Previews

MWC 2013: First impressions of the HTC One

The One to watch

MWC 2013: First impressions of the HTC One
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There can't be many other manufacturers that know as much about building smartphones as HTC, with a history that goes back to a time in the '90s when the company was behind just about every smartphone ever released.

Since going it alone, HTC has had a rather bumpy ride, despite producing amazing devices like last year's HTC One X.

This year, it will be hoping to get back on its feet with the HTC One, its flagship handset that looks more than capable of taking on the top-end models from Sony, Samsung, and LG, as well as the new competition emerging from China.

The first thing that will grab the attention of any customer perusing their local retail store will be the design. The phone looks amazing.

Sure, many people have already dismissed the HTC One as a rip off of both the front of BlackBerry's Z10 and the rear of the iPhone 5, but few will care when they get to hold what is arguably the best-looking Android phone produced to date.

Sure, there's the pending announcement of Samsung's Galaxy S4, but it's fair to say that it's likely to be more plastic than fantastic when it comes to build quality.

It takes over two hours just to manufacture the HTC One's body, using a combination of electro-chemical etching and diamond cutting. No wonder this phone is going to sell for a premium price when it hits the streets on March 15th.

And inside that aluminium unibody shell lies Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 600 chipset - making this the first handset of its kind. Based on the existing S4 Pro, which is present inside devices like the LG Optimus G, Google's Nexus 4, and the Sony Xperia Z (and ZL), the 600 is distinguished by a higher clock speed (the HTC runs at 1.7GHz instead of 1.5GHz) and faster memory, which will also speed up day-to-day operation.

Other hardware features include a 2,300mAh battery, LTE (4G), 'BoomSound' dual-front speakers to blast out music to annoy bus, coach, and rail passengers in equal measure, and improved microphone technology to avoid distortion and filter out background noise.

Less is more

The 4.7-inch full-HD screen brings the rest of the hardware up to speed, but if you flip over the phone expecting to see an amazing camera you'll be surprised and, initially, disappointed.

HTC has decided to stop fighting the megapixel battle, acknowledging that more pixels in a small sensor is nonsensical.

Its solution is to drop down to just four megapixels, but what HTC refers to as 'UltraPixels', which can pick up more light and work better in all conditions. There's optical image stabilisation, too, which could put the HTC One up there with the Nokia Lumia 920 for all-round usability and performance.

This is where HTC is going to have to spend quite a lot of money to convince the general public that four megapixels is better than the eight or 12-megapixel cameras offered elsewhere. It would well turn people off completely, even though HTC's logic appears to be sound, and most people downscale their images anyway.

Besides the camera itself, HTC has also developed HTC Zoe, a software feature that can capture 20 photos and a three-second long video clip in a style similar to the Vine service available to iOS users. Easily viewed from within HTC's new gallery application, it offers another way to share special moments with friends.

Seeing Sense for the fifth time

As Google has grown up with a series of design guidelines that has resulted in Android apps being far more ordered and consistent, HTC has chosen to ditch its original HTC Sense software with loads of quirky animations, widgets, and bright colours.

HTC Sense 5.0 now looks a bit more like a combination of Windows Phone 8, Pinterest and Facebook's timeline. Instead of loads of app icons and widgets, the new BlinkFeed system displays a grid full of news stories, social networking updates, weather reports, sport results, and a range of other information in a scrollable feed.

Tap the 'menu' icon and you'll launch the new-look app-launcher with the time and weather always present at the top of the screen.

It certainly makes the HTC One unique, but this is another area where HTC runs the risk of alienating users who prefer the native Android OS experience. HTC has also earned itself a rather poor reputation for providing quick and timely OS updates, so that's another area where the company needs to improve.

First impressions

However, there's very little not to like about the HTC One, and putting aside the camera the only real hardware limitation is the fixed 32GB of internal storage.

When EA wants almost 2GB of storage space just to run Real Racing 3, you can quickly work out that you'll potentially run into problems when trying to balance all of your games, photos, high-definition movies, and apps.

A 64GB variant will be available in some markets, but there's no word of a UK appearance.

For most people, though, the HTC One is possibly going to be a contender for the phone of 2013. It certainly leaves me wondering exactly what Samsung can bring to the table on March 14th when it unveils the Galaxy S4.

Jonathan Morris
Jonathan Morris
From starting out as a games tester for Mastertronic, Virgin and Sega in the late 1980s, it may seem odd to then ditch everything to write about mobile phones that, at the time, lasted 20 minutes between charges. He always had a hunch mobiles would become quite popular, but possibly didn't realise how powerful (and, ironically, returning to 20 minutes between charges). Jonathan's job is to continue advising on the best hardware to buy, in order to enjoy games that have advanced considerably since those long days and nights testing Double Dragon on the C64.