| Review of the HTC One |
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The HTC One is the high-end Android phone that is supposed to save HTC. However, I don’t think they’ve done themselves any favors in the choice of a name, because I’m sure regular people (those who don’t have a passion for smartphones that way we do) will look at that and assume that it’s a step down from the HTC One X or even the HTC One S. I wonder what marketing genius thought that putting fewer letters in a name, which is striking similar to other names they’ve already used, will somehow impart the idea that this is a step up? Last Updated: 26-Apr-2013 |
Before reading this review,
please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
A stupid marketing move or not, the HTC One is a high-end phone that will
compete directly with the likes of the
Samsung Galaxy S4. I tested the S4 before this review was completed, so I’ll
compare the 2 where applicable. I will also compare the HTC One with the
S3 and with my trusty
S2 LTE.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Unfortunately the HTC One that I tested was locked to Telus, and my S2 LTE is
still locked to Rogers. If I’d had the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 at the same
time I could have put the Telus SIM in the S4 and compared them. I therefore
couldn’t compare both phones on the same network. This isn’t really a big deal,
because of the last couple of years there has been little or no difference in RF
performance between one phone and the next (even the new BlackBerry Z10). This
is because the manufacturers all use pretty much the same RF chipsets,
especially for LTE. Any small differences come mainly from antenna design.
However, I did once again find that Bell Mobility/Telus still have an LTE
network that tries to push me off of LTE whenever it can. For example, I
couldn’t get the phone to go to LTE anywhere in my house, even though Bell/Telus
has a reasonable LTE signal there. I eventually solved the problem by forcing
the phone into LTE only. While there is no official option to do this, you can
make the change in the unofficial “Testing” menu which is reached by dialing
*#*#4636#*#*. From this menu touch “Phone information”, and then scroll down
slightly to “Set preferred network type” and choose LTE only. Just remember that
when in this mode the phone cannot make or receive calls, but it can handle text
messaging and all data functions.
Audio
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, an how to interpret it.
During a phone call the overall
quality of the HTC One is just average. Its tonal quality is fine, but not quite
as nice as a typical Samsung phone. Earpiece volume is also fine, but not quite
as loud as my S2 LTE. I’m not sure how many people really care about the phone
functionality any longer, but if you do still demand this feature on a daily
basis you’ll find the HTC One is an okay phone, but nothing stellar.
I had expected the speakerphone to be much better than it was, but to be fair
it’s still better than most phones. The high-quality speakers (which I’ll get to
in the next section, on Multimedia Audio) don’t sound any better than most other
phones during a call, mostly because the quality of the audio coming from a
typical phone call is pretty bad to begin with. Where the speakers on the HTC
One excel however, is in their ability to NOT add any further distortion to the
sound (which on most phones usually comes in the form of sympathetic vibrations
inside the speaker or it casing).
Multimedia Audio
When it comes to listening to multimedia audio through the native speakers on
the phone, the HTC One blows away all other phones on the market. The speakers
used on the phone are of very high quality, they face forward, and there are two
of them (which providers stereo sound). While nothing this small can be expected
to produce anything vaguely resembling bass, the rest of the audio spectrum is
reproduced cleanly with exceptional tonal balance. Howard Chui and I listened to
various examples of music and we agreed that what the speakers seem to have in
spades is the ability to bring out the detail in the sound. Voices on videos (or
from other high-quality sources like
Zello
for example) sound superb.
However, there is one caveat to this: in order to achieve this wonderful sound
quality you MUST turn on the Beats Audio feature (though fortunately, it is on
by default). You’ll find plenty of opinions regarding Beats Audio in general,
but you have to hand it to HTC for providing an equalization curve that suits
the built-in speakers to a tee. By carefully crafting an equalization curve for
the speakers, HTC has created an aural experience you must hear to believe.
The overall volume of the speakers isn’t quite what you’d expect however.
Compared to the Galaxy S4 for example (which I was able to quickly compare to
when I picked up the HTC One for this review) the volume of the HTC One was a
little disappointing. While the HTC One sounded much better than the S4, it
wasn’t all that much louder. But just to be clear, it was louder, but not by
enough to really make a huge real-world difference.
I next compared the HTC One against my S2 LTE when plugged into a stereo with
Mission speakers that were quite capable of reproducing very low-frequency bass.
One of my favorite songs to test this is “Sk8tr Boi” by Avril Lavigne, though
not because it’s a particularly stellar piece of music. However, just near the
beginning (at around 14 seconds, and then again at 1:50) there is an incredibly
low-frequency rumble that is the sort of thing you feel rather than hear. It’s
very distinct and it can be used to test a speaker’s (or headset’s) ability to
reproduce this type of bass.
The song is good for comparing the difference in bass output from one audio
device to another, and in this respect I was a little surprised by the results.
My initial tests were performed by turning off all audio-altering features in
both phones (which means Beats Audio in the HTC One). In this configuration
sound is as flat as it can be and gives us a reference from which to work. I had
to listen to the bass parts of the song a few times over on each phone, but I
couldn’t escape the fact that it just wasn’t as noticeable on HTC One as it was
on my S2 LTE. Turning on Beats Audio helps a bit, but doing so tends to boost
higher-frequency bass content to a greater extent.
I next used the
Volume+ app on both phones to artificially increase the bass (which is
provided by a native API call in Android that apps can make use of). I was once
again surprised to find that in HTC One the effect was more prominent in
higher-frequency bass and all it did was to make the sound a bit boomier. My S2
LTE on the other hand boosts just the ultra-low frequency bass and the effect is
quite stunning. As I use my phone as the source of pretty all the music I listen
to, this aspect of the new Galaxy was a bit of a put-off. Bass aside however,
the S4’s overall audio reproduction sounds quite good and it was hardly a
problem for most people out there.
Bass aside, the HTC One’s overall audio reproduction sounded quite good and it
was hardly a problem. However, the poorer ultra-low bass performance was a
disappointment to me personally, and may be an issue for bass fans out there.
Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that the multimedia audio is better in the S2
LTE (you’ll find plenty of articles on the internet that go to great lengths to
fault Samsung for the audio chipset they used on the S2 models), but there is a
difference you actually hear, so I can’t in good faith give the HTC One a full 5
stars for audio reproduction.
Display
Like the Samsung Galaxy S4, and a few other high-end phones coming out just
recently, the HTC One has a 1080p screen resolution (that means 1920 by 1024
pixels). Back when I reviewed the Galaxy S3 I speculated that manufactures would
go nuts and build phones with resolutions higher than 720p (1280 x 720). Sure
enough they did, and it just goes to show that they’ll do anything to make their
phones seem better than the competition (or than their previous generation
models).
Fact is, they’ve gone too far, because it just isn’t possible to see a
difference between 720p and 1080p on a screen that is 5 inches or smaller in
size. Well okay, you can see a difference if you examine the screens under a
magnifying glass, but the real-world difference is so slight that it’s like
hardly detectable.
I suppose that so long as the GPU can keep up with the resolution increase, and
so long as we aren’t paying a penalty in battery consumption, having the extra
pixels isn’t going to hurt. However, I have no way of finding out if the phone
might have got better battery life if they’d used the 720p screen from the One X
instead of this new 1080p screen.
Resolution aside however, this is a very good LCD display. Like the North
American version of the One X before it, the display shows no signs of color
distortion as you increase your viewing angle. The screen does look a little
darker once you exceed about 20 degrees, but otherwise the color purity remains
intact right around to 85 degrees (after that you can’t really see the screen
anyway).
Processor and
Chipset
The HTC One uses the Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600, which provides quad cores
clocked at 1.7 GHz. The GPU is the Adreno 320, which is more than powerful
enough to handle the 1080p resolution of the new screen. But does this new
generation of processor and GPU produce a markedly faster (or at the very least,
snappier) phone? Compared to my S2 LTE (which uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260
dual-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz and an Adreno 220 GPU) there wasn’t
anywhere near as much difference as I’d expected. GPU performance on the S2 LTE
is obviously much lower than on the HTC One, but the Adreno 220 has 4 times
fewer pixels to manipulate.
I compared app launching speeds and overall smoothness of scrolling in various
situations. Yes the HTC One wins, but the extent to which it wins is by a much
smaller margin than you might image. For all the processor/GPU improvements
we’ve seen in the two generations of phones since the release of the S2 LTE, the
overall improvement has been a bit disappointing. I guess the problem is that
there just isn’t much they can do to radically improve the performance of the
chipsets and we’re beginning to reach an asymptote in the graph of smartphone
complexity vs real-world speed. This is perhaps why companies like Samsung
concentrate so heavily on added software features to differentiate their new
phones.
GPS
I try to make a point of testing the GPS performance on phones, because I’ve had
trouble finding any that can match the overall accuracy of the one in my S2 LTE.
Phone after phone have lost this competition against my S2 and I was beginning
to wonder if I’d ever find another smartphone that could match it. Well, it
seems I finally have. The HTC One has a GPS chipset that for the most part seems
to match the accuracy of my S2 LTE.
To test the GPS (assuming the weather permits) I take both phones on my bike
with me (ensuring they have an unobstructed view of the sky) and I track the
rides using
SportsTracker Pro. I later download the KML file generated by these tracks
and I play them on Google Earth.
As the triangle moves along the ground and traces the route I took I can see how
much error is present by observing where the trace differs from reality. I can
also have both traces displayed simultaneously to see how much they differ from
one another.
Now at this time no consumer GPS device is capable of rendering traces that are
spot on all of the time, but the amount of error should never exceed a few feet
in either direction. In past tests top-notch smartphones were producing tracks
that were off by as much as a full lane or two, which just isn’t acceptable to
me.
The HTC One suffered from none of the radical errors I’ve seen on past phones
(including the HTC One X) and it seems to be just as good as the chipset in the
S2 LTE.
Camera
What surprises some people is that the HTC One has a 4 megapixel main camera. In
a world where the quality of something is gauged by the magnitude of the numbers
we assign to it, this seems like a step backwards. The Galaxy S4 for example
sports a 13 megapixel camera, while my old S2 LTE has an 8 megapixel camera.
What gives?
The problem with camera sensors is that the smaller we make an individual pixel,
the less light sensitivity it has. Most high-pixel shooters found in modern
phones have night modes that allow shooting in dim light, but this usually
requires the taking of multiple exposures and blending them into a composite
single image. This virtually ensures that only when the camera is held perfectly
still (and the subject doesn’t move) will we get good results. Sadly this rarely
happens and taking good-quality low-light pictures with most modern smartphones
is limited to situations where the subject stays motionless and the phone can be
held exceptionally steady.
By moving to a larger pixel, HTC has created a camera that has very good
low-light sensitivity. Add to that optical stabilization (most smartphones,
including the S4, use electronic stabilization, which is nowhere near as good)
and you end up with a smartphone that can take low-light pictures under a wide
range of conditions. Granted, the subject still can’t move rapidly, but it can
move slightly and the optical stabilization means you don’t have to hold the
phone rock-steady to get a good photograph. Another benefit of the
low-resolution camera in the HTC One is that it can auto-focus in extremely
low-light conditions with great ease (and incredible accuracy).
In bright sunny conditions however, where most high-resolution sensors don’t
have any problem, the lack of megapixels in the HTC One creates for a somewhat
disappointing result. The shots still look good, but they seems to be softer
than those taken with a higher-resolution camera simply because the HTC One just
doesn’t have number of pixels necessary to resolve the fine detail. Now
arguably, smartphones are most commonly used to take pictures indoors under iffy
lighting conditions. If that’s the case with your photographs, then you’ll
really appreciate the quality of the low-light pictures the HTC One can take.
The good low-light sensitivity also applies to shooting videos. The
lower-resolution sensor doesn’t matter here, because even 1080p videos are only
just a notch under 2 megapixels in size, and thus are well within the capability
of the 4 megapixel sensor. When it comes to low-light videos, the HTC One puts
all other smartphones to shame. It produces videos with excellent color and
sharpness in light that would produce dark grainy videos on any other phone (and
a large number of point-and-shoot cameras as well).
Sundry Observations
I really didn’t like the placement and the flush-mounting of the power and
volume buttons on this phone. Both were difficult to feel and difficult to press
since they didn’t protrude (even slightly) from the body of the phone. While I
understand this was a styling choice (and typical of HTC models), it produces
buttons that just aren’t as easy to use as they should be.
The removal of the menu soft key from the bottom of the phone is puzzling. While
Jelly Bean works just fine without one, and HTC has omitted it in past models,
removing the menu key for the sake of styling (like the flush physical buttons)
is a compromise I find difficult to reconcile. They also changed the secondary
functionality of the remaining two keys. On most Android phones long-pressing
the home softkey displays the running apps (for fast app switching), but on the
HTC One long-pressing the home key launches search (which is achieved on other
Android phone that don’t have a search softkey by long-pressing the menu key,
which of course the HTC One doesn’t have). To switch apps you must double-tap
the home key.
The Sense UI also changes the way the app-switching screen looks. Rather than
present you with a scrolling list of screen captures, icons, and text
descriptions, the HTC One displays a static panel of 9 small screen captures
with text underneath. This is fine as far as it goes, but it will never show
more than 9 of the last-launched apps. So, if you can get by with just the last
9, you might like this arrangement, but otherwise it is a bit limiting.
Fortunately you can still swipe items from the screen to close to them, just as
you can in stock Jelly Bean, though there is no way to close all of those apps
simultaneous (as you can on many other implementations of Jelly Bean, including
the Galaxy S4).
The body on the phone is made from a single piece of aluminum, and so the
battery is not removable. I searched the internet for what a user would do if
the phone locked up completely (which on other phones is solved by pulling the
battery for a second or two). Hopefully a specific key combination is ALWAYS
detected and forces a reboot. If it doesn’t, then the only way to recover from
such a lock-up is to wait for the battery to run down, and that seems
horrifically unacceptable.
The phone also doesn’t support an external MicroSD card, though this isn’t new
for HTC phones. The phone I tested came with 32 GB of built-in storage, but the
speed at which the camera consumed memory was astounding. With what seemed like
only a small number of videos and photographs taken, the phone reported that
they’d consumed almost 7 GB of space. At that rate the camera could consume all
of the space in the phone and force you to have off-load much of it to your
computer.
Conclusions
In certain respects the HTC One is a superior phone to its competition and its
predecessors. The low-light capability of its camera is unmatched, its speakers
set a new standard for quality in the industry, and its LCD display is among the
best out there (comments concerning 1080p notwithstanding). Beyond those three
things however, there really isn’t much to recommend the HTC One over other
current-generation phones (or even the previous-generation 720p phones) other
than price.
It also has a few strikes against it, including terrible physical buttons, the
missing menu softkey, the lack of an external MicroSD card, non-removable
battery, and Sense UI (if you don’t happen to like it). The aluminum body, while
beautiful, felt rather uncomfortable in my hand due to the sharp edges and was
scared silly that I’d scratch the back (which isn’t replaceable).
I came away from the review feeling rather under-whelmed, despite the camera,
speakers, GPS performance, and screen quality. If you’ve liked previous high-end
HTC phones, then you should have no problem with this one. However, if you
already own something like an HTC One X, then you won’t get all that much for
your money if you switch to the HTC One (unless of course the speakers and/or
the camera are too good to pass up). Users familiar with Samsung phones will
find the layout of this model to be rather annoying, but you can get used to it.
If you’re in the market for your first high-end smartphone however, it’s
difficult not to recommend the HTC One. The areas in which it excels will likely
prove to be important to many first-time buyers, and the lower sticker price
compared to its direct competition (I.E. the Galaxy S4) will surely attract many
buyers.
