Gadgetory

welcome back to Android QA my name is Jace and this is where we try and answer your most pressing Android questions and I'm sure many of you have watched all the HTC m8 reviews some things you like some things you don't you've weighed the pros and cons and you're still sitting on the fence ow ow ow ow ow our heart sabaha but that's okay because here at Android authority we feel your pain and that's why we are going to go a little deeper into the top question surrounding this beloved phone right and the top question everyone has is regarding those beautiful front-facing speakers so compared to the original HTC one how much better is the m8 s-- front-facing speakers well the speakers have been improved to bring about 25% more volume and even richer mids and lows and they stand up to that task pretty well it's not hard to hear what you're playing even when you're on a busy street as a result sharing media with friends is even better on the m8 than the original HTC One phone calls come in nice and clear with no drops and strong signals all around but we have to admit that when Josh reviewed the phone he found himself using the boomsound speakers more often than not now for those of you who have the m8 on the Sprint network there's some special goodies for you HTC and Sprint introduced a special edition of the HTC One m8 that features a unique design and sound enhancing technology created by Harman Kardon the legendary audio company this special version of the HTC One m8 uses two different techniques to output high fidelity sound when playing compressed files clarify is said to improve the quality of a compressed file by analyzing the song and reconstructing the highs lows and reverbs in real time for richer sound is that just hype or not if any of you have the HSM 8 on the Sprint network I would love to hear your thoughts on that does it really sound as good as they claim because that sounds fantastic I'd love to hear your first-hand experience next question is all about battery yes what is the real-life battery life like on the HTC m8 when it comes to the battery its capacity alone might not Press anyone but the non-removable 2600 milliamp hour battery manages to last for quite a long time in a couple of instances Josh used the phone for hours on end for tasks like navigation and playing music and never did feel the pressure to get the charger even by the end of the day the good battery performance can be pushed even further with the power saving features that are available on the device now Josh did report a she sees pretty audacious claim that on a five percent charge you could get almost 15 hours of standby time that is pretty crazy for HTC to say that and so I wanted to ask as many users who have some first-hand experience with the phone not just a couple days but a couple weeks and get their experience of the battery life and it's concerned because I got a wide range of answers people who said they were really pleased with it loved the battery life another people said they were really disappointed with it it's hard to measure because everyone uses their phone differently but one thing that was really common everyone said employ all the battery saving features that the phone employs use them all that is going to have a noticeable effect now what I did is take an informal poll of HTC One m8 users who I know personally and on Google+ and see what their battery usage or battery experience was like with the m8 and I got a wide range of experiences people who were really impressed with the battery and very pleased with it could easily get more than a day with moderate to high usage other people who had quite the opposite experience and could not get a full day with even moderate usage so it's pretty clear though that everyone says you really want to employ all the battery saving features on the phone but I found out some more independent information from trusted reviews.com you can see here that they had the phone charged just over 50% and they played sd quality video playback with Wi-Fi off and screen brightness set to 50% for just under five hours now they got about one hour more than they did with the original HTC One so pretty darn good not fantastic but you really do want to employ all the battery saving options next question is regarding blinky is blinkfeed really useful one of our viewers said I really like how it blends whatever topics I've chosen into a mixed stream of interest and they also mix in my social network messages with news stories to make it feel like it's truly my personal feed of the things I care about so you should know that I also quiz Josh on this and he felt that yes blinkfeed was worth it provided that you were willing to put in the work to customize it and refine it to your own personal likes and needs if you had done that he thinks it's better than any magazine widget or magazine app out there so the final question is with regards to the HTC m8 camera and I have been highly critical of the camera in the past I've softened on that a little bit so just to review very quickly the phone has a four megapixel rear facing camera and a five megapixel front facing camera that is unlike almost any phone that I know out there where the front-facing camera has a higher megapixel count than the rear facing camera meaning that pictures of yourself are more important than the pictures you take of the world around you pretty counterintuitive for someone like me I have softened on that a little bit because I understand the HTC m8 is trying to create a DSLR like image for the average user and if that's their goal they have largely succeeded at that if you don't want to crop your photos and you know low-light performance is important to you this could be a great phone I'm a big fan of Alex Lindsay of the pixel core and he's he's a hardcore geek and he loves the camera on this phone and he uses it constantly so I had to reconsider my opinion and look at a little differently it's maybe not the best camera for me but for many of you it might be fantastic thanks for watching Android army my name is Jase love to connect with you here on Google+ or Twitter you don't want to forget about the opportunities to win more Android Authority t-shirts and Android Authority Google Play cards in the Android Authority forums you just need to post your questions there and answer questions there if you can many of you are very knowledgeable to Android help people answer answer those questions and you could win a Google Play card I shall talk to you next week on Android Q&A