all upfront. Two at the top and two at the bottom. They are quality speakers and music, videos, anything with sound sounds great!
so you are prolly wondering what kind of battery life i am getting with all this. well in informal tests i have gotten 9 to 14 hours!!! I never got that with any phone!
now some ?bad? thoughts..
because i am transferring pix to and from a macbook to the One, its a bit of a pain. There?s an app called Air Droid which helps but its still not as easy as transferring iPhone to macbook. Same for songs. But I guess thats where GMusic comes in haha.
as I said above I wish the phone had audio indicators when being plugged in to charge and when charging was complete.
i also wish the back and home buttons were back lit so as to see them at night.
last thoughts...
after using iPhone since 2008 I was in the habit of reaching for iPhone buttons LOL.. took some getting used to. for example volume buttons are on the right not the left. same with the power button top left now (not top right like iPhone). I think I am finally used to the ?new? placement, haha. This phone only has two on screen buttons: home and back. No physical home buttons.
i am pleasantly surprised that i LOVE this phone.. its what iPhone SHOULD be! Its said that this and Galaxy S4 are the two best smart phones out there and I would whole heartedly agree!
May 27, 2013
I previously had an iPhone 4 so this may be comparing apples (no pun intended) to oranges. A more fair comparison would be iPhone 5 to HTC One, but I didnt have a iPhone 5.
After using iPhone 4 for three years and being a devoted iPhone user since 2008, it was sadly time for iPhone and me to part ways. I found my 4 to be too heavy, too thick, too slow and way too small! I?m, well was, no fan of google and iPhone synced great with my macbook, but android phones were bigger (screen), thinner, faster, and light weight. The slogan for HTC One is ?everything your phone., isnt.? And i sadly (or not) found that to be true.
I got my upgrade credit with ATT in May (this month).. oh back track I should mention that I had twice tried Samsung phones and that experiment was a disaster LOL.. So after looking at many phones, I ruled out iPhone 5 (to small despite the slight increase in screen size), and despite the retina display (whatever that is) I felt the display wasnt good enough. It gets washed out in day light. Any Samsung phones were out of the question which left Motorola (which ATT only has one model, the Atrix), or HTC.. there was growing talk in tech circles about this new HTC One phone coming out and the demo model at ATT was NICE! For one week I would go to ATT and play with the demo model to make sure it was the right phone for me. I got the HTC One for $199.oo on May 3rd. I have been using it daily, even hourly every day since then. Here?s the specs for it:
HTC One Overview - HTC Smartphones
My comments are:
if you want to judge a book by its cover, you know you will be getting a quality phone by the stylish box with rounded corners. you also get two HTC stickers.. the only branding on the phone is the HTC logo discreetly on the front and back. And you get all the usual cables, ear phones etc. There?s a quick start guide but I didnt need that, and if I didnt I dont think anyone would haha.
the slogan for the HTC One is definitely true. It is everything the iPhone isnt. It is faster, way faster (thanks to the quad core processor), thinner, and lighter. The touch screen is very responsive and you barely need to touch the screen. It scrolls quite fast. Something I am not used to and often scroll past the point I want to. Thats not a bad thing, just shows how use I was to iPhone's slow scroll.
the only category I found the One equal to the iPhone was in build. iPhones, like most apple products are a good, solid, quality build. The HTC One is too! It stands out tho because the back and entire casing is made of metal. Stunning and dramatic. Not cheap plastic nor glass. (The One comes in two colors: black and silver) I got the silver one. It definitely is a stylish and different looking phone.
the screen is amazing and anything looks great on it. I can even use it in broad daylight and it doesnt get washed out like iPhone. And its a lot bigger than iPhone ever was or possible will be.
i am not a big picture / video taking person but the camera with its ?ultra pixels? takes great pictures especially in day light. I have not tried it yet in low lit areas or at night. One thing that I found was there are TWO settings for the camera and video. BOTH need to be set to camera for the camera to work. If not it will take video even tho only one button is set to camera.
i like the LED indicator light. again another thing iPhone doesnt have. Blinking green means i have notifications (Facebook, email, SMS). Constant red means charging and constant green means fully charge. While I like this I also wish the One had an audio indicator for charging (like iPhone and Samsung phones do).
one unique feature of the One is blink feed. At first I was afraid I wouldnt like this but its quite a nice feature. What you do is sign in with all your social network log ins (but not G+ for some odd reason), you also tell it what news feeds you would like to read (AP, Reuters, CNet, etc). When you unlock your screen it will show all this plus any events you have for that day in one feed that you scroll thru. You can also post directly to Facebook from the Blink Feed. It also displays the weather and time in a large font. You can swioe left to get to your home screens.
the One runs jelly bean with HTC Sense 5.0. Sense is very light and doesnt hamper the phone in any way. I also find jelly bean to be much better than Froyo which was on the two Samsung phones I used. It has all the Google stuff when you sign in: Gmail, Drive, GMusic, etc. I would have to switch everything (To Do, email, notes, calendar, contacts over from Apple to Google but it wasnt too bad. And everything syncs good now too. Also while there is some ATT bloatware its all in one folder in your app drawer.
my iPhone 4 did not have 4G LTE. i didnt know what I was missing. The One has it and boy is it fast! I get better speeds on 4G than I do on wifi. Pages load instantly. Again, I am used to waiting for iPhone is load pages haha. This also adds to how responsive the phone is.
another feature touted by HTC is the speakers. The One has 4 speakers, all upfront. Two at the top and two at the bottom. They are quality speakers and music, videos, anything with sound sounds great!
so you are prolly wondering what kind of battery life i am getting with all this. well in informal tests i have gotten 9 to 14 hours!!! I never got that with any phone!
now some ?bad? thoughts..
because i am transferring pix to and from a macbook to the One, its a bit of a pain. There?s an app called Air Droid which helps but its still not as easy as transferring iPhone to macbook. Same for songs. But I guess thats where GMusic comes in haha.
as I said above I wish the phone had audio indicators when being plugged in to charge and when charging was complete.
i also wish the back and home buttons were back lit so as to see them at night.
last thoughts...
after using iPhone since 2008 I was in the habit of reaching for iPhone buttons LOL.. took some getting used to. for example volume buttons are on the right not the left. same with the power button top left now (not top right like iPhone). I think I am finally used to the ?new? placement, haha. This phone only has two on screen buttons: home and back. No physical home buttons.
i am pleasantly surprised that i LOVE this phone.. its what iPhone SHOULD be! Its said that this and Galaxy S4 are the two best smart phones out there and I would whole heartedly agree!
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