Gadgetory

it may be the most advanced phone that the company's ever built but does the HTC One have what it takes to stand up to competitors like Samsung's Galaxy s4 find out in our review hey everybody I'm Chris look HTC seems to be using a lot of new terms and buzzwords to describe the one blinkfeed Zoe ultrapixels boom sound that's a lot of fancy words but are the features actually you know good well let's find out starting with the specs the HTC One runs a 1.7 gigahertz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and has a 4.7 inch 1080p display with a pixel density of 468 pixels per inch it has 2 gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of internal storage the rear facing camera is 4 megapixels more on that later and the front-facing camera is 2.1 megapixel powering it all is a 2,300 milliamp hour battery for some time now HTC devices have generally been known for excellent build quality and that is certainly the case here the aluminum body and gorilla glass screen lend the one a solid feel and the phone feels rugged in general though time will tell on that one while it all boils down to taste the design seems to be a culmination of what HTC has been working towards over the course of various phones combining elements from earlier one branded phones and the Droid DNA it's hard to communicate in video form but the HTC One just has a great feel aside from the somewhat awkward placement of the power button I was initially skeptical about HTC's hyped boom sound but the HTC One has the best speakers I've ever heard on a phone and putting them on the front does make a difference again it's basically impossible to tell unless you see the phone for yourself but it's really impressive how big this phone can sound simply put the HTC One S display is gorgeous and the HD resolution and super high pixel density are just the start the colors are incredibly vivid and black levels have excellent depth it's difficult to find a bad angle to view the screen from now that isn't to say that the screen is notably better than some screens from the competition or other HTC devices but it's hard to imagine a screen looking much better and the high res and 4.7 inch screen size leave it looking razor sharp simply from the specs alone I was expecting great performance from the HTC One and I wasn't disappointed starting with benchmarks I ran and 2 to 3 times and averaged the score ending up with a very nice final score of 20 4258 next up was Epic Citadel the Snapdragon 600 and Adreno 320 GPU were put to work here and we ended up with an average frame rate of 56 point 7 frames per second in high quality mode and 57.9 frames per second and high performance mode this is pretty impressive considering the 1080p resolution moving into real world use I tried out Real Racing 3 which consistently performed very smoothly without a single hiccup as you might expect standard apps launched and ran very quickly the HTC One runs Android 4.1.2 jelly bean and the new HTC Sense 5 in the past sense has had both its fans and its foes and though it's more minimalist in design this time around sense 5 will probably be even more divisive mostly due to some of its new features like blink V if you haven't heard blink feed is HTC's new replacement for the standard homescreen which pulls in news and information from a variety of sources while tying in to your various social media accounts if you wish pick the categories you're interested in sign into your accounts and blinkfeed does the rest is this useful well that depends on you I don't see myself using blink feed often but with the popularity of apps like Flipboard I can see this feature being very popular with some people HTC Sense has generally been toned down a little which should be less controversial and a few other small touches like supporting folders right within the app drawer are incredibly useful for being such relatively minor changes a few utilities and tools are included with little in the way of bloatware but that's on a review unit with a unit that carriers have gotten their hands on you can probably expect that to change you might notice I left out another big sense 5 feature HTC Zoe we'll get to that but first let's talk about the camera ultra pixels first let's start with the bat the initial batch of test devices the HTC sent out had a problem that caused subpar results with the ones much hike new camera I received an over-the-air update before I began testing so my results weren't affected by this problem one of HTC's main points about its new camera is that these ultra pixels can take in more light and they are right about that low-light performance is among the best I've seen in a smartphone camera most of the rest of the time while the camera is good the results aren't really anything amazing it can take a good photo don't get me wrong but it's not mine blowing lis awesome 1080p video capture is definitely sharp and clean looking though it's in the same boat again it's not mind-blowing HTC has packed in a ton of features though like HDR and panoramic sweep for still photos and HDR video and variable speed capture and playback then of course we have Zoe Zoe does a few things but its main feature is that when you use the camera and Zoe mode it takes short videos and multiple photos all at the same time even better it constantly runs a buffer so that actually captures a full second before you hit the shutter button which is great for capturing moments you might otherwise have missed after you shot your photos videos or Zoe's you can take advantage of a new feature that puts together short highlight videos which uses location and date information to figure out which clips and images to use I can't tell you if you're going to be using this all the time but it was actually kind of fun to play around with at the very least the 2300 milliamp hour battery in the HTC one could be bigger and we've definitely seen phones with better battery life while this isn't the strongest aspect of the one considering everything it's powering the battery life wasn't bad we ran a battery test in antutu tester got a score of 472 with capacity down to 18% after just around 6 hours heavy testing saw charge last just over 5 hours actual use though fared much better with the phone easily lasting the full day without needing a charge long story short the HTC one is the best device the company's released in a long time now you may not love everything about it blinkfeed in particular is somewhat polarizing but in general there's little to hate the build quality and feel are solid performance is blazing fast and since five is the best iteration of sense to date not only does the HTC One stand a decent chance of turning the company around but it's our last best hope for peace oh wait that was Babylon 5 anyway if you want to know more we have a written companion to this article at Android authority calm you can find the link in the description we always have new videos coming out so if you want to stay caught up make sure to subscribe to our Channel I'm Kris woofer Android authority and as always thank you for watching