If there’s ever been a time to make a switch to Android, it’s
probably right now. Three newly released Android handsets in the past
month, and all of them have been more polished than any previous
generation that I can remember: the Samsung Galaxy S5, Sony’s Xperia Z2
and the new HTC One. Each model can be considered a safe purchase, and
each targets a slightly different type of user, but only HTC’s offering
stands out as being truly unexpected.
In a number of ways, the new HTC One (aka the “M8″) represents the antithesis of the Android stereotype — even more so than its predecessor, last year’s HTC One (the M7). It doesn’t participate in the war over specs or bragging rights, it unashamedly emphasizes form over function, and it doesn’t even try to be affordable. It’s an iPhone from another universe and, in my estimation, it’s easily the best Android phone on the market today. Here’s why:
Design
It’s hard to be creative and artistic when you’re pushed into a corner and forced to fight for your very existence. When I reviewed HTC’s underwhelming One Max a few months ago, I thought the company’s designers and engineers had sadly succumbed to the stress of their employer’s financial predicament. Now, holding the M8, I see that I was wrong. The phone is admittedly long, due to its deliberately over-sized speakers (essential for listening to Bob Marley while sitting in a deck chair), but this is compensated for by its narrowness and general feel.
The aluminum construction is satisfyingly dense, elegantly rounded and it makes you happy every time you pick it up. The same simply cannot be said of the blocky Xperia Z2 or the interminably plasticky Galaxy S5. It’s also true that HTC’s Android skin, known as Sense, is bolder, cleaner and friendlier than either Samsung’s or Sony’s software interfaces — Sense is almost iOS 7-like, not so much in the details, but in the general feeling that someone has paid close attention to the overall aesthetic, and again that’s something switchers might appreciate.
As my colleague Brad Molen noted in his full review, one drawback of the M8′s design is its slipperiness. This makes it essential to spend $50 extra on a “Dot View” plastic case, but frankly you should do this anyway. The colorful accessory adds personality as well as protection, and, by means of the perforations you can see the in the photo above, it cleverly let’s you check the time and basic notifications without you having to lift the flap open or expose any part of the display. You’ll still sense the cold metal lying under the plastic, even if you don’t always see it. (For what it’s worth, I’ve told HTC that I think $50 is too much for the case — it should be $30 at most.)
Camera
While the Sony and Samsung phones are very capable of taking serious, high-resolution photos, the M8 prioritises fun over fidelity. It has a secondary depth camera that is really only useful for one purpose: blurring backgrounds on portrait pictures. The effect isn’t always perfect if you examine it closely, because sometimes the edges of your foreground subject go blurry when you need them to stay sharp (and vice versa), but in general it works extremely well, especially considering that it takes two button presses to achieve.
It’s surprising just how many photos you take that can benefit from this sort of ‘depth of field’ effect. A number of my friends (who pretty much all use iPhones) have asked if they can use photos from the M8 as their profile picture on Facebook and dating sites, and none have been much concerned by the fact that the images only consist of four megapixels. That said, if I was looking for a smartphone that could replace the need to take a dedicated camera on vacation, I’d opt for the Xperia Z2; it’s larger sensor and 20-megapixel output almost rival a basic point-and-shoot, albeit without any zoom.
Battery life
Rapid battery drain used to be one the biggest gripes with Android phones, but with the introduction of the Qualcomm QCOM +0.88% Snapdragon 801 — the processor that powers the M8, Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2 — we can consider the problem all but solved. The Galaxy S5 is the worst of the bunch for efficiency, perhaps reflecting Samsung’s decision to go for a higher clock speed (a turn on on for stereotypical geeks) rather than better stamina, but it’s still a reliable workhorse. The Z2 arguably has the best battery life of the trio, by virtue of its physically larger battery, but this enlarged component contributes to the handsets unwieldiness in the hand, which is a significant sacrifice.
The HTC One M8, meanwhile, strikes a sensible balance between size, raw performance and longevity. A lot depends on how exactly you use your phone, but I regularly get to midday before my M8′s battery symbol shows any signs of depletion, and it’s often still in the green when I stop work at 6pm, so I’ve never felt afraid to play games or listen to Spotify while on the train. The thing just
refuses to die.
A big ‘but’
All these new Android phones are still too big. I can accept the fact that they’re expensive (there’s always the Nexus 5 or Moto G if you’re looking for something simpler and cheaper), and I can learn to live with the occasional bugs that invariably coexist with Android (the M8 has an annoying one where icons on the home screen occasionally disappear and take a few seconds to come back). But I don’t see how I could recommend any of these phones to someone who is used to the size of an iPhone or BlackBerry, or who simply doesn’t want to look like they’re carrying Gordon Gekko’s's filofax in their pocket.
Let’s just hope that HTC plans to shrink the M8 to create an M8 Mini, for folks who want something smaller, and that they don’t screw it up like they did with the last One Mini I wrote about a while back. If the company can create a smaller version of its flagship with the same features and build quality, just like Sony did with its ‘Compact’ version of last year’s Xperia Z1, then it’ll more than deserve a second chance at mainstream success.
In a number of ways, the new HTC One (aka the “M8″) represents the antithesis of the Android stereotype — even more so than its predecessor, last year’s HTC One (the M7). It doesn’t participate in the war over specs or bragging rights, it unashamedly emphasizes form over function, and it doesn’t even try to be affordable. It’s an iPhone from another universe and, in my estimation, it’s easily the best Android phone on the market today. Here’s why:
 |
| The HTC One (M8) in its perfectly perforated protective case. |
It’s hard to be creative and artistic when you’re pushed into a corner and forced to fight for your very existence. When I reviewed HTC’s underwhelming One Max a few months ago, I thought the company’s designers and engineers had sadly succumbed to the stress of their employer’s financial predicament. Now, holding the M8, I see that I was wrong. The phone is admittedly long, due to its deliberately over-sized speakers (essential for listening to Bob Marley while sitting in a deck chair), but this is compensated for by its narrowness and general feel.
The aluminum construction is satisfyingly dense, elegantly rounded and it makes you happy every time you pick it up. The same simply cannot be said of the blocky Xperia Z2 or the interminably plasticky Galaxy S5. It’s also true that HTC’s Android skin, known as Sense, is bolder, cleaner and friendlier than either Samsung’s or Sony’s software interfaces — Sense is almost iOS 7-like, not so much in the details, but in the general feeling that someone has paid close attention to the overall aesthetic, and again that’s something switchers might appreciate.
As my colleague Brad Molen noted in his full review, one drawback of the M8′s design is its slipperiness. This makes it essential to spend $50 extra on a “Dot View” plastic case, but frankly you should do this anyway. The colorful accessory adds personality as well as protection, and, by means of the perforations you can see the in the photo above, it cleverly let’s you check the time and basic notifications without you having to lift the flap open or expose any part of the display. You’ll still sense the cold metal lying under the plastic, even if you don’t always see it. (For what it’s worth, I’ve told HTC that I think $50 is too much for the case — it should be $30 at most.)
Camera
While the Sony and Samsung phones are very capable of taking serious, high-resolution photos, the M8 prioritises fun over fidelity. It has a secondary depth camera that is really only useful for one purpose: blurring backgrounds on portrait pictures. The effect isn’t always perfect if you examine it closely, because sometimes the edges of your foreground subject go blurry when you need them to stay sharp (and vice versa), but in general it works extremely well, especially considering that it takes two button presses to achieve.
It’s surprising just how many photos you take that can benefit from this sort of ‘depth of field’ effect. A number of my friends (who pretty much all use iPhones) have asked if they can use photos from the M8 as their profile picture on Facebook and dating sites, and none have been much concerned by the fact that the images only consist of four megapixels. That said, if I was looking for a smartphone that could replace the need to take a dedicated camera on vacation, I’d opt for the Xperia Z2; it’s larger sensor and 20-megapixel output almost rival a basic point-and-shoot, albeit without any zoom.
Battery life
Rapid battery drain used to be one the biggest gripes with Android phones, but with the introduction of the Qualcomm QCOM +0.88% Snapdragon 801 — the processor that powers the M8, Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2 — we can consider the problem all but solved. The Galaxy S5 is the worst of the bunch for efficiency, perhaps reflecting Samsung’s decision to go for a higher clock speed (a turn on on for stereotypical geeks) rather than better stamina, but it’s still a reliable workhorse. The Z2 arguably has the best battery life of the trio, by virtue of its physically larger battery, but this enlarged component contributes to the handsets unwieldiness in the hand, which is a significant sacrifice.
The HTC One M8, meanwhile, strikes a sensible balance between size, raw performance and longevity. A lot depends on how exactly you use your phone, but I regularly get to midday before my M8′s battery symbol shows any signs of depletion, and it’s often still in the green when I stop work at 6pm, so I’ve never felt afraid to play games or listen to Spotify while on the train. The thing just
refuses to die.
A big ‘but’
All these new Android phones are still too big. I can accept the fact that they’re expensive (there’s always the Nexus 5 or Moto G if you’re looking for something simpler and cheaper), and I can learn to live with the occasional bugs that invariably coexist with Android (the M8 has an annoying one where icons on the home screen occasionally disappear and take a few seconds to come back). But I don’t see how I could recommend any of these phones to someone who is used to the size of an iPhone or BlackBerry, or who simply doesn’t want to look like they’re carrying Gordon Gekko’s's filofax in their pocket.
Let’s just hope that HTC plans to shrink the M8 to create an M8 Mini, for folks who want something smaller, and that they don’t screw it up like they did with the last One Mini I wrote about a while back. If the company can create a smaller version of its flagship with the same features and build quality, just like Sony did with its ‘Compact’ version of last year’s Xperia Z1, then it’ll more than deserve a second chance at mainstream success.
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