HTC continues to impress in the smartphone department, as they up the ante yet again with the new HTC One M8.
Features and Design:
As soon as you get your hands on the phone, you'll notice the premium make up of the device, and will come to appreciate the improvements over the original HTC One. The metal chassis is still there, and the aluminum casing now makes up 90% of the frame, up from about 70% previously. The sides are now more curved than before, which really separates itself from the iPhone 5s which features more straight edges. The comparison between the One M8 and iPhone are just, seeing as these can be considered as the top two phones out there. The iPhone is pretty light, and feels a bit less premium when you compare it two the M8. The HTC One (M8), with its 9.35mm thickness and 160g weight, always feels great when you're holding it. The iPhone 5S and even the Galaxy S4 / Galaxy S5 have a more compact design language than the One (M8), which is largely thanks to the speaker addition, but overall I don't think this hurts the overall effect. The headphone jack has been moved to the bottom of the phone, which will annoy some people, especially me. I never like having the headphone jack at the bottom of the phone, it just feel a bit unintuitive. The HTC One (M8) comes with a microSD slot, which is pretty surprising seeing as how the company pretty much abandoned the tech years ago. In the end, expandable memory is always a huge plus. It simply offers a cheap and easy way to increase the 16GB / 32GB onboard storage by up to 128GB. The top of the phone is all plastic, and this is to with antenna technology as well as allowing the infrared signal to control your TV and other devices. The phone is beautiful to look at, and improves it's key features like Blinkfeed, Fitbit app, better BoomSound, and longer battery life.
Quality and Performance:The interface on the new HTC One (M8) is designed to seem very similar to that which has gone before. HTC redesigned Sense, its overlay atop Android, back in 2013 to be more geometric and easy to use. The HTC One (M8) is running an all-new version Android for the Taiwanese brand, and thankfully this means it's Android 4.4.2, or KitKat. I found the interface better on the One (M8), and a bit more snappier than on the G Flex. It still has the tap to wake feature, where you can double tap the screen to wake and put the phone to sleep. Where the phone truly excels is the performance, thanks to the powerful chipset powering the phone. It's recently come to light that HTC has admitted 'cheating' the benchmarks, which basically means optimising the performance of the phone when the presence of the app is found, which makes running the many different types of apps that much faster.This mode can actually be activated in the developer settings, so if you want your phone to run at the below speeds then you can enable it - although it will come at a relatively harsh battery cost.
Thanks mostly to Qualcomm's new efficient Snapdragon 801 chipset, the battery life is much, much better than the original HTC One. You can easily get days off of one charge, and it will obviously change depending on how heavy a user you are. The other thing HTC has offered up when it comes to battery life is Extreme Power Saving Mode, which sits somewhere between Samsung's Ultra Power Saving Mode. With this mode, HTC assured me that you can get 15 hours off of just 5% of the battery. It's impressive, and I'm sure more phones will start to follow suit. The main camera is roughly the same as the sensor found on the back of the HTC One last year, meaning it's an 'Ultrapixel' sensor that can capture a lot more light than other devices on the market. With this said, the camera software is deep, and offers you a lot more detail than the G Flex.
Final Thoughts: The HTC One (M8) is probably my favorite phone so far this year, offering you a ton of upgrades over the previous phone. The camera is spectacular and comes feature packed, this is just another example at how HTC is changing the playing field in a congested market.
+Gorgeous, Premium Design
+Expandable Memory
+Impressive Duo Cameras
+Strikingly Powerful
S&S Rating:9/10 @whatsPlay
