TechHuB!

REVIEW: HTC ONE

In the year 2013, few things are as hyped as a new premium
smartphone. There were adverts for the Sony Xperia Z all over the national press, technology journalists (ourselves included)
are falling over themselves to pick up on any rumours about
the Samsung Galaxy S4 and even staid, businesslike BlackBerry hired Alicia Keys to be its Creative
Director. By contrast, HTC has been relatively quiet about the new HTC One.
There was a launch press conference in London but,acrobats aside, there were few
gimmicks. Make no mistake,though; this is the big one. HTC
has fallen far behind Apple and Samsung in sales, and it hopes
this is the top-end phone to revive its fortunes.
First impressions, thankfully, are
great. The One is a gorgeous phone, and we think it wipes the
floor with the Sony Xperia Z. The combination of metal rear,bevelled metal edges and edge-
to-edge screen are class itself,and make the Xperia Z feel
square and tacky, despite its glass rear. The HTC One's curved
back also makes it comfortable to hold - a minor downside is that it's tricky to type when it’s lying flat on a desk.
The metal-backed HTC One is a thing of beauty, and even out-
classes the Sony Xperia Z's glass chassis We were also seriously impressed with the screen. It's a
4.7in model with a Full HD 1,920x1,080 resolution, leading
to a huge pixel density figure of 468ppi. When compared side-by-
side with the Xperia Z's display,we preferred the HTC One's screen, thanks to its superb contrast. It has incredibly deep
blacks (for an LCD at least), and our test photos showed rich,
vibrant colours and plenty of shadow detail.
The Xperia Z had the advantage when it came to looking at web pages, however; its slightly larger 5in display meant text was ever-so-slightly larger and easier to
read when web pages were fully zoomed out, helped by brilliant white backgrounds,compared to the very slight grey tinge on the
HTC One.
Last year it was 720p, now Full HD 1080p screens are becoming the norm on top-end
smartphones
The HTC One wins out when it comes to web browsing performance. It has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, and completed our Sunspider JavaScript
benchmark in a super-fast 1,123ms. This is far faster than the 1,890ms we saw from the Xperia Z, but we think much of this is down to the speed of the Xperia Z's browser. For comparison, we ran the same test using the fast Dolphin
browser, and the HTC One remained ahead of the Xperia Z with a score of 1,120ms
compared to 1,357ms.
This difference was borne out in our subjective web browsing tests. Both phones rendered
graphics heavy web pages at a similar speed, but when zoomed in and panning around a web page, the Xperia Z would stutter when coming across a large
image – a problem we didn’t have with the HTC One.
Luckily, HTC has provided a huge 2,300mAh battery to power the fast processor and bright screen.
The handset managed 8h 32m in our continuous video playback test, which is a strong result and
bodes well for all-day battery life.

SENSE 5.0
An Android smartphone can be
beautifully designed and have an amazing screen and top-notch
chipset, but none of this will make any difference if the
software is rubbish. HTC sails closer to the wind than most on
this front, as it heavily customises Android with its latest Sense
interface.
Sense has always divided opinion, but this time HTC has
really pushed the boat out!

So how is it for you? Comfort and Useful!