The HTC One was without a doubt, the standout phone of 2013! It may not have received the same sales figures and mainstream reception that the Samsung Galaxy S4 received, but with incredible speakers, a best in-class display, lag-free software, a brilliant low-light performing pair of cameras, and last but by no means least, world class design it showed that you don’t have to have a bunch of gimmicky features to be a great phone.
People initially fell in love with the HTC One’s design. It pushed new boundaries in phone making with an all aluminium body, simple camera and incredible front-facing speakers. A lot of people, including myself feel that it was the first Android phone to match, if not better, the iPhone in design standards. The feel of the handset left a lot of people wondering why Samsung was still pushing out cheap plastic handsets for an equivalent price as the solid, premium all-metal body of the HTC.
However, the One is nearly a year old now and it’s superseder is coming on the 25th of March. We’ve seen a lot of leaks over the past few months on the HTC One (2014) including real-life photos, renders, screenshots and even a video from a 12 year old kid who was deemed important enough to receive a developer version of the device. If the leaks are anything to go by, this device is really going to top the HTC One and at this rate, the already announced Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Z2!
With a new year we expect an upgrade on almost everything that made the HTC One great: the display, BoomSound, the body, the software and the camera. From the suggested leaks, the resolution of the screen is expected to stay the same, but the size of the screen is expected to increase to 5”. I first remember when the HTC Desire was released and HTC bragged about the “enormous” 3.7” screen on that. With that phone, HTC started going in the right direction and with phones starting to get simply too big to be considered “mobile” telephones, HTC have been a few points of inches behind the competition to retain a fairly respectable screen size. I feel 4.3” is the maximum that my hand is comfortable with one handed, however 5” (if the bezels are thin enough) is the largest I would go to. I have no doubts that the new HTC One will also have an incredible display as I can’t remember an HTC flagship phone was released and it wasn’t the display that all following phones had to beat. We expected to hear 2k displays coming to the S5 and the Z2, but neither arrived with the rumoured resolution and so my worry of HTC being left behind in the resolution wars is no longer.
The HTC One came with front-facing speakers above and below the screen which they oddly named ‘BoomSound’ which was a consumer first for a phone (why it took so long I’ll never know.) And when it arrived, the speakers weren’t just more in-your-face, they also delivered more bass and a far louder experience than any other mobile phone on the market. To this day, no manufacturer has produced a phone with speakers anywhere near as clear, loud or bassy as the the One’s. The the 2014 model, I hope they either leave the speakers alone or simply try to upgrade them to be louder and bassier. If HTC try to tamper with them in any other way, they could easily be ruined.
We’ve seen plenty of renders and suggested shots of the new HTC One in the wild all over the internet as of late and the design to me looks really quite incredible. I felt the HTC One was a beautifully crafted phone and looked amazing to the eye, but the edges looked a bit too sharp and the design felt quite harsh. However, with the new One, they look to have smoothed out some of the edges and added a brushed-aluminium effect which I personally think is one of the sexiest materials in hardware design. The phone seems to have been rounded a bit and made to look a little more friendly, but kept the premium and high-class feel. One thing that everyone on the internet is upset about with the suggested renders though is the inclusion of the HTC logo/bar at the bottom of the screen (which used to house the navigational buttons on the 2013 One). With the software leaks suggesting on-screen buttons with Sense 6, people don’t know why HTC have wasted extra room on the phone with this bar. If the bar was excluded, the phone could have been shorter and with the elected thinner bezels, could have remained a fairly similar size to the original One, which would be impressive with a larger screen. However, I don’t think this is something that is going to deter consumers from buying the phone, it would just have been nice if HTC hadn’t felt the need to include their logo on the front of the device (unless it contains a finger-print scanner or something that we can’t see in the renders…. oooooohhh.)
On the software side of things, the new HTC One appears to be keeping up with Android’s design guidelines a little more this time around with the addition of translucent navigational buttons and notification bar. This makes me happy, as I’ve always felt HTC skin over Android a little too much, but with the One last year they really toned it down and despite the icons and slight colour-alteration of apps, I felt that if you’d come from a stock Android phone, you would quickly pick up how the One works. Blinkfeed appears to have been improved also with larger images and a simpler design; whether the feature with offer any more function or yet, we probably won’t know until the device announcement itself. All I hope for on the software side is as little skinning as possible, nice smooth animations and a quick and responsive experience.
Finally, arguably the biggest talking point in last year’s HTC One phone was the ‘UltraPixel’ camera that appeared on the right. The questionable choice with this camera was that it was only 4 ‘Ultrapixels’ which was advertised as having a wider pixels which allowed them to let in more amount of light. The result from most reviewers and users appeared to be that the camera was perfect if you only ever wanted to upload mid-res photos to Instagram or Facebook and weren’t too worried about clarity. The camera was acclaimed for having really good low-light performance to a point that it almost matched the latest Nokia phone with that full-on digital camera-sized lens on the rear of the phone. The front camera also showed up to be the best of the year also with one of the highest resolutions and an impressive low-light performance once again. This year, people are hoping for the rear camera’s resolution to be at least doubled, it not trebled allowing for the ‘Ultrapixel’ low-light performance as well. However, from the leaks we’ve seen that the phone will feature dual-rear cameras. Some people thought that this was HTC trying to bring back 3D, but no one really believes they’re that dumb. The true use of these two cameras is still being questioned; most believe it’s a Lytro-like camera that will allow the phone to take instant pictures the worry about focus later on, some believe it will allow the phone to take shots that incorporate much more of the image. Either way, I’m hoping it’s something clever that doesn’t make the second camera seem pointless and unneeded.
In summary, the HTC One (2014) is looking to be one of the best phones of 2014, if not THE best. If it can take everything that made the HTC One brilliant and improve it all slightly, then it will be a phone that a lot of people will really desire. The renders are all very promising so far with transparent notification bar, on-screen navigational buttons, a bigger display. The only two questions are why HTC have left that black bar at the bottom of the display and what that second camera’s purpose is. These two questions I'm sure will be answered on March 28th! Can’t wait!
What do you think those cameras on the back are for? Which phone do you think will win phone of the year? Are you excited for the release of the HTC All New One?
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