Gadgetory

hey what's up guys I'm Kip PhD here and this is the Google Edition HTC one now the regular HTC one was my favorite phones of this entire year I gave it the number one choice in my top 5 1080p smartphones it's just a brilliant phone all together but now that there's a Google edition of this phone it's time to take a look at what sets this thing apart what makes the Google Edition phone worthy or different from the regular HTC one so without any further ado let's take a closer look at the Google Edition HTC One this device on the outside is basically exactly the same as the regular HTC One you simply cannot tell the difference because well there is no difference the Google Edition one only comes in the silver 32 gigabyte model and everything that was great about the build quality of the regular HTC One is still great about the Google Edition one as well the aluminum body the slight curves the front-facing speakers the zero gap technology the front and back facing cameras the sealed and battery even the Beats Audio logo which we'll get to in a second all of that stuff is the same on this phone and up till now I could have been showing you a regular HTC One and you wouldn't ever known but the real difference comes as soon as you turn on the phone because as you know the Google Edition HTC One is running a stock build with pure Android the regular HTC One is just getting the Android 4.2 update now with HTC Sense but this Google Edition phone comes out of the box with the latest version of Android 4.2.2 and we'll get all the OS updates right behind Nexus devices very early which is great so all the differences that make this different from the regular HTC One are in the software department so we'll go ahead and take a look at those first of all there are actually a new boot animation for the Google Play edition phones this isn't a nexus boot animation right now this is only found in the Google Play edition HTC One and galaxy s4 so that's pretty cool that that's new now yes this is booting into pure AOSP stock Android vanilla Android pure Android however you want to put it that is what comes onboard so no HTC Sense skin no carrier installed apps no bloatware just pure Android because there's no HTC stuff you actually do get some nice bonuses like that non expandable storage space you get more of it free out of the box and he gets slightly better battery life with less blinkfeed and other HTC stuff running in the background some other things have changed too first of all I found this ROM to be overall a bit snappier when compared to HTC Sense 5 and Sense 5 was already really fast on the regular one I think that's to be expected though by now with AOSP it's just naturally a bit snappier and more fluid overall and that's even more apparent with the google edition galaxy s4 when you compare it to TouchWiz and I also think that stock Android happens to look really pretty on the black bezel around the display I just wish I could get a black google edition HTC one since I think that would look even sexier now of course HTC Sense isn't all bad in fact some of the HTC ones hardware specifically depended on optimizations from sense to be good the speaker and the camera now the speakers are already huge but like I mentioned earlier the Google Edition one still has a Beats Audio logo on the back and you're actually gonna find in the sound settings a Beats Audio toggle so this device still has a dedicated separate audio amplifier inside for those massive speaker drivers and they've chosen to continue to label it Beats Audio whether or not you decide to use it is up to you have a listen to the difference in the sound it makes so beatsaudio is still in full effect here and I just leave it on all the time to avoid all the suppressions that come with turning it off I'll leave my Beats Audio explained video in the description below that like button if you're looking for any more information on that now as far as the camera goes this is still HTC's 4 megapixel ultra pixel camera I didn't explain video on this too so I'll link that below but basically because this only takes 4 megapixel shots HTC had quite a few algorithms and tweaks in sense 5 for some sharpening and some optimization for low-light performance to make this look better in regular light after spending a lot of time with the device and looking at the photos I've taken it looks like a lot of these optimizations are still present turns out they're not all completely built into HTC Sense but they're built into the imaging chip that is still part of the Google Edition ones hardware like the Beats Audio amplifier so comes with the new Google camera software interface and swipe gestures to change settings and everything but the images you'll be able to take will look exactly the same so you'll be able to switch to video mode take HDR shots panoramas and photo spheres etc with Google software and it'll have the same quality as a regular HTC One so of course you're going to be missing all of HTC's extra little camera features like Zowie and the effects and live filters but overall it is very fast and definitely not a bad quick point-and-shoot camera for just the regular photo taking experience so I think it's pretty obvious by now I really like stock Android I like the way it looks and I prefer it over sense in just the way it operates and I like how quick and responsive it is on hardware that is optimized for and as Google addition isn't just a regular HTC one with pure Android on top of it it actually has quite a few tweaks and adjustments behind the scenes to make it work for the one the button layout is a good example on the bottom it's not on screen buttons but you do get you have to long press the home button to get to Google now and double tap it to get to multitasking and that back button is always a back button so no menu button down there you still have to use on-screen menu button but nothing else switches about that the bottom line here is it works it has all those delicious hardware specs that make the HTC One the flagship of the year for HTC - that info so at the end of the day I really like the Google Edition hdc1 there were some initial concerns about whether or not stock Android would run fine on it but like we said there are some little behind the scenes improvements to stock Android that make this run really well on the one it's not a nexus obviously because of those you know hardware button layouts and it's slightly different because there's no on-screen buttons but I figure this would be a good chance to take a look at what native stock Android basically would look like on a phone when it's not CyanogenMod or anything like that now you can also download a Google Edition from for your HTC One and you have one so I'll clue the links below to any of that stuff if you want to check it out if you're daring enough to route and flash something like that but uh yeah at the end of the day it's a great phone and I'm a fan I'm going to be recommending it to a lot of people who like stock Android either way thanks for watching this quick video be free to stay tuned because the google edition galaxy s4 review is also in the works that will be coming up very soon either way thanks for watching and I'll talk to you guys the next one peace