HTC One review

UPDATE: We’ve re-run our benchmarks after the HTC One received an over-the-air update. Scroll to the end of the review to read more.

HTC couldn’t have chosen a tougher time to release the HTC One. With the Samsung Galaxy S4 just around the corner, and no shortage of Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 rivals all vying for the premium handset crown, the competition in the sector has never been so fierce. With the pressure piling on, HTC has responded in the best way possible: it’s unleashed the world’s best smartphone.

The One makes a stunning first impression. Each handset is hewn from a single block of anodised aluminium, and the process is painstakingly thorough: HTC proudly claims that it takes more than three hours of CNC machining to create each and every phone. It’s clearly time well spent. The curved rear fits beautifully in the hand, and the attention to detail is astonishing. Bands of off-white polycarbonate slash across the rear and run around the phone’s circumference, every edge is lovingly chamfered and the speaker grilles above and below the screen are formed from grids of finely milled pinpricks in the aluminium body.

Those gorgeous looks are matched with excellent build quality. The HTC One isn’t the lightest or slimmest handset – its 143g weight and 9.3mm thickness put it squarely in the middle of the flagship smartphone pack – but it’s certainly one of the sturdiest we’ve encountered. The metal construction and Gorilla Glass display make for a reassuringly stout-feeling handset, and there isn’t a hint of give or flex anywhere to be found.

Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for such stunning design and build quality. As the rear panel isn’t removable, there’s no battery access, and expandable storage has also fallen by the wayside – you’ll just have to make do with the 32GB of onboard storage.

Still, there’s little else missing. Support for 4G, Bluetooth 4, NFC and dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi is included, and HTC has concealed a tiny infrared transmitter within the One’s power button to allow it to control set-top boxes and TVs. The front-facing stereo speakers are surprisingly good, too, with ample volume and unexpected levels of clarity – the audio quality is a cut above most smartphones.

Crystal clear

The One’s display is equally refined. It isn’t the first phone with a 1080p screen – the Sony Xperia Z takes that honour – but the HTC’s 4.7in panel is markedly better. Its maximum brightness of 481cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and contrast ratio of 1,202:1 soundly beat the Sony’s vital statistics of 409cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and 454:1, and the HTC also surpasses the Sony for colour reproduction and viewing angles. The very darkest greys are crushed into black, but that’s its only weakness, and one it shares with several other top-flight handsets. In every other respect it’s a fantastic screen, and the match of any smartphone on the market, including our previous A-list smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S III.

Whether the HTC’s Full HD resolution gives any real benefits over a 720p panel is debatable. With the Nexus 4 and HTC One side by side, there’s no apparent difference in clarity at all. Just like its lower-resolution rivals, images remain crisp even with your nose pressed to the screen, and it’s possible to read desktop web pages without having to zoom in first.

In everyday use, though, it’s the One’s dedicated home and back buttons beneath the screen that have a far greater effect on usability. Where rivals such as the Sony Xperia Z and Nexus 4 sacrifice precious screen real estate to make space for onscreen home and back buttons, every one of the HTC One’s pixels is put to good use.

Power

Despite having to power all those pixels, the One’s performance is never less than silky smooth. It’s the first time we’ve seen a phone with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset, and it’s a monster: its four cores run at 1.7GHz, and they’re partnered with an Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM. It’s enough to help the HTC One best the previous record-holder, the Sony Xperia Z, by a country mile – in Quadrant, the One scored 11,617 to the Sony’s 7,744, and in Geekbench it outpaced the Sony’s 1,911 by some margin, achieving 2,733. It repeated the feat in Peacekeeper, more than doubling the Sony’s score with a final result of 692. Only SunSpider saw it drop behind the front-runners, although its overall score of 1,154ms is still nippy.

In real-world use, the HTC One doesn’t disappoint. Apps open swiftly, menus slide past without a judder, and the handset responds instantaneously to every prod and flick of a finger. Gaming is a strong point, too, and despite having to power the Full HD display, the Adreno GPU powered through the most demanding titles – where Real Racing 3 was noticeably stuttery on Sony’s Xperia Z, the One delivers a smoother, more consistent frame rate.

Amazingly, the HTC’s power doesn’t come at the expense of longevity. The One’s sizable 2,300mAh battery had 60% of its capacity left after our 24-hour rundown test, and while that’s 10% less than the Sony Xperia Z, it’s right on a par with the Samsung Galaxy S III.

Camera

Where its rivals are touting 8- and 13-megapixel cameras as standard, HTC has gone against the grain – the One’s rear-facing camera has a mere 4-megapixel sensor. The difference, according to HTC, is that its “UltraPixel” system makes up for this by using larger pixels that capture more light. Combined with optical image stabilisation, these larger pixels are supposed to improve quality in low-light situations.

The One’s camera slots into the top tier of smartphone shooters with accurate colour reproduction and sharp detail, but it isn’t perfect. Our sample shots were a tad noisy, and the One’s low-light images weren’t a match for those taken with the Nokia Lumia 920.

It’s still a good camera by any other standards, however. The HTC’s macro mode took detailed close-up shots, and the panorama mode quickly captured widescreen images without major stitching errors. We like HTC’s redesigned camera app: a tap on the top-left corner opens up a menu crammed with options, a horizontal swipe switches between the front and rear cameras, and the bottom-left corner is home to more than a dozen filters. The burst mode is effective for capturing fast-paced action, too.

A tap on the top of the screen opens up the HTC One camera’s most novel feature – Zoe. This shoots 3.6 seconds of 1080p video, while simultaneously snapping 20 full-resolution 4-megapixel images. The videos produced can be uploaded to social networks and play automatically in the Gallery app, and those 20 frames can be sifted through and repurposed as still images – handy for grabbing the perfect action shot. It’s a nifty party trick, and the HTC One can also combine these short clips and still images to stitch together 30-second highlight videos.

Sense

HTC has also loaded the One with version five of Sense, its Android user interface. Underneath Sense 5, the HTC One runs Android 4.1.2. It isn’t the latest version, but HTC has filled the gaps with its own additions. The notification drawer has a link to the full settings menu rather than version 4.2’s quick toggles, and HTC’s own gesture keyboard works as well as the software included with stock Android.

Elsewhere, changes are less dramatic. We don’t like the new 3 x 4 grid in the app drawer, but it’s easy to revert to the traditional 4 x 5 layout.

Sense 5’s key new feature is BlinkFeed, which replaces the traditional homescreen with a tiled gallery of web content, news stories and social media posts. It’s the first thing to appear when the phone is unlocked, and it looks superb: scrolling downwards reveals vibrant tiles loaded with pictures, headlines and status updates.

A dropdown menu allows for a basic level of customisation. Relevant topics and a limited selection of specific “featured” websites can be added to or removed from the feed, and Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn integration can be toggled on and off. It isn’t possible to disable BlinkFeed completely, but it can be moved to an alternative homescreen if you don’t want it taking centre stage.

BlinkFeed works well for casual browsing, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. Since HTC hasn’t yet released the SDK for third-party apps to publish their own feeds, there are only 12 specific “featured” websites to choose from, and 39 wider categories, 11 of which are different sports – the ability to add specific websites would be welcome. The social network integration isn’t entirely convincing, either. It works well with picture posts, but we’d rather delve into our Facebook or Twitter apps than see disjointed, individual status updates scattered among the news stories and content updates.

BlinkFeed’s influence is also felt in the Gallery, which uses a familiar, tile-based interface. It doesn’t only display the camera roll, either – it draws in images from Flickr, Dropbox and Facebook friends.

HTC’s TV app uses the One’s infrared sensor to take control of your TV and set-top box. We told the app which companies manufactured our TV and Sky+ box and, within seconds, we were able to navigate the EPG, record programmes and change channels – it’s also possible to control Virgin Media and Freeview set-top hardware, too. It’s a handy addition, but it’s very basic compared to similar offerings from Sony and Motorola, both of which offer both greater control and far wider support for a range of home entertainment devices, such as AV amplifiers and DVD or Blu-ray players.

Verdict

The final question is one of cost, and as HTC’s range-topping handset, the One commands a premium price. It isn’t unreasonably expensive, however. The handset is free with 3G contracts that cost £31 per month, which is only £5 more than the Samsung Galaxy S III’s monthly cost. SIM-free, it costs £504, which is only a few pounds more expensive than the £498 Sony Xperia Z, and a substantial chunk more than the Samsung Galaxy S III, which is now available for £384.

On balance, however, the HTC One does more than enough to justify paying that premium. The handset alone is a design tour de force, and the lovingly crafted aluminium body combines stunning looks with outstanding build quality. The loss of expandable storage is a blow, but there’s little else to find fault with: Sense 5 is slick; class-leading power is matched to decent battery life; and the Full HD screen oozes quality. HTC needed to come out fighting with its latest handset, and it’s done so with gusto: the One is the finest smartphone money can buy.

UPDATE: May 15, 2013

The One hasn’t long been available in the UK, but HTC has already pushed out a software update for its latest flagship. The update involves an upgrade of the One’s software from version 1.28.401.7 to 1.29.401.12. The Android version underneath remains at 4.1.2, with HTC saying that an update to Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) is coming next month.

The new software packs in numerous bug fixes. Beats Audio and the camera’s Zoe mode have had minor tweaks. Other bug fixes include a weather fix and an improvement to the Back button’s functionality; HTC also says that mobile networking functionality has been improved.

The One is already one of the fastest phones around, but the update has made it even faster. Its original Geekbench score of 2,733 jumped up to 2,906, and its older Peacekeeper result of 673 improved to 759 – extending the HTC handset’s lead at the top of the Peacekeeper table. The Samsung Galaxy S4 remains at 3,221 and 586 in both of those tests.

The new update doesn’t make a huge difference to the One’s smoothness or functionality, both of which are still the best around, but it still weighs in at a hefty 229MB. It’s an over-the-air update, so an icon will appear in the phone’s notification drawer when it’s ready to download – and we’d recommend you download over Wi-Fi, lest you incur hefty mobile data charges.

Details
Cheapest price on contract	Free
Contract monthly charge	£31.00
Contract period	24 months
Physical
Dimensions	68 x 137 x 9.3mm (WDH)
Weight	143g
Touchscreen	yes
Primary keyboard	On-screen
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	2.00GB
Camera megapixel rating	4.0mp
Front-facing camera?	yes
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	4.7in
Resolution	1080 x 1920
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	Android