Gadgetory

if you happen to be an HTC smartphone fan well my friends you are in for a real treat I have in my hands the long-awaited follow-up to the HTC one called the HTC One m8 this luxurious handset is the company's latest flagship device for 2014 hi guys I'm Brian Bennett for seen it and I can emphatically say that the m8 is the classiest smartphone I've seen all year that includes some seriously good-looking products like the samsung galaxy s5 and Sony Xperia z2 so what makes the m8 so sexy a whole heck of a lot like its predecessor the One m8 flaunts a slick aluminium unibody chassis HTC also polished the bezel the edges around the screen to glint and reflect ambient light to catch your eye as you rotate it HTC expanded the screen dimensions to bringing the One m8 LCD display to five inches across up from the old ones 4.7 inch screen despite the phone's larger display though the device remains roughly the same size thickness and weight understandably it stands a little taller but the m8 stereo speakers which bracket the bigger screen pack more of an audio wallop to HTC claims these improve boom sound speakers offer 20% higher volume plus a greater frequency range which should translate into deeper richer audio the m8 also has a sharper 5 megapixel front-facing camera for better selfies complimenting the phone's 16 gigabytes or 32 gigabytes of internal memory you'll be glad to know that the One m8 has a micro SD card expansion slot - it's a feature the old HTC one lacked the One m8 still has an IR blaster but instead of the HTC One whose power button doubled as its infrared emitter the m8 conceals it under a dark plastic band on its top edge this coupled with HTC's TV app let you use the phone as a universal remote for example it will command HD TVs cable or satellite boxes plus home theater receivers simultaneously you can also set the app to alert you when your favorite programs are on the air and fire everything up to the right Channel with one finger tap the real star of the HTC One m8 show though is its distinctive to a lens camera system on back you find not one but two lenses and dual LED flash connected to what HTC calls a four megapixel ultra pixel sensor the smaller lens senses distance and depth with this data the camera app lets you do all sorts of wild photo editing tricks the coolest is something called u Focus which gives the m8 light sure like depth of field effects once you've taken an image you focus lets you pick a point in the photo to keep and focus once selected the app either blurs the background or the foreground the foreground ur function applies special filters to the background like simulated pencil sketch marks motion blurring even animated objects to indicate the changing of the seasons a 3d effect warps pictures as well to lend them cartoon like depth which you can alter by tilting the phone aside from that you get a bucketload of shooting modes such as night HDR sweep panorama plus manual camera settings for just about everything the old HTC One Zoe engine is here too that means the phone's gallery app groups images and video by events plus smashes them up into highlight reels with canned themes and music automatically running Android 4-4-2 Kit Kat the HTC One m8 also features the company's latest Sense 6 custom interface along with a cleaner look and flatter icons since 6 has new gesture controls as well you can pick up the phone then double tap the screen to wake it up without touching the power button likewise you can fire up the camera by turning the device horizontally and pressing down the volume button the blinkfeed news aggregator is back as well it's been revamped a bit though to let you choose custom topics and pull in notifications from third-party apps and services powering the device is a state-of-the-art 2.3 gigahertz quad-core snapdragon 801 processor along with 2 gigabytes of RAM that makes the m8 snappy and very responsive now there are a few things about the HTC One m8 that I'm not crazy about I know this might sound trivial but for some reason the back of the phone feels smoother and more slippery than the first HTC one also the mas polished bezel lacks the same flash and reflective Sparkle as the previous one other than that the m8 looks to be one mighty fine smartphone I'm Brian Bennett for CNN we've just taken a first look at the HTC One m8