Jen-Hsun Huang stepped on stage this week at GTC 2013 with words on the GPU, the graphics processing engine that NVIDIA uses to push the envelope in many, many more ways than one. Five features were announced as coming on through the conference: breakthroughs in computer graphics, updates on development, a roadmap update for NVIDIA, an update on remote graphics, and a brand new product announcement. While we’re expecting this conference to hold quite a bit of news on computing outside the mobile world with Tegra, there’s certainly going to be some amazing Android-based excellence coming on too.
Wave Works
Beginning this show with TITAN – the GeForce GTX GPU we’re about to have hands-on time with in the very near future here on SlashGear – some interactive ocean experimentation was shown. Straight away we saw a ship shown on a large screen, real-time water being pushed up against the craft as heavy waves came up and crashed against it. With 20,000 sensors in-place (virtually), this demonstration showed how with NVIDIA GPU power, we’ll be able to test the ability of ships in the future to withstand a beat-down.
If we didn’t know better, we’d have to guess that this demonstration of the ship was real – this demonstration was called Wave Works, and was a Beaufort-Scale Real-Time Ocean rendering. Absolutely gorgeous.
Face Works
Also included was a show of what the company calls Kepler Dawn. This lovely fairy was the work of many, many years of work on the creation of a very real human form. Attempting to escape the so-called “Uncanny Valley”, Huang let us know that they were close, but weren’t quite there yet with this first show. The “Uncanny Valley” is a place where realistic animations get creepy – incase you didn’t know – this happening between an obviously animated creature and a real human being.
A new technology called Face Works was introduced, letting a system that before NVIDIA got to it was 32GB to be pushed into 400 MB. Here we’ve seen NVIDIA’s Titan GPU turning an animated face look real. For those of you that aren’t able to see this face move in real-time yet, hear this: it’s impossibly realistic. If Star Wars is going to feature Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hammil, they’ll use Face Works to make it work.
Stick out the full conference with us here on SlashGear as we cover the entirety of the show, front to back. Have a look at our GTC 2013 tag portal for more information and stay tuned for more amazing rendering beastliness!
This week we had the opportunity to have a chat with Sony Pictures Imageworks on how they brought the next generation of L Frank Baum’s “Oz” universe to life in the prequel: Oz the Great and Powerful! Our chat began with Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Scott Stokdyk, who let us know first and foremost his role with the film. We then quickly launched in on how the movie creates not just a re-entry into this magical environment for fans of the classic “Wizard of Oz” picture, but also – and especially – lovers of the original book series from whens the whole universe is born.
Stokdyk’s role in the creation of this movie began 2.5 years ago, working directly with the director of the film, Sam Raimi. With Raimi, Stokdyk broke down each element in the storyline piece by piece, speaking about how they’d go about creating each visual effect that would need to exist. After knocking out the script for a period, Mr. Stokdyk headed to Detroit for 7 months of filming the movie on soundstage, working after this for over a year in post-production.
As Visual Effects Supervisor, Stokdyk worked with the fabulous Sony Pictures Imageworks, a group we’ve had some rather fruitful conversations with in the past, to be sure! For those of you who have that tingling feeling you’ve heard Stokdyk’s name before, you’ll be glad to know you’re right: he’s previously worked with Sam Raimi on each of the Spider-Man movies (1, 2, and 3) as Visual Effects Supervisor as he does on the one we’re discussing today and has worked in different effects roles on such classic films as Titanic, Contact, and The Fifth Element.
According to Stokdyk, in both Oz the Great and Powerful and in the film industry in general, the way an effects-inclusive movie can distinguish itself is simple (so to speak). As Stokdyk says, “In Visual Effects nowadays, there’s basically effects work, there’s character work, there’s environmental work – and what distinguishes one show from another nowadays is it’s own unique combination of how those pieces work together and how they’re Art Directed together.”
Seems simple enough to say, right? Stokdyk continued, “[This film] has a nice blend of character animation that’s stunt and action oriented – and performance based – interacting with the real actors. We’ve also got really fantastical environmental extensions of sets. They bring into this fantastical world of Oz what we’ve shot on set.”
You’ll be seeing your fair share of fantastic effects-dependent shots and characters throughout this film which – if you did not know – is out in theaters now! Featured computer-generated characters you’ll be seeing throughout the film include:
The China Girl – this little lady is a porcelain doll that our hero Oz finds after her town is destroyed in the film. She’s voiced by Joey King and trots along with fully realistic features from top to bottom.
Finley the Flying Monkey – a cute little beast voiced by none other than your best buddy Zach Braff. This lovely beast also accompanies Oz throughout the movie and has one whole heck of a lot of fur that needed digital brushing – not to mention the rest of his fully-animated monkey body.
“The most technically challenging production Imageworks’ has completed to date.”
Both Braff and King took part in filming their parts as the monkey and he doll throughout principal photography, allowing the rest of the actors to act and respond in a much more organic way than traditional CG replacements would have allowed. Once filming was complete though, it was all up to the effects teams to bust forth with what Sony Pictures Imageworks describes as “the most technically challenging production Imageworks’ has completed to date.”
The group notes that they completed over 1,100 shots that appear in the final product, these including every single one of the GC environments and character shots. You’ll see digital doubles of each of the main characters: Oz, Glinda, Theodora, Evanora, and Knuck. You’ll see “thousands of flying baboons including three unique hero baboons.” You’ll see massive amounts of CG creatures including “attacking snapdragons, horses, various insects, butterflies, birds, flying fish, wooden horses, lion, squirrel, and river fairies”. You’ll see giant digital crowds of characters across the countryside and inside the city.
Some of the most awesome bits and pieces you should look out for while you’re experiencing this magical mix of fanaticism are:
• Glinda’s Magic Bubbles • A shimmering wall around Glinda’s countryside and village • Theodora’s Fire Tornado • The Oz hologram • Water effects galore • Massive poppy fields • China Town • Emerald City – including “the main gates, boulevard, central square, back gate, back alley, bell tower, palace, dais, vaulted corridor, Throne Room, Room of Resplendence, balcony and bridge digital sets and huge aerials of the city” • Fog!
And for those of you that are worried that this is another one of those films that destroys the experience of moviegoing with a heavy overdose of effects-driven shots, don’t fret! According to Stokdyk, they were certainly conscious of how easy it could have been to OD.
Stokdyk: You have a certain number of shots in any movie that are all computer generated, right? You just can’t shoot them, or there’s a prop that’s too expensive to shoot, or you shoot them in post after you’ve shot them in principal photography. We certainly had a decent chunk of those kind of shots, but after you’ve gone all CG, and done everything in the world CG, where’s the boundary? Where’s the next frontier after that?”
As Stokdyk tells us, so too must it be true! Expect the most awesome combination of art direction, live action, and CG you’ve ever seen on a film of this kind – start to finish!
We didn’t really get to see the Plair in action when we last saw it at CES, but luckily, it’s here with us at Expand 2013! This time round we have a better understanding of what makes this $99, micro-USB-powered HDMI dongle so special: not only can you beam native video clips from your mobile device (through an iOS or Android app) or your desktop Chrome browser’s extension to it, but the Plair can also grab the video source from your current page in Chrome and then stream the clip independently — as in once the video’s started, you can shut your computer down and still keep the stream going on your TV! You can actually see this demonstrated in our video after the break, where we streamed an episode from NBC’s Saturday Night Live website through a WiFi network (but the Plair can also create its own hotspot for direct WiFi connection, which is handy for avoiding slow hotel networks).
In our opinion, the Plair is a neat little gadget for its price, but you’ll have to wait until early April for the next batch coming off the production line. Interested buyers will be able to order a Plair on its website around then.
Follow all of Engadget’s Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here!
Joining the handful of Insert Coin finalists at Expand is Azorean’s cute Ziphius aquatic drone. While Fort Mason is located by the seaside, the folks actually brought their own little pool along to let their Raspberry Pi-powered robot splash around in; though it can happily operate in seawater as well and thus adding more use case possibilities — be it for entertainment (including autonomous ball-chasing, for instance) or for environmental monitoring. Through a direct WiFi connection we were able to use an Android tablet to control both the Ziphius’ surprisingly powerful motors and its camera’s vertical position, as well as watching a live video feed at the same time.
The final version of the drone will come with an interchangeable chassis to suit different purposes or simply for personalization, and internally it’ll be equipped with Raspberry Pi’s upcoming high quality camera module, which will enable even better streaming and onboard 1080p 30fps capture. According to CEO Edmundo Nobre, the Kickstarter campaign will launch before the end of the month, and he’s hoping to bring the Ziphius to the mass market with a price point at around $200 to $250. Not bad, huh? Check out our hands-on video after the break.
When you’re getting to know the 8 CPU cores of the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa SoC, you’ll first want to understand that they absolutely do not work the same way as multi-core mobile processors have in the past. While the Exynos 5 Octa does have 8 CPU cores, they’re never being used all at once. Instead you’ve got 2 distinct pairs of 4 CPU cores, four of them “big”, the other four “LITTLE”. The Exynos 5 Octa SoC works with what’s called big.LITTLE architecture, this term coming from the British processor company ARM.
Inside the Samsung Exynos 5 Octa processor you’ll find two sets of CPU cores, both of them made with ARM technology. There are four Cortex-A15 CPU cores as well as four Cortex-A7 processor. The Cortex-A15 processors take care of processing-intense (read: “big”) tasks while the Cortex-A7 cores take care of lighter (LITTLE) workloads. That’s two sets of four cores that are never all being used on the same task at once.
What you’re about to see is a chart showing in a very basic way how big.LITTLE technology works with the Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 CPU units working together.
The company has also noted that the Exynos 5 Octa is able to drive devices with displays as large as WQXGA (2560×1600) pixels sharp. Devices with this dense a display have not yet hit the market at the time of this article’s publication – but we may see beasts like this inside the next year. Perhaps on the Samsung Galaxy S 5. The Exynos 5 Octa works with e-MMC (embedded multimedia card) 5.0 as well, and works with a USB 3.0 interface for the “first time in the industry” according to Samsung.
With the Exynos 5 Octa you’ve got incorporation of a full HD 60fps (frame per second) video hardware codec engine made powerful enough for 1080p video recording and playback. Also included is a 13 mega-pixel 30fps image signal processor interface as well as a 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth interface that enables use of a Full HD Wifi display.
Samsung has today let the world know that the Exynos 5 Octa application processor will be going into mass-production in Q2 of 2013. They’ve made it clear that this processor architecture will be made specifically for high-end mobile devices and – at the time of the publication of this article – the first release of the Exynos 5 Octa will be inside the Samsung GALAXY S 4.
This week those responsible for working to find the elusive subatomic big of matter known as the Higgs boson have confirmed that they have, indeed, been able to confirm its existence. Of course as these scientists at CERN are, indeed, scientists, most have been just as cautious about saying they’re sure of their findings as their post would indicate: the data “strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson” – is what they’ve announced today. This is indeed a proud day for the $10 billion dollar Large Hadron Collider one way or another.
The initial suggestion that the particle science may have confirmed this week could exist came from 83-year-old Peter Higgs and his team. Though immediately following the announcement it’s been suggested more than once that this discovery will summon a Nobel prize for someone, it’s not quite clear whether the CERN team or Higgs himself would be up for recognition. If the award weren’t just limited to humans, the prize may well have been headed directly for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider itself, it and its 17-mile (27-kilometer) tunnel altogether.
This machine is responsible for creating the energy surges needed to discover the Higgs boson. With collision simulations of the energies generated immediately following the initial Big Bang that created our universe, only one in every trillion tests would – and perhaps has – created a Higgs boson particle.
The confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson particle would, in turn, prove the existence of the Higgs field. The Higgs field is part of what’s called the Standard Model of particle physics that explains why some particles have mass. Discovering the Higgs boson and confirming the Higgs field would in turn validate the last in a series of parts included in the Standard Model.
If the Standard Model is validated in full, this could open the door to developments in what at the moment is called “new” physics. If we’re moving from the Standard Model towards “new” physics, we’ll eventually be lead to new technologies and innovations whose reach is currently incalculable.
The possibilities here are well and above the cost – any cost – that creating the Large Hadron Collider could have created as the end result could change our understanding of how the universe fits together – and how we interact with it. The possibilities are endless, and right this minute we’re at a point in our collective history that we may well be placing in history books forevermore!
Google Reader is shutting down, folks, and aside from a few petitions that may or may not, but definitely won’t work, there’s nothing we can really do. The die has been cast. The moving finger has writ. Hannibal has crossed the alps. Google Reader will be no more starting on July 1. Thankfully, though, Google is giving us a generous grace period to go out and seek other means of RSS aggregation, and we have a few suggestion that you may want to consider as you go on your quest.
The Old Reader
The Old Reader is often forgotten about, but it’s a minimalistic and simple RSS reader that gets the job done. However, the interface also looks a lot like Google Reader, giving you just the information you need in a simple and straightforward layout. However, there’s no mobile apps to access your feeds on the go, so you’re tied to your web browser.
NewsBlur
NewsBlur is another RSS reader that looks similar to Google Reader, but we have to say it looks a bit nicer. It offers both free and paid plans; free users can have a maximum of 64 feeds, while you can jump to an unlimited subscription for only a $1/month, which isn’t too bad at all. Plus, the service has iOS and Android apps for the news junkies on the go.
Feedly
Feedly is one of the more popular RSS readers out there, and it supports a whole host of devices, that way you can have your RSS feeds synced up wherever you are. Feedly can run in Chrome and Firefox using the service’s extensions, and there are also iOS and Android apps, as well as an app for Kindle devices. The interface will take some getting used to, though, if you’re used to Google Reader, but it has most of the same display options. It’s layout is more like a magazine, or even a newspaper in some cases, but you can change the format in the settings to give you just a straightforward feed.
Flipboard
Flipboard is also another popular option, although it’s interface is more like a stylish magazine rather than an actual feed, since it’s heavily image-based. However, there’s no desktop client or web-based version of Flipboard — it’s all strictly mobile on iOS, Android, Kindle, and NOOK. So, while design junkies will definitely like the beautiful layout, it’s definitely not for those who need their news and information on their desktop.
Pulse
Pulse is another RSS reader that’s similar to Flipboard, as it has a pretty interface that lays out items in a tile format. It’s also heavily image-based, so if you’re looking for something that closely resembles Google Reader, this may not be the one for you. However, it does have a web-based version using HTML5, as well as apps for both iOS and Android.
If success is judged by anticipation, the Samsung GALAXY S 4 is already a winner. Hotly discussed in the months leading up to today’s big reveal, expectations for the phone have varied wildly from a ground-shaking rethink to a buff and polish of the best-selling Galaxy S III. The end result, though, treads a line between the two: familiar and yet bursting with new functionality, and refined in ways that, while not perhaps the most headline-catching, nonetheless keep Samsung’s hardware at the top of its game. Read on for our hands-on first impressions.
From the outset, it’s clear that Samsung hasn’t strayed too far from the formula that made the Galaxy S III so successful. The new phone follows in the family style footsteps, though while the dimensions are similar to before – the same 136.6mm length, slightly wider at 69.8mm, and slightly thinner at 7.9mm – Samsung has managed to squeeze in a larger display. The new Super AMOLED HD screen measures in at 5-inches, versus the 4.7- of the older phone, and now runs at a crisp 1080p resolution for 441ppi pixel density.
Even just accommodating a screen of that size without a significant change in size is impressive, but the panel itself is a good one too. It’s still PenTile, which is likely to make some display purists groan, but it keeps the great contrast and rich colors we’re familiar with from AMOLED. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the similarly 1080p (though slightly smaller) HTC One’s LCD3 screen is a little more natural and pleasing to our eyes, though.
If HTC has focused its software efforts on BlinkFeed and Zoe, Samsung has cast its net wide, basically throwing everything at the wall in the expectation that at least something will stick for most users. The 13-megapixel main camera (paired with a 2-megapixel front camera) gets a new suite of features, such as the ability to take two photos or videos simultaneously from the front and rear cameras and combine them into one, Samsung Dual Shot, and being able to append up to nine seconds of audio to a still, to give it some context when you later review it. Samsung calls that Sound-in-Shot, though while it’s clever, we’re not quite as impressed as we were by HTC Zoe.
There’s also no shortage of signs that Samsung has its eye on what’s currently fashionable in mobile. So, there’s Cinema Photo, which basically creates a cinemagram-style animated photo without demanding a third-party app, and Drama Shot, which builds a single frame out of multiple burst-photography stills. You can easily share a group of images about, say, a recent holiday in a Story Album, complete with facts from Trip Advisor; that can later be printed courtesy of a tie-in with Blurb.
The Galaxy S III introduced eye-recognition for keeping its display active, and the GALAXY S 4 builds on that with Smart Pause and Smart Scroll. When you look away from the screen during video playback, the phone automatically pauses it until you look back; similarly, if you’re looking at the S 4 and reading a longer list, then simply tilting the phone scrolls through it. The GALAXY S 4 is pretty obsessed by where your fingers are, too: the Galaxy Note II, for instance, could track whether its S Pen nib was hovering over the screen but not touching, but now the S 4 can do the same only recognizing your fingertips.
That means you can peep inside folders and galleries, or at the content of unopened messages, simply by floating your fingertips over the top of them; Samsung has also brought in some third-party app support, with titles like Flipboard also supporting the Hover feature to preview new stories. It’s not the only way the GALAXY S 4 is watching you. Air Browse, Air Jump, and Air Call Accept all track hand movements, allowing you to wave and gesture your way through menus, answering calls – which we could see being particularly usefully when you’re driving – and controlling music playback.
When you can pretty much count on your phone selling in the millions, you can start to look at how different units interact, as Samsung has with the GALAXY S 4. There’s Group Play for audio, video, and gaming playback, creating ad-hoc local networks of multiple handsets all running the same content synchronized, for instance, with support for games like Asphalt 7 and Gun Bros 2 working with the feature. There’s also S Translator in the latest version of ChatON, the messaging app, and the email app, usefully switching between languages rather than forcing you to copy and paste into something like Google Translate.
Samsung has really gone to town on added-extras – in fact the number of times you might have to dig into Google Play for a third-party solution is shrinking all the time. There’s a business card scanner – which also usefully gets S Translator baked-in, to pick out and convert foreign addresses and job titles – and an IR blaster which, with the new Samsung WatchON app, turns the phone into a remote control complete with EPG and on-demand access.
The rest of the hardware basically backs up that software flourish with the power the Galaxy S4 needs to deliver on its promises. Different geographies will get different processors, depending on the combination of LTE and other factors, with Samsung choosing between the quadcore Snapdragon 1.9Ghz and its own eight-core 1.6Ghz Exynos 5. . No matter the chip, there’ll be 2GB of memory to accompany it, and the usual 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of internal capacity. Samsung has also stuck with expandable memory and a removable battery, something neither the HTC One nor the iPhone 5 offer, features which remain popular among power-users and business customers.
Image and sound processing also get worked over, with Samsung Adapt Sound and Adapt Display. We’ve seen such DSP used to good effect by Sony and others, and the Galaxy S4 benefits too, though when it comes to sound it’s clear that nothing can replace big drivers. The HTC One’s custom speaker system and Beats Audio processing still has the edge, to our ears.
Samsung didn’t stint on accessories for the Galaxy S III – at a time when, while iPhone had a thriving ecosystem of third-party add-ons, Android devices still lacked anything so cohesive – and the company hasn’t slowed down with the Galaxy S4. There’s a new S View Cover, like a flip-cover only with a window cut through that allows a small part of the smartphone’s display to remain powered-up and show battery, signal status, music playlists, and incoming call details. That’s courtesy of AMOLED’s capability to only power a small subset of an overall display, and sip battery while it does so.
Then there are the new add-ons to go with S Health. Samsung did have some health & fitness tech for the previous Galaxy, but the S4 steps it up a notch, timely given the focus on wearables and monitoring right now. Software-only, S Health will work as a pedometer as well as tracking temperature and humidity, in addition to allowing users to log their food (with a huge database in the background of nutritional information). However, there’s also Samsung S Band, a Bluetooth-enabled tracker in the manner of a Jawbone UP, which logs data even if the GALAXY S 4 isn’t nearby, and then synchronizes with it once they’re back in range. Samsung also has a Bluetooth-enabled body scale and heart-rate monitor, which also feed their recordings into the phone.
Expectations for the GALAXY S 4 have been high, but Samsung has taken the evolutionary rather than revolutionary path for its new phone. Then again, it didn’t have to: sales of the Galaxy S III remain brisk, and the company has the marketing budget to hammer home its latest message. It also avoids frustrating existing owners too greatly: they’ll be getting software updates which add many of the new Samsung-exclusive additions, and haven’t been left too far behind with the hardware.
That said, should Galaxy S III users upgrade to the GALAXY S 4? If you insist on being on the very latest hardware, and you’re wedded to Samsung, then perhaps it’s a no-brainer. However, it’s not the vast step-up we saw from, say, the Galaxy S II to its successor. In fact, while the hardware is cutting-edge, it’s clear that Samsung’s efforts this time around have really been focused on software enhancements. Some won’t care about things like the IR blaster or Group Play, but will lap up the S Health system and Air Gestures, or vice-versa, but either way there’s a sense that there’s something for everybody.
On the one hand, that’s liberating – after all, why should everyone use the same device in the same way? – but on the other it can get overwhelming and confusing. The appeal of the HTC One is not only that it’s built so well (leagues ahead, we must say, than the in-hand-feel of the GALAXY S 4) but that it focuses on doing a couple of things particularly well, in ways that make a significant difference to the user over and above the standard Android OS.
We’ll confess to a certain sense of unease, then, about how the GALAXY S 4 will find its place in the smartphone market today. Samsung has done what it needed to – in the manner of Apple and the transition between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S – to bring its flagship up to speed. Promotion and advertising will take care of the rest. If that overshadows phones like the HTC One, however, devices which really do take a more revolutionary approach, then we’d be mightily disappointed.
The Samsung GALAXY S 4 will sell by the bucket-load. Everybody knows that. But in a way we’re still more thankful for its predecessor and how that forced every other Android OEM to raise its game for 2013. That’s better for consumers, and more interesting for us. We’ll have to wait until we can review the Galaxy S4 before we can tell whether it’s actually the best Android device of the lot, however.
It’s been a tough few years for HTC, unsung victim of the Apple-Samsung smartphone war, and the new HTC One has a lot to do to fix that. The company has seen its place in Android dwindle from trailblazer to also-ran, as Samsung’s cutting-edge hardware and vast marketing budget forced Galaxy to the fore. Solid phones like 2012′s One X and One S failed to relight HTC’s fire, and so it has done the only thing it can: raise its game much, much higher with the HTC One. We’re back to the days of risk-taking hardware decisions and legitimately interesting software, but the big question is whether the One can pull it off. Read on for the full SlashGear review.
Design
Stunning. The HTC One makes a compelling argument for being the best-made Android phone we can recall, a design that both looks and feels premium (though photos don’t tend to do it justice, making it look flat and overly simplistic). Last year’s One X was a solid device, with its polycarbonate plastic casing, but the One is leagues ahead. HTC went back to basics – CNC-intensive manufacturing processes; clever rethinking of how to finesse the most out of minimal antennas – with its industrial design, and the end result is a phone that’s creak-free and somehow timeless in the same way that Apple’s MacBook Pro design has gracefully evolved.
On the front, HTC’s favorite micro-drilling process has spread from the earpiece to the slip of metal under the display, while the company continues to insist that Google’s on-screen buttons are a waste of valuable display space, and so includes touch-sensitive keys. We’re down to just two of them, however – Back and Home – flanking an HTC logo that doesn’t do anything if you tap it. We can’t help but wish the logo was the home button, since we kept stabbing at it out of habit.
A thin band of white polycarbonate runs the chamfered edge of the One, enclosing the power key (which doubles as an IR blaster) and headphone socket on the top edge, and the microUSB port on the bottom. A volume rocker is on the side, flush with the casing. On the back, the gently bowed metal has been carefully shot through with narrow strips of plastic which allow the antennas to do their magic; there’s a neat stylistic flourish with the upper band dipping to encircle the camera lens, but we could do without the Beats Audio logo which looks a little garish in comparison to the discretely metallic HTC branding.
All that metal and sturdiness comes with a compromise, and that’s the battery. HTC has opted for a non-removable Li-Poly pack, a healthy 2,300 mAh, which is fixed inside. Exactly how many people ever actually swap out their batteries is unclear, but it could prove an early deal-breaker for some. Similarly, there’s no microSD card slot, HTC unable to accommodate it in the 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3 mm, 143g frame.
Hardware and Performance
HTC has thrown the works at the One, and pretty much all but wireless charging has stuck. So, you get a fast processor – Qualcomm’s 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 quadcore, to be exact – and 2GB of memory, along with a 4.7-inch Full HD display (more on which later). Connectivity includes LTE, HSPA/WCDMA, and GSM/EDGE, along with WiFi a/b/g/n/ac, MHL-HDMI with the right adapter, Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX audio support, NFC, and Miracast wireless display, while there’s also a digital compass, GPS, GLONASS, gyroscope, accelerometer, and proximity/ambient light sensors.
Without a microSD card slot, internal storage becomes all the more important. HTC has sensibly bypassed the 16GB point and instead opted for 32GB and 64GB versions, though the latter will be only available in certain, limited locations. Our 32GB review unit had 25.49GB free out of the box. There’s a free 25GB chunk of Dropbox storage, too, though we’d still rather see expandable local memory if given the option.
It’s particularly topical since the One does so well with multimedia. For once, the Beats Audio doesn’t feel like a cynical marketing mention: the One really does exceed what other phones can do, both when it comes to recording and playing back sound. For the former, it’s down to two dual-membrane microphones, which HTC calls Sense Voice: in short, one half of each microphone handles high signal-to-noise ratio sound, such as regular speech, up to around the 75dB point, while above that there’s a high sound pressure level membrane that can cope with the more boisterous sounds you’d encounter at a concert or club.
Sample recording from a concert
Together they’re designed to handle every audio situation the phone might find itself in, whether that’s doing speakerphone duty in a quiet office, recording your kids on the swings at the park, or in the front row of a gig. Best of all, it actually works: the stereo pick-up is excellent in normal conditions, but as soon as things get loud and you’d expect a regular phone to get overwhelmed, the One just bulldozes ahead. We kept trying to identify the point where the membranes hand over, but in fact it’s more of a seamless blend; you simply can’t tell what the One is doing, which is really as it should be.
On the flip side are the speakers, which HTC is equally proud of. The One brings them up-front, flanking the display, and gives them significantly larger chambers to resonate in. Look beyond the awkward BoomSound branding and the result is impressive: loud but without distortion, and with bass that belies the fact you’re listening to a phone. The speakers get their own Beats Audio branded amplifier, too, with a second powering the headphone socket. Interestingly, HTC isn’t bundling any Beats Audio headphones in the box this time around, only a regular wired hands-free kit, though the One worked well with every aftermarket set we tried.
We can’t complain about the One’s overall performance, the Snapdragon 600 putting in a convincing show both in everyday use and in benchmarks. In Quadrant, the HTC scored 12,127, a huge step up from the 7,400 of the One X+, while in AnTuTu it managed 24,283, up from the 16,245 of the One X+. In Qualcomm’s Vellamo test, it scored 2,398 in the HTML5 category and 779 in the Metal category. In SunSpider, the browser test of JavaScript performance, the One scored 1118.9ms (faster is better. Overall, then, it’s clear that the One can handle anything you could throw at it today, and is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future.
Display
Point-three of an inch shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. HTC’s decision to go with a 4.7-inch screen, against the 5-inch panel of the DROID DNA and Butterfly J, is a welcome one: you still get the rich, creamy Full HD resolution, but that slightly condensed 1080p adds up to both 468ppi pixel density and a handset that’s easier to hold.
HTC has stuck with LCD rather than looking to AMOLED, and the result is a panel that’s beautifully balanced. Accurate colors, rich blacks, and viewing angles that are so broad as to look pasted on. It could arguably do with being a little brighter at its maximum setting – we’ve been spoiled with recent high-nit panels from LG and others, which do better at battling sunlight – but it’s a great all-rounder nonetheless.
Software
HTC Sense
HTC Sense has had a long and at-times tortured journey. What started as HTC’s attempt to tame the wild-west of raw Android back in the v1.5 days gradually became heavier, slower, and arguably less necessary as Google tightened up its own software. What were once HTC-exclusive features gradually became baked into Android-proper, and – despite a few little-developed additions, like OnLive gaming and HTC Watch – HTC seemed more interested in simply visually differentiating its phones than actually delivering a legitimately more usable UI.
That doesn’t fly in 2013, when pure Android has an increasing number of fans, and rivals like Samsung have gone tweak and enhancement crazy with their own software modifications. Happily HTC has taken a clean-slate approach with Sense 5.0 on the One, and much of its new strategy works.
For a start, the swollen icons and cartoony feel has been pared back dramatically, keeping little more than wire-frame outlines of HTC’s weather icons (some things, like zombies, refuse to die). Instead, you get some welcome use of Google’s Roboto font – in its condensed form, which makes it look both familiar and distinctive – and a crisper, more simplistic layout with flatter icons and a black/white/blue color scheme that’s reminiscent of Windows Phone in places.
The familiar homescreen is still present, though now limited to four panes of icons or widgets – HTC says its research indicates the vast majority of users settle on a screen or two of icons, and then never bother changing them – while the app launcher comes with several apps already organized away into folders, part of HTC’s encouragement to keep the layout (either 3×4 or 4×5) tidy. Our units direct from HTC have little in the way of bloatware preinstalled, and we know the company is working with carriers to try to minimize how many “added extras” get thrown in, with the goal being to have them at least corralled into a folder from the start.
Interestingly, you can treat the app launcher as a homescreen; jump from it into an app and then hit the Home key, and you’ll go straight back to the launcher rather than the traditional desktop. However, HTC has another part of its homescreen that it hopes will become your default.
HTC BlinkFeed
BlinkFeed is HTC’s latest try at pulling together social, something it started several years back in FriendFeed. However, the new system is far more comprehensive, featuring not only Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Flickr content, but news from multiple online sources. Outwardly similar in appearance and functionality to newsreading-app Flipboard, BlinkFeed sits to a side-swipe of the desktop and fills the screen with page after page of mixed content from news and social.
In its first generation, you can only choose from HTC’s selection of news sources – future iterations will support general RSS feeds being added, HTC tells us – but it’s a pretty comprehensive selection from the outset, and tailored depending on your location. Those in the US will see sources like USA Today and the WSJ, while those in the UK will get the BBC and the Guardian, for instance. Subscriptions can be added on a category basis – technology, for instance, or sport – or from a specific provider. If you’re on a WiFi connection then the list is updated automatically every couple of hours by default, whereas out of the box it’s manual-only refreshes on a cellular data connection. A quick pull down on the BlinkFeed list triggers a check for new articles (as well as showing the options menu for managing subscriptions).
We’re generally wary of news reader apps, especially those preloaded by manufacturers, since they’re usually subpar compared to third-party options like Flipboard. BlinkFeed, though, is surprisingly capable. HTC describes its purpose as serving up “snackable” content, the sort of glanceable tidbit that might catch your attention when you instinctively reach for your phone in a moment of distraction, and in that respect it operates as a gateway rather than trying to be the be-all and end-all of news consumption.
Tap an article – small icons and text at the bottom of each thumbnail show whether its come from a news site or been shared from Twitter, Facebook, or another social source, along with who shared it – and it opens in the regular browser. Tweets open in the official Twitter app, Facebook links in the Facebook app; not some HTC version the company has cooked up. In the future, you’ll be able to choose alternative apps – so, for instance, you could use your third-party Twitter software of choice rather than the microblogging company’s own app – but that’s not supported at launch. If the flow of news gets too much for you, you can shut it off and use BlinkFeed solely as a social feed, or vice-versa. Other apps will also periodically inject their content into BlinkFeed too, so for instance the gallery might remind you of an old photo taken if you revisit a location, or HTC might slide in a pane with tips about an under-utilized feature. Sadly, despite its cards arguably making the most sense for inclusion, there’s currently no Google Now integration.
Despite our skepticism, we quickly grew to like BlinkFeed. Part of that’s down to speed: there’s very little lag in scrolling through the list – HTC has wisely kept the animations to a minimum, with just a small amount of tile-tilt when you flick through each page – and stories open up quickly. HTC’s content partner does a fair amount of server-side processing to keep data transfer time and overall traffic to a minimum: the One gets the headline and an image (news sources with photos get priority over text-only stories) and then only accesses a specially formatted article when you actually tap on it. There’s also a push to show the full article rather than just an excerpt, as sometimes find on Flipboard, though you can always open up the page on the original site, or share it via any of the usual Android methods. It’s perfect for the casual grazing smartphone addicts do in every moment of downtime.
BlinkFeed is obviously a first-generation product, but HTC has ambitious plans for its development. Our advice has always been to buy a device for what it does today, not what it might be updated to do tomorrow, though HTC has at least made changes to Sense in v.5 to address a key complaint: that software updates are frustratingly infrequent. Typically, that’s because a new firmware version demands considerable interaction between manufacturer and the carriers, and often only comes when Google pushes out a new version of Android.
To address that, HTC has divorced the update process for its own apps from the underlying OS. Rather than being forced to wait for a significant firmware change before it can tweak, patch, and generally improve BlinkFeed and other homegrown software, HTC will be able to update them piecemeal. So, when BlinkFeed finally gets third-party app support, or RSS subscription support, HTC will be able to deliver that functionality in the same manner as an app downloaded from the Google Play store can.
We’ve heard promises of more timely upgrades before, so the proof of HTC’s ambitious new system will be in the delivery. However, if it can do it, it will go a long way to drawing some of the venom many feel about OEM skins like Sense. That’s not to say HTC has turned over a new leaf entirely: the One launches running Android 4.1.2, rather than 4.2, with the company promising an update soon.
HTC Get Started
Once upon a time, HTC offered a web-based counterpart to Sense on its phones, with mobile content access, backup, find-my-phone security, and remote locking. That was quietly retired in early 2012, however, with HTC promising bright new things in its place. Those bright new things have taken until now, and the HTC One, to arrive.
HTC Get Started is, the company tells us, in part a reaction to the growing number of online sales of phones: now, buyers will be able to jump straight into their new phone experience, even while they’re waiting for the One to be physically delivered. In short, it’s a simple way to set up a new device. After choosing your model (and carrier variant), you can personalize the applications, sounds, bookmarks, wallpapers, lock screen options, and even the feeds in BlinkFeed, all via a web interface on the desktop.
You can start from a blank slate, or pick from seven presets – family, games, music, photos, social, sports, or travel – which each populate the One with a set of feeds, apps, bookmarks, sounds, and other settings. So, if you opt for the games preset, you get Temple Run and Angry Birds Space automatically installed, along with gaming and sports content for BlinkFeed, and some of the popular gaming news and reviews sites bookmarked in the browser. Every choice is previewed on a mock-up of the One shown alongside.
If you’d rather craft your own setup, you can step through each content stage, picking ringtones, notifications, and alarms – or uploading your own audio to snip a sound from it – then choosing from either preloaded bookmarks or add your own, as well as from HTC’s wallpapers or one of your own images uploaded specially. All of the apps you choose come direct from the Google Play store, which means they update just as if you loaded them manually on the phone itself.
It’s the accounts section of Get Started that’s the most useful, however. Rather than punch in your email and Dropbox credentials during the on-device setup wizard – something which can be frustrating, pecking in passwords on a soft keyboard – you can register them in the browser interface. The whole thing is then finished off with either the creation of an HTC account or, alternatively, by logging in with your Facebook or Weibo username and password. When you start up the phone, you can punch those credentials in, and the One gets automagically set up just as you arranged it online.
Given how much time we spend setting up new devices, we’re unsurprisingly fans of HTC Get Started. You don’t have to be a phone reviewer to appreciate its simplicity, however; one of the most frustrating issues new smartphone owners can face is not being quite sure what to actually do with their powerful new gadget, and so HTC’s smorgasbord of curated apps is a great launching point. Unfortunately there’s no way, at present, to synchronize Sense in the other direction – you can’t back-up your exact phone layout to Get Started, edit it online, and then later restore that to the device – but HTC does at least offer a backup system that preserves most of the layout and settings of your handset.
TV
HTC’s clever integration of an IR blaster into the One’s power button gets a purpose right out of the box, with the company’s simply-named TV app. Built on Peel technology – which powers the universal remote system included on some Galaxy Tab tablets, for instance – the app basically replaces your usual home entertainment remotes and throws in a channel guide too.
First-time setup involves telling the app where you live and what content providers you have – cable, satellite, free-to-air digital, etc. – then selecting your TV model and any other A/V kit you might have. HTC has a long list of manufacturers to choose from, and we were up and running with our TVs simply by choosing the brand; testing basically involves firing off a power signal, and making sure the TV turns on as expected. Multiple devices can be set up and switched between, and if you’ve something not on the list then you can teach the TV app how to use it: the IR blaster also works as a remote reader, and so by pointing the controller for your mystery device at the One, you can step through all of the key controls. That way, we were able to set up an Apple TV, a preset for which was missing from HTC’s list.
When you open TV, you find a screen of currently-playing shows based on the channels you receive. Each gets a preview and a bar running along the bottom showing how far through the show is; tapping it automatically changes the channel, or you can open up an information page with an episode summary, a list of actors, and other details. It’s there you can also favorite shows: from that point, those you’ve favorited will show up higher in the “now playing” list, as well as have reminders of new episodes pushed into your BlinkFeed. A side-swipe from the main screen shows what’s coming up next, as well as allowing you to dig into the future schedule or break your planning down channel-by-channel. It’s also possible to permanently hide channels you’re not interested in.
Exit the TV app and a shortcut automatically appears in the notification bar, complete with quick access to the power, to the full remote page, and details of what you’re currently watching. Set the phone down with TV running and, if it goes to sleep, it’ll wake up automatically when you pick it up. You can pull the app up even if the phone is PIN-locked, too, though for security users won’t be able to jump from the TV app to other content on your phone if you’ve left it on the coffee table. It’s worth noting that the app only knows what’s on if you’ve been using it exclusively; if you switch between the One and your regular remote, there’s no way for the phone to figure out what channel is currently playing.
The other aspect of TV is streaming content, though here HTC’s provision is slightly less developed. You can stream video directly from the phone to a TV – it’s incredibly straightforward, too, as long as it supports DLNA or Miracast, and is basically a matter of choosing the screen of choice and then watching the content show up – or from third-party services like Netflix and Hulu Plus. Eventually, HTC aims to have the TV app control the native streaming apps on smart TVs, but for now it works best if you have HTC’s own MediaLink HD box plugged into your set via HDMI.
As with BlinkFeed, HTC has more in store for the TV app. Right now, it’s responsive but not predictive: it’ll remind you of an upcoming show if you’ve favorited it before, but it won’t make suggestions based on what it thinks you might like. That’s in the pipeline, though, and HTC will be able to iterate more regularly thanks to its streamlined update system. Meanwhile, HTC is pitching an API for the IR blaster around A/V app developers, hoping for broader adoption there, too. For the moment, it’s a handy system if you’re laden with remotes or often lose them, though it’s perhaps too early to be a must-have feature.
Kid Mode
Handing your offspring your phone – especially if it’s logged into an app or multimedia store, complete with a credit card registered – can be a recipe for disaster. To fix that, HTC equips the One with Kid Mode, powered by Zoodles, which offers a captive selection of games, age-appropriate multimedia, storybooks, and more, all with a child-friendly interface.
There’s support for time limits on how long games and the web are accessible, as well as ad-blocking and site whitelisting for controlling what kids will come across online. Each child has their own “Playground” user-account, with management from a centralized dashboard. It’s worth noting that Zoodles is already available for Android devices in general, in addition to Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Camera
The One’s camera is probably HTC’s biggest risk with its new flagship, a concerted decision to step off the megapixel bandwagon and instead reconsider smartphone photography from the perspective of how owners really use their phones. So, the One has a “mere” 4-megapixel camera – less than a third of the 13-megapixels Sony has equipped the Xperia Z with, for instance, or LG on the Optimus G Pro – but it’s a specially designed sensor exclusively for HTC’s use.
The key is light. HTC’s research suggests most users take photos indoors or in subpar lighting conditions, rather than outdoors where most phone cameras do their best work. Although ramping up the megapixels increases detail, it also makes each pixel smaller – assuming you want to keep a pocket-friendly phone unlike, say, Nokia with the capable but bloated sensor of the 808 PureView – and that means each gets less light and so the final image gets more noise and other glitches.
HTC’s approach is to use huge pixels – capable of grabbing over 300x the light of some rival cameras – so that, even though the final image may not be as large as from an 8- or 13-megapixel device, its overall quality is higher. More light means faster shutter speeds are possible, which helps cut down on phone shake; HTC also adds in two-axis optical image stabilization to assist with that. The resulting data is fed straight into the latest version of HTC’s ImageChip processing, which finesses things based on the RAW data rather than, as other phones tend to, on the converted JPEG.
Sample shots
The difference is quite literally night and day when it comes to low-light images. Scenes that, on a Galaxy S III or an iPhone 5 are so murky as to be all but useless, come out with significant amounts of detail on the One. The One has an LED flash – which will automatically choose between five degrees of brightness, depending on the distance between the phone and the subject – but you can comfortably leave it off more often than not. As well as greater detail, the One can do less post-processing to remove blur, since the bigger pixels allow for faster shutter speeds.
In more ideal conditions, the One’s shots suffer if you blow them up and compare them side-by-side with higher-megapixel images. The 4-megapixel sensor simply lacks the resolution to compete on that level. Nonetheless, at more typical levels of crop, we’re left impressed by the standard of stills from the One. Colors are accurate and there’s admirably little noise, HTC’s favored 28mm f/2.0 lens making its presence known once more.
Up front, meanwhile, there’s a 2.1-megapixel camera which also has an f/2.0 lens, and HTC has borrowed the One X+’s wide-angle optics so that you can fit more people in-frame at any one time. It’ll shoot 1080p Full HD video, too (though not Zoe shots; more on which in a moment), plus HDR stills, and there’s a useful timer which means you can tap the screen and still have time to post before the frame is captured.
As for video, the One can capture 1080p footage at 30fps, or 720p footage at 60fps; there’s support for HDR video, as well as simultaneously capturing a full-resolution still image while you’re recording video. The results for video are as impressive as those for still images, with excellent colors, balance, and brightness levels, and minimal judder or noise. The low-light performance isn’t quite as convincing as for still shots, though the One handles scenes with mixed high- and low-brightness well: in footage of a show, for instance, with bright lights on-stage and darkness elsewhere, both areas were cleanly visible.
HTC Zoe
If HTC has its way, though, we’ll not be taking just photos or video, but a hybrid of the two. Called Zoe, it’s HTC’s vision of the future of mobile photography: a 0.6s pre-capture of video, from before you hit the on-screen button, then three seconds of video along with twenty stills. There’s no quality compromise involved – stills are at full resolution, and video is at 1080p complete with audio.
Each cluster of content can then be used in interesting ways. At the most basic, it brings the gallery alive: as you look at albums and thumbnails, the 3.6s video clips cycle through as if you’re looking at a magical Harry Potter newspaper. However, open up a Zoe and you can scroll through the clip with a timeline bar, picking out individual frames to keep. HTC has baked in some editing features too, so you can pick out faces from different frames and combine them into one, ensuring everyone has their eyes open and are smiling, or remove objects from the picture. The One can identify faces, too, and allow per-face tweaks like eye-whitening, anime-style enlarging, and skin smoothing.
Each event – a group of recent Zoe clusters, either automatically created by the One or manually merged or split off – gets a thirty second “highlight reel” that the phone produces itself. That sits at the top of the event view, and is basically an automatically curated overview of the themed content. There are six themes to choose from – ranging from “Eifel” with its quirky Parisian style, to the more hipster “Vega” with fast chops and cool color tones – and you can switch between them at will, the reel changing on-the-fly. Hit the remix button, meanwhile, and you instantly get another edit, the speed at which it’s created a testament to HTC’s processing power.
The technology behind the highlight reel is surprisingly complex, too. The cuts aren’t solely random; instead, the One is analyzing each clip and photo for the most interesting parts, such as those which include action, or faces, or even how often you’ve looked at specific photos in the gallery. What you can’t do is manually tweak the reels – only have the phone cook up a new remix itself – or use your own music; HTC tells us the latter is likely to come in a future update, as well as more themes to choose from, but for now you’re limited to the six preloaded.
We’ll admit, it seemed like a gimmick at first. Yet after a short while – and the fact that shooting a Zoe basically has no downside compared to a photo; there’s no processing lag after it finishes, for instance, you simple tap the button and watch the little red highlight slide across the icon – we found ourselves sticking in Zoe mode altogether. Being able to step back through the array of stills, even to before the point we actually took the photo, and pick out the best frame was useful for portrait and action shots, while the highlight reel is the perfect length for Facebook sharing (without boring friends and family with minute after minute of the same mundane thing).
That sharing can be done directly to YouTube, Facebook, or something similar, with the reel exported as an MP4. However, there’s also Zoe Share, HTC’s own social system. A free online gallery, it allows you to choose a reel and an accompanying ten photos or Zoes to upload to a special gallery, with the One automatically pinging you a link in the notification bar which can then be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, or somewhere else.
Zoe Share isn’t ideal, however. For a start there’s a time limit on how long HTC will host the collections – currently three months – after which they get deleted. Individual stills can be downloaded from Zoe Share, but not individual Zoe clips nor the thirty second highlight reel. Links are entirely public, too; you can’t have a private Zoe Share, with a password in case someone forwards the URL, for instance. There’s also no way to change the video resolution – it defaults to 1080p – which can mean slow uploads unless you’re lucky enough to have a decent connection.
Again, HTC tells us it’s working on a more comprehensive export system – perhaps integrated into the HTC Sync Manager app, which is used to synchronize audio and other content from your PC or Mac to the phone and back, as well as doing file browsing duties – but there’s no timescale for when it might arrive. Meanwhile, if you use an auto-upload service, whether Dropbox (as is prompted during the initial One setup) or something like Google+, every one of the twenty Zoe frames gets automatically uploaded, and there’s no way (aside from manually deleting the shots) to have it only upload one or two of them. Storage – whether on-device or cloud – could quickly become an issue, with each cluster of Zoe content coming in at around 32MB (the 30s video along is 4MB).
That said, we still think it’s a great feature. Zoe injects the fun back into being a mobile shutterbug, producing multimedia that others would actually want to look at. In fact, the biggest drawback of the One isn’t its photo quality, or its overall usability, but trying to educate potential buyers as to what makes the camera special. HTC does itself few favors by turning the full force of its branding machine on the One’s camera system, with confusing results. Instead of megapixels you get UltraPixels; the video/snapshot clusters are called Zoe; but there are also Zoe Highlights, the longer videos that pull in content from multiple Zoes for the ad-hoc, curated 30 second clip complete with music and filters. It’s enough to confuse even the professionals, and that doesn’t bode well for how easy a sale it might be.
Phone and Battery
Given the quality of the HTC One’s music playback performance, we had high hopes for in-call audio. Interestingly, though, the phone was pretty average: the earpiece has a somewhat hollow sound to it, with callers certainly audible but not quite as clear as on some other devices. We had no complaints about microphone performance, though, with the One’s noise cancellation doing a capable job, and the speakerphone was suitably loud.
HTC quotes up to 18hrs 3G talktime (27hrs 2G) from the One, or 500hrs 3G standby (479hrs 2G); that’s based on our European-spec review units, since US-spec versions aren’t available yet. Given the size of the display (and the amount we’ve been playing with the One, particularly the camera) it comes as little surprise that it falls in line with other recent smartphones in terms of real-world longevity.
With all of the usual accounts doing their work in the background – push email, Facebook and/or Google+ multimedia uploads, periodic checking of social networks, etc. – and with regular use, we took the phone down from 88-percent to around 20-percent in the space of just over 7.5hrs. That’s predominantly on WiFi, though with some AT&T HSPA+ use. From a full charge to flat, then, with heavy use you could expect in excess of nine hours of runtime.
Unsurprisingly, once you notch back on some of the background activity, things start to improve significantly, and in fact HTC offers a Power Saver option – readily accessed from the notifications pull-down – which optionally throttles the CPU, lowers screen brightness, turns off vibration alerts, and shuts off off data when the phone is locked. Unfortunately there’s no way to prioritize certain apps to maintain their connection with Power Saver is turned on, which means you won’t get the benefits of push-email and similar. Instead, the One wakes the radio periodically to check what’s new, with no user control over how frequently that happens.
Display and camera are the biggest battery hogs, really. The impact of the screen isn’t much of a shock, since it’s a common culprit, but camera users might be surprised by how much in the way of resources significant use of Zoe photography can cause. After all, the One is constantly buffering video and photos whenever Zoe mode is active in the camera app.
There are two ways of looking at the One’s battery showing – and bear in mind we’ll be running ongoing battery testing over the coming days, including on LTE networks. You could be disappointed, frustrated by the fact that big screens and lots of data use take their toll on a battery, even if it’s a reasonably sized 2,300 mAh pack; you could also decry HTC’s decision to chase solid form over replaceable battery flexibility. Or, you might accept the regular recharging as a fact of life with any modern smartphone; we’re yet to find one – barring perhaps the DROID RAZR MAXX and Galaxy Note II, each of which have simply huge batteries and the oversized form-factors to accommodate them – which doesn’t demand such compromises.
Wrap-up
It doesn’t take genius to realize that the One is HTC’s best phone in a long time. The build quality and crisp, minimalistic design is a step above any other Android phone, and comfortably sits alongside the iPhone 5 for premium feel in the hand. The display is beautiful, the UltraPixel camera technology and Zoe system both ambitious but capable of hugely engaging results, and the performance superlative. Meanwhile, HTC Sense has finally rediscovered its roots, and evolved with BlinkFeed into a legitimately useful and compelling interface – one which didn’t instantly leave us pining for unmodified Android.
Nor is the One perfect, however. The battery life is merely average, and while the UltraPixel system pays dividends in low-light performance, it’s not the solution to every photographic need that HTC might have billed it as. HTC may not be the first to eschew removable storage and a replaceable battery, but we still don’t like it when they’re omitted.
Nonetheless, there’s a sense that HTC’s challenge isn’t in the device – after all, it had good phones in 2012 – but in the market. Samsung’s risen star in the Android ecosystem has left little room for rivals, and HTC simply lacks the marketing heft to build the same brand-recognition that “Galaxy” has achieved. That’s notwithstanding the fact that HTC’s phone looks better, is built better, takes generally better photos, and has arguably better software than the Galaxy S III; we’ll have to wait and see how it holds up to the new Galaxy, but Samsung will need to pull out all the stops if it hopes to even get close to rivalling the One for its perfect quality feel.
Just as it took becoming the underdog to force Nokia to adopt an innovative “challenger” attitude, so its taken a rough year to provoke HTC into raising its game. The end result is a phone that’s beautiful, solid, and cleverly, thoughtfully equipped – one which makes bold challenges to our expectations of hardware specifications and software. Now, HTC has to find a way to educate consumers as to why they should care about it.
“Hi, I’m Richard Lai from Engadget. You guys probably hate us but…”
“No no, I don’t hate you,” Vertu’s 52-year-old President and CEO interjected with a charming smile. He then laid a hand on my shoulder and explained our in-joke to the other chuckling diners, “These guys, they read the specs and they only judge by the specs.”
Of course, it was just a light-hearted banter the night before our interview, but having been with the luxury phone maker since June 2009 as President, Perry Oosting obviously knew of everyone’s ongoing jokes about the rationale of his super expensive phones. Even before Vertu, the Dutchman would’ve faced a similar problem when he held senior positions at the likes of Bulgari, Prada, Gucci and Escada, except these brands have been around for a lot longer; and for us mere mortals, their existence is already widely accepted. Not so much for the luxury gadgets, though.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
