Before we begin getting down into the review, here’s a little breakdown on what’s the excitement about the new HTC One. The previous One was a trendsetter with its metal body build, and was a very strong contender of the ‘social media-centric’ device with the UltraPixel camera.
This year HTC up the ante again with the new One, codenamed M8, was announced back in March – earliest of the entire array of flagship phones by prominent manufacturers.
And now it’s been here for about 4 months already, how does the new One compete against all other smartphones?
Let’s start off with the design. It’s now made out of 95% metal which definitely does add a little heft to it. It has a curved back and brushed metal texture which you can definitely see, but not feeling with your own fingers since it’s too small.
One thing to note is the age of this device that I got for review. Like I mentioned, the new One is a couple of months old, and the review unit I got is also about that age. As time goes by, phones tend to get dents and some parts of it either chipped off or damaged. It was obviously the case for this unit I got.
There are clear scratches at the top right side of the phone in the picture shown, and there are many more parts chipped off around the four corners of the phone. This is a big deal not because the metal will get permanently damaged, but because of how well the new One can hold up against such “injuries”, if I get the word right.
The phone can survive without any phone cases, and that will most definitely be fine for the new One, but if this is my personal device, I’ll never do so. Putting the One M8 with the screen facing downwards makes my heart shriek, and the speakers will be covered. If the screen is facing upwards, the camera and the beautiful HTC logo at the back will get scratches.
Oh, the dilemma.
Luckily, HTC’s Dot View cases are here to save the day in beauty and functionality. Unfortunately I don’t have it with me, so… yeah…
This is definitely the most beautiful smartphone I’ve ever used, no doubt. Samsung Galaxy S5 can kiss the M8’s shiny metal ass.
[nextpage title=”Ports and buttons”]When I first grabbed the phone, the first thing that got into my mind was how to use this phone comfortably. The reason behind this question is the power button.
With the superbly long top-to-bottom length of the phone, reaching for the power button is never the easiest thing to do at all. Thankfully, HTC included some magic to address this issue.
At standby mode, you can do 5 things.
- Double tap the screen to wake
- Swipe up to unlock
- Swipe left to show home screen
- Swipe right to show BlinkFeed
- Swipe down for voice control
- Rotate the phone to landscape and press volume button for camera
Obviously this only works if the proximity sensor is not blocked. We’ve seen this feature in quite a lot of phones, and I’ve personally tested it. I can tell you that HTC had done this so well that even with my random button-mashing pockets, it didn’t trigger anything – not even a screen wake. This doesn’t even work is the phone is laid flat on the table. You’ll have to hold the phone in the “natural angle” for these gestures to work.
Thumbs up, HTC.
In this image there are two things that I want to point out. First, the HTC bar above the speaker. That is absolutely distracting and it shifted the screen upwards, so that it can make space for it. So, if you’re using the phone is landscape mode, your right finger will have to reach further as compared to your left finger. Sounds like a small issue, but it was annoying.
If you’re thinking “hey – why not switch sides so that the HTC bar is on the left hand side”, I’ll give you a thumbs up. That was what I thought too, but unfortunately the speakers are hardwired where the right side speaker is on the side with the HTC bar. Maybe next step is the speakers wired up dynamically so that it changes sides depending on orientation?
Secondly, I love that HTC put the audio jack at the bottom of the phone. Sure, it’s a personal preference and I can’t argue with that. I just love it because I put the phone in an inverted orientation into my pocket, so obviously having the audio jack at the bottom is for me.
Coming from the Nexus 4, I’m not used to having power button at the top, and this SD card slot tray definitely made me mistaken that this is the power button. Funny how I mashed this tray and wondered if the phone had ran out of battery when I first used it.
[nextpage title=”Camera”]
The UltraPixel camera made its way back here again, but this time with a second camera that HTC calls the Duo – makes sense.
The Duo is here to assist the main 4MP camera in one main thing – focal length, and it does its job very well. Not only that it did help in focusing speed, but also offers some superbly advanced picture editing features that only the new One can do.
Here’s a comparison.
These features aren’t perfect, and so is the 4MP camera. Yeah, it’s never meant to be perfect in the first place, but the clarity and focusing is amazing, even for closeups, albeit the low megapixel count.
Common misconception is that megapixels equal picture quality, but that is never the case. The lens and sensor plays the major role. Though I really want to see a higher megapixel count on the next HTC One, as zooming really does make the picture look shitty and unusable. Even my Nexus 4 does better in zooming.
If you’re not planning to zoom, the new One does take very good images.
What can I complain, really? It performs quite okay in dimly lit situations (let’s face it, who takes pictures of objects in complete darkness?) and the pictures are beyond decent for social media sharing. People will ask you what camera are you using.
The front-facing camera has nothing special though it has a higher pixel count than its main rear-facing camera. Ironic.
Another thing to note is the two-tone flash. It caused quite a commotion as many said it does no difference, and some said it does. What better way it is to found out for yourself? Throughout my test, it did have a orange hue, and it definitely did minimize the harsh white LED light effet to a more natural skin colour when the flash is on.
HTC Zoe also did make its return to the new One, which is a big, big plus.
Another funny thing about this phone is the weird weight distribution. This is the first time ever that the top side of the phone has too much weight that it has a rotational force if you’re holding the phone with an angle, thanks to the dual camera setup that it has.
[nextpage title=”Speakers”]
I’ve played with the HTC One M7 before for quite some time, and now it’s the M8’s turn. First thing to note is that the distinctive front-facing speakers. The one and only front-facing, stereo speaker on a phone. It totally did not disappoint as the volume can get very loud, though it can have some distortions.
When it came to BoomSound, it didn’t know where to start. Again the M8 has the same technology as the M7 – built-in amplifier and what HTC claims to be a “bass-to-treble balancing software”. Anyone can differentiate the sound quality when they turn the BoomSound on and off, as it did amplify the music playing when turned on though I don’t really see the point of it if your audio equipment couldn’t play the audio back as it should be.
As I said, the speakers are hardwired to its left and right side and there’s nothing you can do about it. The earpiece side is the left, and the bottom part is the right side. I really do wish HTC can make this to be dependent on the orientation of the phone, so that it doesn’t matter.
Yes, it’s a small matter, but the HTC bar makes the way I grip the phone not as comfortable as I would prefer.
[nextpage title=”Performance”]Let’s get some benchmark scores up. Before I begin, there is something that I need to show. In Developer Options under Settings menu, there’s a “High Performance Mode” which I had to make a comparison. Also, the benchmarks are all done under Dalvik runtime, as it would have been unfair as many apps still couldn’t run smoothly on ART.
Here’s Epic Citadel on Ultra High Quality with full resolution on both high performance on and off, with a proper cold boot before each test.
Yeah, the numbers didn’t lie. I have no idea why the High Performance mode got lower FPS, so I retried again and again, and I still get the same trend.
I’m never a fan of benchmarking through numbers, since they never did translate into real life performance much. This time however, is an exception since I want to debunk what’s behind the High Performance mode, and used Qualcomm’s Vellamo.
So here’s where the significant performance increase is – at web browsing. Obviously it’s going to drain more battery, but is it worth it? Definitely not. Based on what I tested, Chrome was already fast enough in the Normal Performance mode, so anything above it is surplus for me.
[nextpage title=”Battery”]When I got this phone, I’ve been playing Deemo for hours on this device because of its front-facing stereo speakers. Then, I’ve been using WiFi hotspot for an extended period of time because I need it for the iPad and also my Nexus 4. Gaming and WiFi hotspot together, and the battery life was definitely something beyond my expectation. Also the Power Saving modes were off.
Here’s an indication of how long I turned WiFi hotspot on – whenever the WiFi is off, the hotspot is on. The tiny charging was when I’m the car using my car charger to get about 15 minutes of charge only.
And to be honest, I don’t know what keeps the new One this efficient. Is it the metal body that lets heat dissipate out much quicker than any other phones? It might be, as the phone gets warm fairly quick. It only gets to the point where it’s uncomfortably hot if you’re gaming with a high brightness level and with WiFi hotspot on. That said, I still couldn’t drain up the battery.
I never had the chance to test Power Saving modes much, but it’s some of the basic things like temporarily turning sync off, WiFi off, 3G/LTE off, etc.
[nextpage title=”Wrap up”]
The HTC One M8 is definitely a magnifenct trendsetting smartphone. It makes me jealous that I have to return this phone back to HTC and go back to the miserable rear-facing loudspeakers. I want to be able to do those gesture magic when the phone is on standby. I want more metal on my phone and not fragile glass sandwiches.
The shape, the design, the material of the One M8 is stunning. Even after announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Sony Xperia Z2, the LG G3, the Oppo Find 7, and some other phones, the M8 is still standing in the league of its own. It has an undisclosed ability of waterproofing, which I did wash the M8 a few times, and also a shitloads of potential for the M8 to sustain in the market for a long time (hint : ART runtime).
The price of the phone is unfortunately fluctuating like mad, but you can find it at a cheaper price if you know where to go.
Final words, the HTC One M8 is a phone made perfect for multimedia content consumers, though the camera’s megapixel count could have been better for some cropping to be possible.
As near perfect as this phone is, it still has some minor issues, though I will most definitely recommend this phone.
Rating : 9/10
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