A Day With The One - First Impressions of the HTC One

The One is one of my favorite Jet Li movies, but it’s also a neat phone by HTC. I've been excited about this phone for a while now, and it is turning out to be a great upgrade to my HTC EVO 4G LTE (quite possibly the worst phone name ever, which is Sprint's fault). Full disclosure, HTC did send me this phone to play around with. With that out of the way, how about some first impressions?

I think "quite brilliant would be better"

Right out of the box, the phone is damn pretty. The build quality is outrageous. The phone feels amazing in your hand. The rear of the phone is slightly curved and just feels “nice” in your hands. It is entirely made of aluminum and it just oozes sexy. It reminds some folks of the iPhone and I wager that the build quality is on par with it.

The screen is gorgeous. The HTC One is using a Super LCD 3 screen and does full 1920x1080. The pixel count is high. How high? Well it’s 468ppi. What does that mean? It means that the screen is very sharp. The iPhone 5 is 326ppi while the Samsung Galazy X 4 is 441ppi. Why is pixel density important? It makes things lovelier to look at (more difficult to detect pixels). Do average folks care? Not really, but it makes the display strikingly crisp.

The phone is snappy. The One ships with a Snapdragon 600 processor and it’s a big improvement over the CPU in my HTC EVO LTE. The UI flows more smoothly and the apps seem quicker and more responsive. I’m sure it’s great for games too, but I don’t play many mobile games, so...meh.

In addition to the fast CPU and snappy UI, Boomsound is also present. What’s that? Boomsound is two front-facing speakers with built in apps. What does that mean? It means that if you aren’t careful, you’ll wake up to the loudest alarm clock you've ever owned, as I did the morning after getting this device. It also means that speaker calls and videos can get loud, and with pretty good quality. There’s some distortion at the highest volume depending on the song style, but it’s still head and shoulders better than anything I've ever experienced from a smartphone.

One of the more interesting things that I noticed that was rarely discussed in the reviews I read and the press release was the IR blaster that the phone has in it. What that means is that the phone can control your TV, and it did! Last night I spent the entire evening without lifting my remote control, and it was glorious. The app interacts with most television manufacturers (I have an LG and a Vizio, it worked with both), and once you hook up the provider that you have, it gives you a little breakdown of what’s on television and allows you to favorite shows and set reminders. But wait Yev, I don’t have cable! No problem, neither do I. The channels I set up with the app were OTA (over the air, found via antennas). It still worked like a champ, though took a smidge more configuration as I had to go through many more channels and select the ones that actually appear on my television. The TV app/feature is under-appreciated and I wanted to make sure I gave it a large shout-out.

HTC TV - an unsung hero of the HTC One

Blinkfeed is one of the differentiations that HTC hopes sets the phone apart from its counterparts. Blinkfeed pulls the data from your social networks (Facebook, Twitter) and shows them on one of your “home screen panels”.  Unfortunately, while I believe in Blinkfeed in theory, in practice I found it kind of annoying. I’m a power-user when it comes to social apps and having a central repository for select social updates just doesn't do it for me. I’m always inside the Facebook and Twitter apps anyway, so it didn't really provide any value for me, and not being able to remove it from the panels is aggravating, as that is prime phone real estate. That said, I think a lot of “average” users will enjoy being able to get a random assortment of their social posts in that feed.

Blinkfeed -  posts from all your social channels

The camera is another big differentiation between the One and other phones.  While most companies are upping the megapixels (Samsung Galaxy S 4 has 13MP, the Nokia Pureview 808 has 41MP), HTC is taking a step back and trying to remind folks that it’s not all about the pixel count, it’s about the pixel size as well. The One has a 4MP camera, but the megapixels are 3x as big as “traditional” megapixels. HTC is betting that the images this camera takes will be just as good if not better as the larger megapixel camera phones (especially in low light settings). The problem is, if you use the camera phone as your primary photography device, sometimes having a bit more definition is a good thing, but the One takes great pictures if your intent is to post them to Facebook or Instagram and when you blow up the pictures on a large screen they still hold up pretty well, until you zoom way in.

The other neat thing about the camera is that it can take little things called Zoe’s . What’s that? A Zoe is a collection of photographs that are taken one after the other to create a 3-4 second video that you can pull images out of. The idea is that any frame of the video can be pulled out and used as an image. It also takes about 1 second worth of pictures from before you pressed the button, so if you’re in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, you will still capture a smidge of what happened. Think of the children, doing adorable things, don’t want to miss that do you? Zoe’s can help. Why Zoe? It stands for zoetropic.

It can’t be all good can it? Well, no. The thing is that despite this phone having incredible hardware, great software, and a good camera, some of the missing items really bug me. For example (and this is nit-picky), I got really used to having my phone stay “on” and awake while it was connected to a charger. This functionality appears to be missing on the HTC One. Not being able to remove Blinkfeed is also a bit of an annoyance as I mentioned earlier. There is one other thing that caught me a bit off guard. I cannot re-size widgets, which has been in Android for a while now and was part of the functionality of my HTC EVO LTE, but is inexplicably missing from this device. Additionally pre-installed applications are also a big pain in the neck. A lot of While none of these are deal-breakers, I am hoping that they get fixed in a later update to the phone, which would hopefully bring back some of that functionality.

Overall this phone is awesome, but take that with a grain of salt. I’ve been in love with HTC design and hardware forever now (my first smart phone was the HTC Hero).  If you are up on your contract and are ready for a new device, go for this one. It’s one of the most beautiful phones that I’ve seen, and it flies.  I haven’t rated any tech gadgets on here, but if I start doing that in the future, this one will get a 4.5/5 from me. The only real downside is that the phone does get a bit hot (but it’s aluminum, which is a conductor) when used heavily (streaming video) for long periods of time, and of course the ever-present disappointment of cell phone batteries. Outside of those two things, this phone is amazing, and it makes me happy to put it in my pocket. Now I just need to wait for the version with a kickstand.

Pictures? Below!

For me?

What's in the bag?!

This! And it's lovely!

That phone is pretty.

The HTC One, unpacked, and the case that came with it.

Fits like a glove.

It's Alive!

I'm going to continue enjoying this phone, I recommend you pre-order it ;-)

***UPDATE***

As promised here's some pictures taken with the camera on the HTC One

Lynmar Estates Winery

This is not the greatest wine in the world. No. This is just a Tribute.

Wish ribbons at Cornerstone Winery

Dinner at the Girl and the Fig in Sonoma 

Golden Gate Bridge - Panorama

As you can see the camera takes fine photos. It's not great, and the 4MP becomes a very clear limitation when you try to open the photos on a large monitor and really get down in to them. I think what HTC is trying to say is, this is not a DSLR, you won't be taking this on photography expeditions, but it can replace your point and shoot if your intent is to just post to Facebook or Instagram. It does that very well. Is it on par with the HTC Evo 4G LTE (which used HTC's previous high-end camera tech and an 8MP camera? I think so. And the Zoe's are fun! Is it groundbreaking or earth shattering? Probably not, but if they can fit the same sensor tech in to the next camera, which will hopefully have a few more megapixels, that will be a good thing and will result in more vibrant pictures that stand up and work in larger sizes. However, as a point and shoot replacement, it works well (less things in pockets is a good thing).