HTC One (M8): Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a Galaxy S5, but glad I didn't.

[KiranB2]

TLDR; please read the title

I've been researching non-stop for the past 2 weeks on the M8 vs S5, aka the 'showdown of the titans'. From reviews to Youtube impressions to camera comparisons, there's nothing I left out. Personally, I would label the S5 the champion and the M8 the underdog in terms of features.... a camera with a higher megapixel count, water-resistant, and a removable battery tipped the scales on paper towards Samsung's flagship phone. At the end of the day however, I remembered how it felt to hold my M7 for the first time. The smooth finish, the aluminum build and how it was the first time I was impressed by the build quality of a non-Apple phone made me lean back towards HTC.

The deal breaker in my case, besides overall design and 'handfeel' was the fact that the S5 didn't launch 32GB versions of the phone where I stay. In addition, initial stocks of only Black and White are being made available, which I wasn't fond of (was bent on blue and blue only). Hence, I picked up a 32GB (Gunmetal) Developer's Edition HTC One M8

Impressions (after playing with the phone for a day and a half)
Design and Build - I expected the phone to be much thicker + heavier than it actually was! I pulled it out of its casing and was very surprised. I guess images on review sites and even videos give off an impression of the phone being larger than it actually is, for some reason. It felt just as light as the original One, and is lighter than the M7's dual-sim variant (which my friend owns).

Camera - I honestly wasn't a big fan of the M7's camera. Having previously owned an iPhone 4s, I found the images exported to PC after having taken them were generally better looking than the M7's. I went to a Deadmau5 concert recently and the lack of zoom also took a big hit on my ability to take decent shots of the stage. Video recording on the M7 was fantastic; no complaints there. Coming to the M8, i'm overall satisfied with the camera. My expectations are low, and 'accepting' the camera as-is feels like the biggest (and only) price i've had to pay for selecting the M8 over Samsung's Galaxy S5. uFocus and other dual-camera features work as advertised, and are pretty nifty. I look forward to taking more shots in the coming weeks and utilizing these features fully.

Features and Misc - i'm really not liking the on-screen buttons. At ALL. I found them to be intuitive on the M7 and had no issues with them whatsoever (in terms of responsiveness).
I really don't like the screen real-estate they take up; the fact that HTC kept the near half-inch border on the bottom of the phone (right above the grill speakers) irks me. More so, what really got to me is that games and other applications do not hide this bar by default. I scoured the internet for a solution and downloaded a popular Immersive Mode application from the Play Store. This works quite well with one huge flaw: keyboard support in immersive mode isn't available/supported. It really feels like a downgrade and i'm disappointed by the device's design for this reason alone. I hope HTC finds a way to address this or more apps start getting updated to support Immersive Mode (specifically, Facebook, WhatsApp and Chrome).

Conclusion - the thread title says it all. I'm more than satisfied with my purchase but the phone does have its gripes (which may not be issues for others).

Feel free to ask if you have any questions. Cheers

 

[UJ95x]

Congrats on the new phone
How's the battery life?

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[MetalxAssassinx]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Do you think having an on-screen buttons is a killer?
Never owned an android device my life, and everyone around me uses galaxy phones where there is capacitive and physical button/s
knowing that i would use my phone for texting a lot and checking on emails, social networks as well.

 

[quarrymanpaul]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

The on screen buttons suck.

Not having a physical home button was an idiotic decision IMO.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[KiranB2]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Congrats on the new phone
How's the battery life?

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

Was too busy messing with the phone to bother installing GSam yet
Have installed it and will report back in a day or two.

Do you think having an on-screen buttons is a killer?
Never owned an android device my life, and everyone around me uses galaxy phones where there is capacitive and physical button/s
knowing that i would use my phone for texting a lot and checking on emails, social networks as well.

Let me put it this way... the app I bought from the Google Play store saved my impressions of the phone from being a lot more negative.
If you play casual games on the device, you'd be really irked without the app; the black bar is useless and honestly kills the experience. The same goes while, believe it or not, watching a movie! I fired up MX Player Pro with the Immersive Mode application enabled, and was able to hide the bars just fine.

The application does have an auto-enable mode for applications (which you can specify in settings), so there's no need to enable this manually every time the app is opened. It does manually need to be disabled though to close out of it... a bit of a pain but easy to overlook, given the advantages the app offers.

Like I said, for apps which require texting / messaging or typing of any sort, the immersive mode app is not an option. The keyboard gets disabled while using it, so... yeah. That's the only down side.

 

[roflwaffleton]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Let me put it this way... the app I bought from the Google Play store saved my impressions of the phone from being a lot more negative.
If you play casual games on the device, you'd be really irked without the app; the black bar is useless and honestly kills the experience. The same goes while, believe it or not, watching a movie! I fired up MX Player Pro with the Immersive Mode application enabled, and was able to hide the bars just fine.

The buttons disappear just fine without a third-party app in MX Player Pro. Full-screen playback, no buttons.

 

[B0WIE]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

The on screen buttons suck.

Not having a physical home button was an idiotic decision IMO.

Posted via Android Central App

One, of several reasons, I don't like the Samsungs is the physical button. Feels clunky to be touching glass then have to push a button. I much prefer on-screen. Plus, they hide whenever I need them to.

 

[UJ95x]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

One, of several reasons, I don't like the Samsungs is the physical button. Feels clunky to be touching glass then have to push a button. I much prefer on-screen. Plus, they hide whenever I need them to.

Same here. I have an S4, but I disabled the home and capacitive buttons on my custom ROM. Have on-screen buttons

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[torifile]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

All you who are complaining about the onscreen buttons seem to be missing an important point. If they were to extend the screen to that black bar, the resolution would be all off unless they also increased the width of the device. 1080p is a specific resolution and adding some in the vertical dimension would create all sorts of problems. Would you ok with a phone 1/4" wider than it is? Because that's what you're asking for. The device has to remain 1080p for it not to break apps. You can't just add a row of pixels without consequence.

 

[trandz]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

All you who are complaining about the onscreen buttons seem to be missing an important point. If they were to extend the screen to that black bar, the resolution would be all off unless they also increased the width of the device. 1080p is a specific resolution and adding some in the vertical dimension would create all sorts of problems. Would you ok with a phone 1/4" wider than it is? Because that's what you're asking for. The device has to remain 1080p for it not to break apps. You can't just add a row of pixels without consequence.

Thats a BS remark. Samsungs S5 does not have the same screen as the M8 and its 1080, along with every other phone. They couldve easily kept the off-screen buttons. Would make more sense since they HAD to keep that stupid bezel anyway. They just didn't

 

[B0WIE]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Thats a BS remark. Samsungs S5 does not have the same screen as the M8 and its 1080, along with every other phone. They couldve easily kept the off-screen buttons. Would make more sense since they HAD to keep that stupid bezel anyway. They just didn't

Unless you are an engineer who designs phones, you just replied to a "bs remark" with one of your own. How do you know it would be so simple? Do you think that the superior sound system might require more physical space back there? (it does).
You may believe you know more than the engineers at HTC, but I'm inclined to think they had specific reasons for what they did.

 

[torifile]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Thats a BS remark. Samsungs S5 does not have the same screen as the M8 and its 1080, along with every other phone. They couldve easily kept the off-screen buttons. Would make more sense since they HAD to keep that stupid bezel anyway. They just didn't

Really? 1080p is 1080p. The resolution is the SAME. You see the same amount of data with either screen. Fact.

 

[UJ95x]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Thats a BS remark. Samsungs S5 does not have the same screen as the M8 and its 1080, along with every other phone. They couldve easily kept the off-screen buttons. Would make more sense since they HAD to keep that stupid bezel anyway. They just didn't

The extra space used by the black bezel is still used for the digitizer. So it's not just wasted space...

Sent from my Galaxy S4 running SlimKat 4.4.2

 

[dtblair24]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

Yeah bezel is one of the only bad things about this phone.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[freddyttt]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

On my lockscreen i was able to turn the onscreen buttons transparent. tried on my main screen but so far.... no luck-

 

[Zod1010]

Re: Sold my M7, bought a M8. Was on the verge of getting a S5, but glad I didn't! Impressions inside

I've yet to make up my mind. There's a lot I love about the M8. It and the S5 are clearly 1A and 1B. However, as much as I love the M8, I suspect (when all is said and done) I'll end up with a G5. And mostly, it's the little stuff. For instance, I like being able to look at my G4 and see a bright, solid, persistent light that tells me I have a message and what kind of message it is (based on color). I like the side power button, the physical key in the middle, and the soft keys that are not part of the OS. And as much as the front-facing speakers on the M8 are wonderful, I have no use for them. Between the real estate the speakers and the bezel take up, the phone is just bigger than it needs to be for my use. Finally, while I think the M8 camera is fine, and much too much has been made about it, I fully expect the S5 camera to be absolutely superb.