Gadgetory

the updates to HTC's flagship smartphone bring enhancements to what was already a pretty great offering so what exactly has changed from one to the other well it's Joshua regard from Android thority what's going on everybody and this is the HTC One m8 versus the original HTC One m7 now while the general design language of both phones is very similar the latest iteration is even more refined with more curves and rounded corners while the award-winning all-metal design of the 2013 edition was fantastic the brush metal of the 2014 device adds another level of sophistication to what was already a classy design with a display that is 0.3 inches larger the m8 is definitely the bigger phone overall and the width didn't increase by much thankfully making the larger device still quite comfortable to hold despite the added weights to 160 grams from the 143 of the original HTC One it actually sits even more snugly in the hand thanks to those rounded corners and the more smooth sides because the aluminum material has been made to wrap around the device so HTC has always come up with some great designs for their smart phones and while they may not have changed anything very significantly this time around no one should really find anything to complain about in the update still in the display HTC has always been relatively conservative with their display sizes as the original HTC One had a 4.7 inch screen when other companies were starting to release 5-inch flagships but with the latest addition the size does get bumped up to that 5-inch stroke but it is still smaller compared to some of the more recently announced flagships as considering the trend the increased display size results in a drop in pixel density from 469 to 441 PPI but and no one should really see any noticeable difference and once again it's a beautiful Super LCD 3d display with 1080p resolution making viewing angles as great as always and colors popping out quite nicely in this more colourful version of sense underneath the hood we get the update to the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked in at 2.3 gigahertz in the West and 2.5 gigahertz in the East so you get the best processing package currently available which is of course expected from a flagship device HTC has worked hard to reduce the heaviness of its Sense UI and the device should fly through the user interface and easily handle anything can throw at it and this pretty much did hold up in our testing on the other hand the HTC One 2013 features a quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor clocked in at 1.7 gigahertz and it's still definitely a very able performer with 2 gigabytes of RAM that help with the multitasking basically the difference in performance comes just because of the year-to-year change and the available hardware the 600 was the best available at its points and now the 801 is the best available in the current space today in terms of hardware the HTC One m7 of last year boasted specs very similar to the samsung galaxy s4 and arguably had the better design but a lot of consumers mentioned their reasoning for choosing the latter was because of expandable storage availability a feature that hasn't been available in an HTC flagship for a while luckily that changes with this new version of the HTC One as 16 or 32 gigabyte options get the additional benefit of microSD card support which might be the tipping point in favor of the HTC One m8 the battery life has been bumped up from 2300 milliamp hours to 2600 milliamp hours and the Snapdragon 801 should be able to make battery consumption even better so we should see a better battery performance from one to the other and as far as those boomsound speakers go the great front facing speaker design that was originally introduced in the HTC One m7 continues here but the amplifiers in the speakers have been enhanced to provide an even a louder experience with an even better sound stage from mids and lows HTC did stick to the four ultrapixel camera of the HTC One from last year and while it had its hits and misses its low-light photography was actually pretty undeniably good but this time around to the processing has been improved so that all other photography gets the same types of enhancements while the same camera does make a return this time it does get a dual LED flash and what is also very interesting is the inclusion of that second rear camera called the duo camera in which it takes the depth of field data and adds it into the photo in a hardware solution that allows you to go into the picture and edit it in order to pick your focal points in a very easy way having a hardware solution this time around eliminates the need for the processing time that more software based solutions use and in our testing it was actually very nice to use and very easy and is one of the real distinguishing features of the HTC One m8 camera and if selfies are important to you you do get an enhanced 5 megapixel sensor on the front with a 88 degree wide angle lens the camera app has also been very vastly improved more opting for simplistic elegance rather than just a full feature set it is very easy to use but if you delve into the settings a little bit more you'll find that there are a lot of options for manual shooting and finally in software the Sense UI does make its return and is updated to Sense 6.0 on the HTC One m8 which is now on top of Android 4.4 KitKat the usual array of software features including blinkfeed do make a comeback but things have seemed to been simplified a little bit as there's no longer the paginated format of the original blinkfeed in the HTC One m7 and is now a more of a traditional scroll with a bunch of rectangles made for all of the consolidation of your social media applications and also of your news sources as far as the aesthetics ago you do get that new power widgets underneath the notification drop-down and also all of the icons seem to be about the same but or consolidate a little bit closer together to accommodate that larger screen and also some gesture-based features are available in the new m8 version including the ability to just move the phone up to your face and be able to activate the phone by double tapping on the screen or in a horizontal position pressing down on the volume key in order to turn on the camera just to name a couple and so there you have it for this quick look at the HTC One m8 versus the HTC One m7 of last year it's undeniable that there is a good update from one to the other here and you can get your hands on the new HTC One right now as it is on sale if you were looking for a even better experience from the greatly received HTC one of last year then you don't have to look any further than the one that was just released today so keep it tuned to Android 34 all of the best coverage on the HTC One m8 for future future focus videos comparisons and the like because Android authority is your source for all things Android