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Android phones are often criticized as flavorless. While they come in a variety of screen sizes with insides that differ even more, they generally all look and feel the same, with many differentiators (ooh, apps that scroll up and down instead of side to side!) actually not amounting to very much. Even the name "Android" implies easily replicated automatons.
That's why the HTC One ($199 for 32GB with a two-year contract on AT&T or Sprint, also on T-Mobile) is a refreshing change from all the bots out there. HTC has focused on a few standout features -- including an interactive home screen, a retooled camera and a novel way to share experiences -- to turn the One into a device that, well, stands out. None of those features is perfect, but at least the company is really trying to differentiate and not just "skin" things.
Take just one example: The HTC One can function as a TV remote control. The app is bland, and setting it up could be clearer, but it's a great feature to have. HTC had to build an infrared blaster into the power button on the top to enable the One to work as a remote, but that's definitely something you iPhone can't do.
HTC lent us a One for review, a pre-production unit that works on Sprint's network (I could tell it was pre-production since it kept telling me it was connected to "print"). Unfortunately, even though it's equipped to connect to Sprint's flavor of LTE, the network hasn't been switched on yet, so I was puttering along at much slower 3G speeds when separated from Wi-Fi.
Pretty One
You can tell the One is a high-end phone from its design. The exterior is crafted from a single piece of aluminum, which feels solid in the hand -- although it's ever-so-slightly less grippy than plastic or glass. The 4.7-inch screen size strains the balance between convenience and unwieldiness ... your fingers will get a good stretch sometimes, at least.
The edge of the phone tapers in slightly toward the screen. This actually gives the phone a very distinctive feel; I would never mistake the One for, say, the Galaxy S III or even other HTC phones like the One S. Some well-considered chiseling along the edge helps to give your fingertips more traction.
The screen is a beautiful LCD with full HD resolution, 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. That puts its pixel density way north of "retina" at 468 pixels per inch (ppi) -- not that it makes much difference to your eyes. The screen makes photos and videos look amazing, although I wouldn't expect anything less from a phone that calls itself a flagship.
The 4.7-inch display is on the large side, though. This isn't a monster phone like the Galaxy Note II, but it can be unwieldy sometimes -- like when you need to create an app shortcut on the home screen. It's a straightforward process: Just press and hold the icon and drag it to the top of the screen, but that's sometimes a large distance to traverse with your thumb if you pick an icon lower down.
Like other HTC phones, the One carries the Beats Audio label. In this case, at least, it means a lot, since the One has some of the best -- and loudest -- audio I've heard from a cellphone. The front of the phone incorporates speakers both above and below the screen. I once held the phone at arm's length during a loud outdoor party and was still able to hear the Pandora station I was tuned to. Bonus: There's a built-in FM radio, too.
Snacking on BlinkFeed
The marquee feature on the HTC One is BlinkFeed. It's a big, visual feed of stories that serves as the One's default home screen. Once you set it up, it'll show you updates -- basically photos, headlines and avatars -- from any social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Fickr, etc.), apps (such as the Calendar and TV apps) and partner publications (including Reuters and The Huffington Post).
If that sounds a lot like Flipboard, you're not far off. BlinkFeed is designed to give you "snack-size" content that you actually care about from the moment you unlock your phone. In practice, it's not quite as elegant as Flipboard, although the scrolling animation is nice and inviting.
The difference comes in execution. With Flipboard, when you tap on a story, a preview comes up that's within the app's framework. With BlinkFeed, you're shunted to whatever app the story is from, or if it's a publication, to a newsreader. It's a subtle difference, but it leads to delays as you wait for Facebook and Twitter to launch before you see the content you want. And if you're offline, forget it (apps like Flipboard and Pulse hold some content in a cache).
There also isn't much control over how the content is presented. You can choose the networks and publications whose content you want to see, whether or not the feed auto-refreshes, and what region you want the stories to focus on. How often you see a particular network, or the size of the update windows isn't customizable.
You also can't delete BlinkFeed outright, although you can make any other screen your default home screen in lieu of it, and you technically never need to set it up. Also keep in mind, BlinkFeed is a 1.0 service, and improvements are sure to come soon.
BlinkFeed, like Facebook Home, is one of several recent stabs at making smartphones more personal by pushing apps aside to bring users content they ostensibly want. I prefer BlinkFeed's approach to Facebook Home's since it's inherently more democratic, although HTC might have done better if they simply partnered with Flipboard for the service. In any case, I like the idea.
Searching for UltraPixels
HTC removed itself from the megapixel race with the One, actually reducing the resolution of the image sensor from its previous generation of phone cameras. Why would they do that? Simple: to make the pixels themselves larger, what the company calls "UltraPixels," which is said to give the One's 4.3-megapixel camera advantages in low light and fast action.
By my eyes, HTC is really onto something here with UltraPixels. In a photo I took of my wife in our dim living room, I could pick out detail in her dark blue jeans as well as on our dark brown couch -- detail that's often smeared out in shadow when inferior image sensors try to capture it. (Check out some sample shots from the HTC's camera below.)
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I also used the One to take dozens of photos of an outdoor toddler birthday party. As the kids ran around like crazy, jumping all over a bouncing castle, the One was a very capable action photographer, and I was able to snap several great shots.
However, for all the pics I took, I noticed slightly more graininess than I saw in photos taken by other phone cameras (mainly an iPhone 4S) in the same lighting -- whether dim or bright. It was only noticeable when I viewed the pics on a bigger screen, but it was definitely there.
Perhaps the camera was choosing an ISO that was a little too high, or maybe it's just something inherent with a lower-res sensor. If most of your phone pics end up on Facebook or Twitter, you won't even notice. Overall, I found the image quality of the HTC One's camera to be very good.
Zoe Makes an Impression
With the One, HTC is introducing a new feature. It's called Zoe, and it's pretty cool. After you snap a bunch of photos -- and maybe even a few videos -- of any event (say, a hockey game), the phone will automatically create a short video compilation of them (using up to 13 individual pieces of media). It's essentially a slideshow that's about 30 seconds long, complete with canned music and optional Instagram-like filtering. Here's an example:
[brightcove video="2286578838001" /]
While apps like Apple's iPhoto have been doing similar things for a while, Zoe has two innovations: 1) It's completely effortless -- the Zoe compilations are automatically generated, appearing as a kind of header to an event (making them even less work than BlackBerry's Storymaker feature). They're created on the fly, so they don't take up any memory, and even though you don't have to, you can customize them to the last detail.
And 2) The camera can take a different kind of photo specifically for Zoes. Instead of snapping a single still, the camera will actually record a short video as well as capture several individual photos. This ostensibly gives the Zoe editor a lot to work with, but the mode doesn't explain itself. I'm certain many users will be confused by Zoe mode when shooting -- especially since it's so prominent on the camera's screen.
The Zoe compilations themselves are surprisingly good, somehow keying in on most of the best shots at the toddler party I mentioned earlier. Once I told it to take out one bad video clip and include three can't-miss shots, it was perfect. And it won over more than me: Showing the Zoe to my wife, she insisted I email it to the other parents immediately. Not bad for seven seconds of work.
One complaint: The Gallery app doesn't make it easy to explicitly exclude content from a Zoe -- at least short of deleting it outright. A Zoe I compiled of people in the office also had a picture from home in it that I took later that day. The only way I could find to ensure it wasn't included in the Zoe was to designate all 13 pieces of content, so there wasn't room for anything else.
Extra Points
BlinkFeeds and Zoes are nice, but my favorite extra in the HTC One is its ability to serve as your remote control. The power button up top doubles as an infrared blaster, which ties into the TV app. It's called TV and not "Remote" because the app doesn't function solely as a universal remote -- it's also a complete channel guide, with graphics and show info.
Setting up the HTC One to control my TV was probably the easiest universal remote setup I've ever performed. After a decade of reviewing remotes, it struck me how much more convenient it is to have the remote control itself connected to the Internet: all instructions, codes and brands were right there on screen -- either part of the app or immediately downloaded. Nice.
The remote works very well, and I even appreciated the "content first" approach the the channel guide -- where you tap on a particular show that's on, and the TV just knows to tune to it, without ever needing to know the channel. The system mirrors similar apps from Sony and Samsung, so HTC isn't exactly innovating here, but it's following the right trend.
The One also includes NFC (near-field communication) tech, something fairly common in high-end smartphones these days. I wish HTC had put some kind of mark on the exterior to show exactly where the NFC chip is, but after slowly sliding the back of the device over the top of a Sony egg-shaped speaker (model SRS-BT5), I eventually was able to find it. One finger tap later, and I was listening to Pandora at respectable volume. Very nice.
Finally, call quality was excellent. Trying out a Sprint phone made me miss speaking on a CDMA network (my personal phone is on AT&T), and both male and female voices were crisp and clear. The great speakers on the One probably had something to do with it.
How the West Was One
For all its ability to attract friends like Steve Ballmer and Mark Zuckerberg, HTC isn't doing spectacularly well. Its market share and profits lag far behind Samsung's and Apple's, and other Eastern brands such as Huawei and ZTE threaten to undermine the recent progress HTC has made in the West.
With the One, however, HTC has built something it can really stake its future on. The company can't rely solely on brand (like Apple) or momentum (like Samsung), so HTC appears to have correctly reasoned that the only card it can play is quality.
Certainly, some of the things HTC has launched with the One -- notably BlinkFeed and Zoe -- will need a few iterations to fully blossom, but the fact that they're there at all speaks volumes about HTC's focus. When using the One, you don't feel like the company is just following trends or tossing in a grab bag of features in the hopes that one or two will stand out. Its differentiators are substantive and focused.
For that reason above all else -- that the phone has the weight of a company riding on it, with a commitment to the path it's setting out for itself -- the HTC One isn't just different from other Android phones out there today. It's better.