HTC has done something quite special here
Right now I’ve handed in all my assignments, I can complete this review
HTC has been incessant on bringing top quality phones to the market for years with the highest quality plastics, biggest and best screens and overall premium feel to their handsets. They were always let down by slow software, a lack of features and no real selling point in a world where an iPhone can do everything you want and offer a more robust and better looking OS at the same time. However in 2013, HTC arguably revolutionised the idea of what Android phones could be; they broke the stereotype that Android phones had ugly software and only came in ugly plastic designs. The first HTC One really was the first Android phone that made iPhone users wince and doubt that they had the most beautiful mobile phone on the market. With the full-body metal design, incredible speakers and just all-round sexiness, the HTC One broke a new boundary with Android, the sex-appeal boundary.
Maybe one of the later reviews of the HTC One, but I’m hoping as a result it will be more concise and detailed. I’ve categorised everything down so that you can easily see what is what and where to look for a review on certain aspects of the phone.
HARDWARE
This year, HTC has decided to keep a similar design and simply upgrade everything that made the HTC One great first time round. The phone feels incredibly premium with the 89% metal body and the curved edges around the top and bottom of the device. The cold feeling in the morning is a beautiful remembrance that this device is made of pure top quality metals and no cheap plastic pretending to be leather..cough. The phone features a 5” display with a 1080p resolution which is what we’ve come to expect from any flagship phone from Android lately. The large display means you’re holding a large phone that is next to impossible to navigate with a single hand, but that’s something that only Apple are clinging on to anymore. A large handed person may have no problem, but as a 19 year old kid with average/small hands, I have no chance of reaching the opposing top corner with one hand. However, in terms of holding it with two hands, the device is incredible comfortable and really allows you to hold it for extended periods of time with no pain. One minor gripe with the hardware is the metal is rather slippery and I found that to make it even more difficult to hold the device in a single hand and even at certain angles with two hands. The display as aforementioned is a standard size and resolution, but with near-perfect colour representation and viewing angles of nearly 180 degrees, I can honestly say that this is the best looking display I have ever seen. The way I try and define phones these days is that they just work; you don’t have to think about what you’re using you can just get to the app you need without having to worry about a certain situation arising. With this display, you don’t have to worry that the sun is beaming, that dark videos can’t be seen in bright light that the display will be too bright in dark rooms or any of those troubles. The auto-brightness setting is also the best I’ve ever used, darkening incredible quickly and lighting straight back up when you walk outdoors - perfect almost.
HTC came out with a few silly names for some of their gimmicks last year with the HTC One, but despite the silly names these ideas actually turned out to be quite brilliant and even revolutionary. The front-facing ‘BoomSound’ speakers on the front of this HTC One M8 are quite possibly the best speakers I’ve ever heard from anything this small. You know that feeling you get when you hear music and it makes you do that little awkward smile because you feel so pumped? This is the first phone speaker I’ve experienced that can give you that feeling when playing music from these beasts. There is absolutely no distortion when the phone is cranked up to full and can easily fill a room with sound. There are two ways to really get an understanding of how well these speakers work, the first is that I’d say they compare to some iPod docks and the second would obviously be to listen to them in person.
The HTC One M8 comes packed with a quad-core 801 SnapDragon processor with 2GB RAM which is basically the biggest and best specifications you can get in a phone right now. As I mentioned just now, I feel that the best phones are the phones that allow you to do everything you need to without having to worry about limitations in the hardware or software. The HTC One M8 FLIES and when I say flies, I mean that I have not experienced a SINGLE hiccup in my month of using the phone. The screen registers every tap instantly and opens apps up almost instantly also. What I love about the speed of this phone is I never feel it has limits; every single game in the android market right now runs easily, every single app scrolls smoothly, every web page opens rapidly; this is a phone where the hardware just gets out of the way and works hard to make it look like the phone isn’t working hard. Gaming on this phone is an absolute joy! With the combination of the incredible speakers, the mind-blowing display and the un-rivalled power and performance, you will really WANT to Google “best-looking Android Games” so you can download them to test your phones limits. This is honestly the first phone where I’ve enjoyed playing games on it and I’m talking PROPER games like FIFA 14, Asphalt and the like, not just your Word games or trivia games. If you want a game that can Game, this is the current phone for you.
We live in a world where people EXPECT a phone this expensive and premium to deliver a satisfactory performance when it comes to call quality and signal strength. However, I’ve used quite a few high-end phones and never have I experienced call quality quite like in the HTC one M8. The first time I rang my girlfriend up from this phone she answered and I genuinely jumped and looked behind me thinking she’d snuck up on me somehow. I stood there genuinely outstanding! I don’t know if it’s part of the ‘BoomSound’ experience or not, but you will not a find a phone on the market that sounds more like the person is actually in the room with you than this one. The signal strength is all dependent on where you live and who you choose as your contract provider. I decided to go with EE as they have the best deals on at the moment and give you 4G for good prices these days. I live in the centre of Sheffield right now and I rarely get FULL signal, but I’ve also NEVER lost signal and will get 4G 99% of the time when moving around the city. This is enough for me to be content with.
SOFTWARE
This year, HTC has branded their skin ‘Sixth Sense’ because..well.. it’s the Sixth version of Sense. This year, they seemed to have cleaned up the skin more than ever and it could be mistaken for stock Android except their altered apps such as messages and mail and such. However, in terms of speed, this phone absolutely flies. Yes, I said it just now but Sense 6.0 really is a nice skin and in fact, I almost prefer it to stock Android’s look and feel. What I think I like is that you could almost mistake it for stock excluding Blinkfeed and the icons of HTC’s choosing for their skinned apps. I would argue, and I’ve seen others admit it too, this version of Android on this HTC is the smoothest and quickest version of Android you can buy; skinned or unskinned. One thing I noticed at the start was HTC’s choice of using a block colour for the navigation bar at the top of their apps and then replicating that colour in the notification shade as opposed to just making it translucent. At first, I was indecisive about this, but after recent leaked shots of upcoming Google apps being redesigned to look very similar, I can see that either HTC already knew or Google liked the idea. BlinkFeed has evolved this year into BlinkFeed 2.0 with some very nice additions. These additions being the ability to simply add almost any RSS feed you want into the list, along with nearly every social network you can think of. What’s also nice is Google adds a little more a personal touch by adding restaurant recommendations and upcoming calendar appointments when you first open the phone in the morning. Some people may dislike BlinkFeed, but I find myself using it for exactly what it was designed for: having a quick read when you’re waiting for a bus or have a few spare minutes to check up what’s going on in the world. It won’t replace Feedly or Flipboard as your main news reader application, but it does exactly what it says on the tin and does it quickly, beautifully and well. What I love about Android over other OS’s is that it all feels like every app is working together to get what you want done quickly and I love that feeling with this phone! I’ll go into that a bit more in a separate article, but if you’ve ever used a decent Android phone, you’ll know what I’m talking about; everything just flows. Overall, HTC’s new skin is the best I’ve ever seen and used, it makes using the phone an absolute delight to look at and to feel. The phone flies through applications, scrolls every page smoother than ever and simply doesn’t seem to know the word ‘lag’. Simply put, this is the Android that we’ve been waiting for for 7 years!
‘THE ULTRAPIXEL’
Another thing that HTC introduced to the public last year with their first iteration of the One was the ‘Ultrapixel’ which let in 300% more light than a normal Megapixel due to being 3x the size. This on paper makes perfect sense and seems like something that every manufacturer should be doing in a world where every young person wants to be able to take great club photos and every old person wants pictures at restaurants to look great. However, HTC seemed to concentrate on letting in more light and forgot about saturation and the Ultrapixel count, last year there was 4 Ultrapixels, this year there is once again 4 Ultrapixels. This really disappointed me when I first heard, but I’d hoped they’d improved it so that the pixel count wasn’t obvious. Don't get me wrong, from comparisons I’ve seen, the camera has improved and pictures appear a lot more vivid and life-like that the M8’s predecessor, but it still falls short. The camera this year does come with a little friend, a little 2mp camera above the original to allow for a depth-of-field. This means that the camera comes with some cool software effects that allow you to blur the background and have the foreground in focus or visa-versa. The idea is that the first camera takes the photo and the second camera allows that picture to have depth to be later tampered with how the software wishes. HTC have allowed other developers to access this software and so hopefully it will improve and we’ll see some cool things come out for it, but I’m not sure how many developers will jump on this bandwagon. The rear facing camera in general produces average shots compared to the other flagships out there. You won’t find yourself bragging about some of the scenery shots you take with this, unless you use the brilliant software that HTC has packaged with the camera to edit them, but i’ll get on to that in a bit.
Now, earlier I mentioned that the camera was mean to let in more low-light than others and yes it does. This is where the camera can shine and is the one redeeming factor of this camera. You can take shots in clubs, bars, restaurants, dark fields and all sorts and feel confident that if there’s a small pinch of light that you’ll be able to see some of the subject. With the flash on, this is arguably the best camera for taking club photos - period. I just wish HTC would have improved the saturation and vividness of the shots - however this is something they could POTENTIALLY fix with a software update but don’t hold me to that.
A lot of people these days but a phone and just expect the camera software to be able to do what they want to do, but often they find themselves a little confused as to what to do. The HTC One M8 comes with some brilliant camera software that makes navigating each mode and editing the pictures after an absolute dream. You can swipe on the screen to switch between front-facing and rear facing. You have six modes to choose from: Camera, Video, Dual Capture (allows you to take a front AND rear facing picture in the same image), Pan 360 (an vastly better version of Google’s Photosphere mode) and Zoe Camera (allows you to record footage and take images from that video allowing for some great mid-action shots.) Apart from Zoe Camera, I have used all these modes and found them all to be useful and work brilliantly. What is nice is that everything is snappy. You have one button to take a camera, one button to get to the gallery, one button to edit some settings and the other button to change modes. Boom! This allows navigating around very simple and easy and means that even when I gave it to one of my flatmates who’s only ever known Blackberrys and iPhones (yeah, one of those) she could easily learn how to switch the camera to take a cheeky selfie before getting the incredibly good-looking shot of myself and the boys.
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| 'Selfie' in bright light "Hedwig Selfie" |
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| Low-light shot with blue lights |
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| Bright sunny day shot |
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| Processed light shot |
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| HDR Low-light shot |
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| Low-light blue light with processed bright lights |
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| Outside bright lighting with beige and bright colours |
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| Bright sunlight with many colours |
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| Low unnatural lighting |
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| Low-light moving shot |
The final comment to make about the camera is that it comes with some pretty decent editing software once you’ve taken your shot. When you hit the ‘Edit’ button on an image, you get four categories to choose from: Effects, Filters, Frames & Tools. Effects is what the new duo-camera is for, you can change the focus of an image, add seasonal effects, do a weird 3D dimensional look at your image, add stickers, copy & paste and a simple touch-up (the one I use most for those cheeky nights out when I’ve got a stray hair or a volcano on my face.) With Filters you’ve got some genuinely nice filters to add to your images; I actually often use these filters when editing an Image instead of using Instagram’s. However, with Filters you can also create your own Filter by editing saturation, Brightness and much more and I’ve managed to create a simple filter that will lighten the image up really nicely which works great for those times when you take a picture with the front-facing camera in low light. Frames is as simple as it sound, it allows you to add a border to an image, something Instagram turned off by default ages ago as they realised people preferred the shots without them. Then finally, Tools, you can Draw on an image, rotate an image, crop an image, flip or straighten your image. I find myself using these editing tools a lot which is something I’ve never said before with a phone’s built-in camera software. I’m yet to feel the need to download Snapseed to edit any of my images so far;
VIDEO PLAYBACK
With the device coming with incredible speakers, a life-like display and a large one at that, you cannot help but marvel at the video playback on this device. Yes, you could argue that watching Videos on the Z1 Ultra or a phone in the Note line would be a better experience due to the larger screen and some people may prefer that, but with the stereo BoomSound speakers on this, even without headphones, you can really emerse yourself on YouTube videos, Netflix or downloaded Films like no other phone I’ve experienced before.
AUDIO PLAYBACK
BoomSound is a word you’ll hear a lot when looking at any advertising to do with HTC at the moment, whether it’s on Twitter or in-store or in your Google ads on the side of webpages. What I would say is that this is the first feature that feels truly Apple-proof. What I mean by that is usually every phone has a star quality, but Apple can do it too and usually either do it better or do it more beautifully. However with BoomSound, the speakers look and sound beautiful. Full stop. What is hard to explain is just HOW much better they are than any other speaker on the market, not just in how loud, but how bassy and detailed they are when at full volume also. I recently went ahead to purchase a JBL FLIP bluetooth speaker and was worried it would be the same volume, luckily it wasn’t but the fact the worry was there just shows how incredible the speakers are. Music playback on the device is sublime as a result of BoomSound though. In addition, BoomSound replaces Beats Audio when putting in headphones and you can really notice a difference. I had Beats Audio on my HTC One X and it merely made the sound of the music louder to my simple ears, but this one you can really feel the bass and clarity increase. Why you’d ever turn it off, I don’t know.
BATTERY PERFORMANCE
A lot of people have been raving about the battery on the HTC One M8 saying that it really gets you through a day’s use without having to worry about what you put the phone through. This is true if you turn on the power-saver mode, without it I doubt this statement would be so well rehearsed. Maybe it’s just my unit, but without the power-saver on, I can get through maybe 8 to 9 hours of medium use on the phone, that involves checking social networks regularly, playing some music, watching maybe a video or two and doing the usual texting/whatsapping/snapchatting etc throughout the day.
With the power-saving mode on though, it’s another story, I can solidly play games and do my usual activities without really having to worry about running out of juice by the end of the day. With power-saver mode though you could possibly notice the phone run a little slower than usual, however I genuinely feel that it’s not noticeable enough to bug you and I feel that power-saver mode is a bit like the built-in BoomSound software; why would you turn it off? Well, in all honesty, the only time I turn it off is if I don’t need to worry about being away from a charger or if I want to play a graphically intense game, but these are rare occasions and even then the power-saver mode still seems to allow you to play nearly all games fairly impressively.
The device’s battery life allows me to not have to worry about it, which as I’ve mentioned numerous times throughout this review is all I could ask for in a phone. It’s the first phone I’ve had where I can go through a whole day and then if I’m off out for the evening, I don’t feel like I have to charge it to keep it going through the evening. Some people often forget, myself included, that when your phone gets to 50% that means it’s ONLY half way through it’s life-cycle, you’ve still got another however many hours you’ve had it off charge to go.
WHAT I’VE MISSED ABOUT ANDROID
Now, I’ve been an Android user now for about 5 years and I honestly can’t see any reason to convert to any other mobile OS. However, just before Christmas, I was forced to use an iPhone as my Nexus smashed and an iPhone 4 was the only other phone anyone I knew could lend me. Yes, it was four generations behind and as a result running iOS7 on it was a series drag for the phone, but I didn’t consider this in my ‘An Android User is using an iPhone’ article as I felt it would be unfair to come from a high-end Android phone to a low-end iPhone. Instead I compared them purely by OS and ease of use with the OS.
What I’ve missed about Android is a list that could go on for quite a while. However, I genuinely feel the biggest thing that I missed from Android was the ‘Share’ ability. It’s a feature that really makes all applications feel connected and makes the phone feel like one OS that is working together to help you get your information you’ve created wherever you want it. On iOS, whenever you want to share a picture, unless it’s Twitter or Facebook or an email (hi 1990s) then you have to go into the application you want to share it with and attach it in a post. Android simplifies this process by allowing a ‘share’ button in the gallery app in which you can share your picture to nearly any application you own that involves imagery.
Other things I’ve missed about Android are the openness, allowing you to put down widgets, change fonts, change launchers, change icons and all sorts of customisation. I’ve also missed the applications that Android offers, their design and difference just makes it feel a bit more free and open than iOS.
Do I miss anything about iOS? There are two things I will miss but I’m sure Google will find a way to properly replicate that soon. The first is the biggest thing I believe iPhones have going for them and that’s iMessage. Some people don’t really understand it’s true power as it just seems to work for them seemlessly. When you want to send a picture to someone personally on an iOS device, you can just send it through the same text/iMessage conversation you’ve been having, obviously knowing they have an iOS device too; however, to send an image on Android, I have to choose which friend I’m sending it to and then choose which application they use most to contact me on and send it that way. It gives off a much less streamlined feel. The second thing I miss about iOS is the smoothness, despite the fact I was using an iPhone 4, I prefer the scrolling physics and speed on an iPhone and the animations and responsiveness of some applications.
The final question I suppose you’ve got to ask on the matter is whether I’m happy with my overall purchase of the HTC One M8. Well when people ask me if it’s worth it, I start to name everything I love about the phone and then I realise that there’s nothing left to note. Everything about the phone is done well, it’s fast, it’s loud, it’s well made, it’s simple to use, it’s got a decent camera, it’s got a good battery, it’s got all the apps you could need. I’ve solidy recommended this phone to anyone who’s come my way as I can’t see another phone on the market that I could go to and not miss something about the HTC One M8.
Who would I recommend this phone to? The following people: those who love music; those who love speed; those who don’t want to have to worry about battery; those who want to play games on a mobile device; those who love watching videos; those who are materialistic; those who are vain… is there anyone else left?
I’ve just brushed on the fact I wouldn’t be able to go to another phone on the market without missing something about the M8, from the double-tap to turn the screen on, to the incredible speakers, to freaking BlinkFeed for god sake! I would say that the only two mobiles that can stand up to this phone on the market right now are the G2 (and the upcoming G3 obviously) and the iPhone 5s (and inevitably the iPhone 6). The G3 purely because of the incredible battery, screen, camera and knock-on screen feature. The iPhone 5S due to it’s incredible build quality, speed and incredible camera also.
The only phones I’m scared of being released is the LG G3 and the alleged One Prime later on this year, however due to their screen sizes, I’m not sure if these phones would have ever been phones I’d purchase anyway. This is the first phone I’ve used where, except possibly the camera, I could recommend this phone to ANY phone user. If you’re a photographer get the G2/iPhone 5s, if you’re a mobile phone user get the HTC One M8 as fast as you can.
Ratings are based on personal opinion and the overall score is based on an average of all the ratings. However, overall score may be altered to represent my feeling for the device in summary.
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