Well I got my HTC One at the weekend and all very lovely so far. It’s processing speed is superb, the screen is lush and the quality of the audio means it’s going to push my Asus Eee Pad into the background when at home and just surfing or listening to internet radio.
The TV app is utter witchcraft! I can use the phone to now control my TV, Sky Box and Surround Sound system. If you set all your favourite channels when in TV mode, it gives you a grid of what programmes you might like are on now or later.
Click any of these and it automatically changes the channel. Couch-potatoism to another level..
Someone mentioned some bad things about the camera, I haven’t tried it out properly yet, but this review is one reason I bought the thing, the light levels it deals with supposedly put a lot of other camera phones in the dark (sorry) : techradar.com.
Some minor niggles: It wouldn’t play a couple of videos that I copied over from my laptop (that’s a player issue not a phone issue I guess) but the phone then didn’t have an option to delete them, I had to connect back up to the laptop to delete these, my old Desire would just click hold and then you can delete.
I’ve been told that if you download video or create video then you can delete direct from the phone.
There was no one click to set vibrate mode, you have to keep the volume rocker button down on minus and it then sets vibrate only, although I did download a widget for this, but the Desire I had before had this option when holding down the power button, don’t why they removed that.
Finally the sound quality for calls, while absolutely fine and dandy does somehow seem different to my old Desire.
It sounds like it’s going through a filter, feels a bit ‘fake’ difficult to describe. I suppose I’ll have to get used to it.
Also the flashing LED that is used to notify you of texts or emails waiting, is set into one of the micro holes of the top speaker so it’s very small, but it’s like a laser and really very bright – so much so that head on it’s even a bit annoying on the eye, feels like it’s jabbing you to deal with the text or email. I couldn’t leave an unread text on it for long.
Lastly the contact list when in groups mode shows your contacts in thumbnail form, but I want a list so I can see the difference between my numbers where a name is longer than the text provided under the thumbnail.
For example, I might have Accountant – Bob – Mobile, or Accountant – Bob – Landline, but all I can see is Accountant – Bob… Would have been nice to have expandable memory but when looking at other phones in comparison (Xperia Z was one) they didn’t match up on the camera, screen and style.
Overall though I’m very happy and thankfully on an unlimited data tariff as its definitely going to get more use as a mini-tablet than it is as a phone, you can get a case for it that allows you to stand the thing up landscape so great for watching videos on a lengthy commute.
