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Some people look a little unkindly on the so-called “S” years — those years when Apple updates the iPhone, but doesn’t change how it looks, and then sells that while secretly working on something flashier that will debut 12 months later. I don’t think that’s exactly fair. Those “S” years are when Apple adds some of its most useful features. Siri? Touch ID? Both valuable additions to the iPhone platform that have since grown in importance. This year we get 3D Touch, a potentially awesome way to interact with iPhones. The thing is, a device’s worth isn’t just tied up in one feature: It’s about how all those moving parts work together. That’s why the new 6s and 6s Plus (starting at $649 and $749, respectively, for 16GB models) are such great phones. The combination of much-improved hardware and some polished software makes this year’s release far more than just a modest refresh.

Hardware

No, your eyes don’t deceive you: The 6s and 6s Plus look nearly identical to last year’s models, save for a new rose gold color option that oscillates between “vaguely lavender” and “shiny new penny” depending on the light. The sleek, rounded aesthetic might not raise as many eyebrows as it did last year, but it’s still one of my favorite iPhone designs. Aside from the pink color option, the other changes aren’t particularly noticeable. Both phones are now made from 7000-series aluminum, an alloy used in the aerospace industry that, when compared to last year’s phones, makes for a sturdier but similarly lightweight design. The regulatory icons that used to live on the iPhone’s back have been removed too, leaving a teensy “S” logo to let the world know you’ve upgraded.

Meanwhile, we’re still left with the same 16GB, 64GB and 128GB storage options as last year, and you’re almost certainly going to want one of the latter two. I was hoping against hope Apple would finally give the 16GB model the heave-ho and raise the baseline to 32GB of space. That was clearly silly of me. Economies of scale aside, iOS 9’s smaller footprint and new developer tools like app slicing make the 16GB iPhone a little easier to make do with, though the inclusion of an upgraded 12-megapixel camera, 4K video shooting and animated Live Photos (which are turned on by default) means some will have a tough time keeping free space available.

As ever, the Touch ID fingerprint sensor lives in the iPhone’s home button, but this year’s module is a clear improvement: Apple claims it can pick up your fingerprints up to twice as fast as before. I can’t make out exactly what the speed multiple is here, but Touch ID really is blazing fast now, and I can’t remember the last time it didn’t work on the first try, either. In fact, it’s actually so fast that I’ve had to change some of my daily behaviors as a result. You see, I used to be one of those people who tapped on the home button to check the time or change tracks while I was in my car (yes, dangerous, sorry). With the 6s and 6s Plus, that doesn’t fly anymore: Touch ID picks up all but the quickest home-button taps.

As it happens, both phones are a touch thicker and heavier than before, but they’re still comfortable to hold, and the change in thickness specifically is so subtle that it’s nearly imperceptible. As for the weight, the 6s and 6s Plus do indeed feel noticeably weightier: The 6s weighs in at 143 grams, up from 129, while the bigger 6s Plus now comes in at 192 grams, up from 172. Not that that’s a bad thing. All told, this is one of the few times an iPhone has gotten beefier (the 4s was slightly heavier than the 4), and I’m actually quite pleased about it. At some point, there has to be a lower limit to how thin a phone can get and still be comfortable to use. I’d much rather see companies abandon that ceaseless march toward cartoonishly thin designs and instead work to make better use of the sizes they’ve already achieved. Bigger batteries, anyone?

Speaking of the sort, the cells in these new models are actually slightly smaller than they were before: 1,715mAh in the 6s and 2,750mAh in the 6s Plus. I’ll delve more into battery life a little later (spoiler alert: It hasn’t really changed), but recent teardowns seem to reveal why we’ve gotten a bit of a downgrade this year. In short, you have that new 3D Touch screen to blame. To give you a little background, the display crams 96 pressure sensors into the backlight layer of the phones’ Retina HD displays, along with a Taptic Engine that provides some subtle vibrations when you bear down on the screen. Turns out, the engine took up some extra room near the phones’ bottom edges, just under the spot where the battery sits. For now, the time-savings you get from using 3D Touch gestures feels worth the slightly smaller batteries, but hopefully Apple will eventually figure out how to shrink the necessary components so that it doesn’t have to compromise on battery size.

A new display, and a new way to touch it

At first glance, you probably wouldn’t notice anything different about the IPS screens on the 6s and 6s Plus. After all, they’re the same size as before (4.7 inches and 5.5 inches, respectively) with the same pixel density (326 ppi, or 401 ppi on the Plus). You won’t even notice the improved glass covering them until you drop it (please don’t). The eagle-eyed among you might catch that both screens are a touch brighter with slightly better color reproduction. There is, of course, something much more important at play here. It’s called 3D Touch, and it’s the biggest change in how we interact with iPhones since Siri.

Let’s start with the broad strokes: If you press your finger down on, say, an app icon, you’ll get a small menu of quick actions that you’d usually have to be inside the app to use. You’ll also feel a brief vibration from the Taptic Engine as a sort of tactile “thumbs up.” Like any new behavior, applying force to your iPhone’s screen will take getting used to. The whole thing is made a little trickier by the fact that it’s initially easy to mix up a 3D Touch and a long-press (like the one used to rearrange your app icons). It didn’t take more than a day or two for my muscle memory to learn the amount of pressure needed to make 3D Touch work, but hey — your mileage may vary.

Those 96 3D Touch sensors can also take precise measurements as you push down and release. Imagine, for instance, playing a racing game and being able to press the screen to accelerate past the chump who just whiffed while taking a corner. If that’s the future of smartphones, bring it on.

What’s more, there’s an entirely new vocabulary around this 3D Touch screen. Pressing down to preview something in a little pop-up window — be it a web link, or an address someone texted you — is what Apple calls “peeking.” Apply just a bit more pressure and the phone will bring up the usual, full-screen app view, in this case a Safari window or a location in Apple Maps. Congratulations, you just “popped” something. You can’t use all the same 3D Touch actions if you’re using an iPhone 6s Plus in landscape mode. Pressing down on app icons still brings up the menus you’d expect them to — as evidenced by the GIF above — but you can’t peek/pop addresses or hyperlinks in Messages and Mail while the phone is sideways.

Apple’s already laid out guidelines about how developers should implement 3D Touch, and they’re basically centered on one key idea: 3D Touch is about helping users do things faster. So far, the vast majority of apps don’t yet support 3D Touch, but the ones that do take different approaches as to what you can peek at. Some, like Twitter and Instagram, let you press down on their app icons to bring up those Quick Actions menus for near-instantaneous tweeting and photo sharing. Others, like Dropbox, offer previews of your files when you long-press their filenames in a list, but there’s no app icon interaction. OpenTable takes sort of a hybrid approach — you’ll get both an app icon menu and the ability to peek at restaurants’ locations in Maps as you’re scrolling through the culinary options.

This all might sound complex, but trust me: It’s not. Once more developers get on board, people will be able to zip around their home screens and just do things, as opposed to constantly jumping in and out of apps. It’s also a tremendously useful tool for getting quick bits of context — why yes, I would love to see a map of that sweet poutinerie in Berkeley, thanks very much.

After I got used to using 3D Touch, going back to the plain screen on my iPhone 6 was almost painful. Heck, even if you use the 6s and 6s Plus full-time, most developers haven’t had the chance to build 3D Touch support into their apps yet. I can’t tell you the number of times I was reading something in a non-supported app like Twitter, and pressed my thumb down on a link only to have nothing happen. Whoops! The mild twinge of annoyance I felt every time that happened speaks to how powerful 3D Touch is: It might seem like a gimmick at first, but it quickly became a feature I wanted to use all the time.

Software

I’ve already penned a few thousand words on iOS 9, and its focus on cohesiveness and efficiency makes a great match for the new iPhones. Most of the software tweaks on the 6s and 6s Plus are centered on those lovely little 3D Touch interactions, but there’s one more trick that’s currently only available on these things. Jump into Siri’s settings and you’ll find that you can now enable “Hey Siri” — Apple’s always-on listening mode — to work even when you’re not connected to a power source. The feature launched with iOS 9 just a few weeks back, but it works best with the new iPhones’ more efficient M9 co-processor helping out under the hood. Weird as it sounds, I’ve taken to just talking to her sometimes when I want to listen to some Capital Cities in Apple Music, add yet another event to my stupid-packed calendar or turn on Airplane Mode when it’s time for some shut-eye.

What’s more, one of my favorite features from recent iPads has reached the new iPhones: 3D-Touching the keyboard while pecking out a text turns it into a trackpad for precise placement of the cursor when an inevitable typo pops up. If you lump in these tweaks with all the other thoughtful design changes in iOS 9, you’re left with a tightly integrated package that tries to give us the apps and info we want at just the right time.

Camera and Live Photos

iPhones account for a huge chunk of the photos taken every day, so it’s no surprise that Apple takes this camera business seriously. Thankfully, after several years, Apple finally traded in its 8-megapixel sensor in favor of a 12-megapixel main camera. Naturally, it’s actually not so much the higher resolution that matters; it’s all the other, more technical bits that should help improve photo quality. The folks in Cupertino went for smaller, more densely packed pixels (1.22µ, down from 1.5µ in the iPhone 6) that make for higher-resolution shots… with the added potential for more noise.

That’s where Apple’s “deep trench isolation” comes in: The company managed to separate the sensor’s photodiodes to keep incoming photons from introducing interference into surrounding diodes. You don’t really need to worry about that, though: It basically just means your photos should come out nice and crisp. Pair all that with a five-element lens and a familiar f/2.2 aperture and we’ve got ourselves another serious camera contender.

Right, so how do photos actually look? Pretty great. Colors look nicely saturated, but naturally so, while the standard Photo mode handles dynamic range and exposure better than I expected. This becomes especially apparent in landscape shots; neither the 6s nor 6s Plus blew out the sky on bright days, which made for some great shots of Toronto’s famous Honest Ed’s superstore. Once you get a little closer to your subject, though, things start to go slightly awry. Just about all of the photos I shot using the 6s and 6s Plus’s main cameras were crisp with clear color separation, but zooming in didn’t reveal much more detail than in photos I took with the iPhone 6. That’s not to say the 6s’ photos were worse than ones taken with last year’s iPhone; they just weren’t always the dramatic leap forward I was hoping for.

Photos taken with the iPhone 6s Plus are, in most cases, on par with those taken on the regular 6s, but it does fare a little better in low-light situations thanks to its optical image stabilization. Those of you with really steady hands might not notice as much of a difference, but it came in handy when shooting video. Also on the plus side, the front-facing FaceTime camera has also received a long-overdue upgrade to a 5-megapixel sensor. It should shock absolutely no one that selfies came out crisper and more natural looking, and the software-based screen flash does a respectable job lighting up faces in bars.

As for video, the 6s and 6s Plus can shoot in 4K — not that most people have 4K-ready screens in their homes yet. The resulting footage is remarkably sharp, with colors that were more or less true to life. Of course, all of this comes at a price: 4K video will eat up your free space in a hurry if you let it, which is why Apple didn’t bother setting it as the default recording quality.

What is enabled by default, however, is the Live Photos feature. You’ve probably seen the demos already; when you snap a photo, the camera captures just a little audio and video before and after the shot is taken — much like the Living Images feature found on recent Lumia phones. The end result is a neat, gimmicky way to capture enhanced pictures. They’re evocative at best and sort of lame at worst, but artsy types will surely get a kick out of concocting cool Live Photo scenarios and sharing them to and fro. Remember, Live Photos are shareable between anyone running Apple’s latest phone, watch or computer operating systems, so they need not languish alone on your 6s. They’ll quickly spring to life as you thumb through your Camera Roll, and you can set them as Live Wallpapers too — just apply a quick 3D Touch to run through the animations on your lockscreen.

All told, then, the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have great cameras. And yes, that’s “cameras” as in plural. Here’s the rub, though: The competition hasn’t exactly been sitting on their haunches these past few years, and devices like the Galaxy S6 line and Motorola’s Moto X Pure edition are powerful pocket cameras in their own right. Are these new iPhones definitively the best mobile cameras on the market? No, but they’re very strong options that stack up nicely against the rest of the greats. We’re all better off for the competition.

Performance and battery life

A new kind of touchscreen and some upgraded cameras are one thing, but what about the silicon running under the hood? This year, we’ve got a new 64-bit A9 chipset thrumming away inside both the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, which, according to some benchmarking tools, appear to be made up of dual 1.8GHz Typhoon CPU cores, the GPU and the updated M9 co-processor. Apple never comments publicly about how much RAM its phones have, but recent teardowns show that the new iPhones have 2GB, just like the most recent iPad Air and Mini. All together, that’s the biggest performance increase from one generation to another that we’ve seen in a while, and it shows.

I spent most of my time testing the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus by restoring them from recent backups of an iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and then using them side by side. The difference is obvious: Launching apps, firing up webpages and multitasking were all noticeably smoother on the newer iPhones. This performance gap can still vary a bit; the older iPhones would occasionally get close to 6s speed, but they never fully caught up. The benchmark table below paints a pretty good picture of just how much better the 6s and 6s Plus are at handling graphically intensive tasks like playing games. No dropped frames, no stuttering, no jankiness — the 6s and the 6s Plus were the clear winners.

	iPhone 6s	iPhone 6s Plus	iPhone 6	iPhone 6 Plus
3DMark Unlimited IS	24,601	27,542	16,689	17,902
Geekbench 3 (multi-thread)	4,427	4,289	2,885	2,803
Basemark OS II	2,354	2,428	1,441	1,520
SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms)	230	220	351	388
SunSpider: Lower scores are better

More horsepower plus smaller batteries usually only means bad news, but the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus fared surprisingly well in our standard rundown tests. With screen brightness set to 50 percent and a video looping indefinitely with WiFi on and connected, the 6s hung in for 10 hours and 4 minutes, just short of the 10 hours and 19 minutes we saw on last year’s iPhone 6. Meanwhile, the 6s Plus and its bigger battery managed to eke out 12 hours and 37 minutes, narrowly besting its predecessor. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting either iPhone to match last year’s results, but whatever Apple’s doing with its silicon sure seems to be working.

You’re probably not spending over 10 hours a day watching the same video over and over on your phone, though, and thankfully the iPhones do a great job keeping up with real-world demands too. In my case, a typical day of use consists of horsing around on social networks, firing off messages in Slack and Outlook, intermittent voice calls and the occasional bathroom break playing Pokémon Shuffle. With that kind of use, the iPhone 6s usually made it through an 11-hour workday with 15 or 20 percent battery life to spare, at which point I fired up Low Power Mode for another hour or two before plugging it in. if you’re a bit more demanding or simply can’t stand the idea of being tethered to an outlet, you might want to go in for the 6s Plus: I routinely was able to squeeze out 18 hours of use on a charge.

The competition

If you’re on the prowl for a new smartphone and consider yourself platform agnostic, Samsung’s Galaxy S6 line would be a good place to start. Samsung shares Apple’s fondness for sleek, metal-and-glass designs, and both the 5.1-inch S6 and curved-screen S6 Edge pack some of the fastest silicon I’ve ever seen in an Android handset. Both phones are also comfortable to hold despite being bigger than the iPhone 6s. And if comfort and big screens are your concern, there’s a good chance the Galaxy Note 5’s curvaceous back will fit your palm better than the iPhone 6s Plus.

Then, of course, we’ve got some big-name options that aren’t even available yet. There’s a new pair of Nexus phones — the 5X ($379) and the 6P ($499) — that each offer potent horsepower at a reasonable price. Microsoft’s eager to prove it’s still in the smartphone game too, and is holding a keynote next week where it’s probably going to announce the first high-end Lumia phones we’ve seen in ages. There’s no word on price, unfortunately, and none of these options are likely to sway ardent Apple fans, but people willing to jump ship are about to have a lot great choices on their hands.

Wrap-up

It’s easy to say that these are the best iPhones Apple has ever made, but that’s true every year. Like I said before, a device’s worth isn’t tied directly to a single feature: The important thing is how all of its components and design flourishes and features and interaction elements fit together as a unified whole. The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus nail it — mostly. They’re great phones: well-built, well thought-out and brimming with potential. So, let’s cap this off with a little buying advice. If you have an iPhone 5s and are itching to turn it in, now’s the time. If you’re an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus owner, this is a worthy upgrade, but no one will fault you for waiting another year. If you want the best iPhone you can buy right now (and don’t mind a bigger device), you want the iPhone 6s Plus. And if you’re tired of everyone insisting that big phones are the future and asking “What’s wrong with you; why don’t you have one yet?” buy a 6s and tell them to buzz off.

All product photos by Will Lipman. James Trew contributed camera samples.

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/01/iphone-6s-and-6s-plus-review/

One. In literal terms, it’s a number. To HTC, however, it’s a branding strategy — the foundation upon which the entire company is now based. Just take one look at the One lineup and you’ll easily understand this is the manufacturer’s pride and joy. There’s a very good reason for that: in a crowded smartphone market, HTC is the underdog to titans like Samsung and Apple. The company needs to stand out if it even wants the chance to prove itself to consumers.

Last year’s One X marked a solid start, and while it didn’t pick up the momentum CEO Peter Chou would’ve liked, the follow-up model — simply called the One — takes HTC’s design and imaging chops to the next level, bringing a new UltraPixel camera sensor, among other top-shelf specs. But will it catch the eye of potential smartphone buyers, in light of another key product announcement? We’d say it’s got more than a fighting chance.

Update: HTC has since come out with a refreshed version of the One, the M8. Read our review here.

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Hardware

In order to most fully appreciate the One’s hardware, you first need to understand the process that goes on behind the scenes. Rather than opt for the sort of polycarbonate shell used on the One X and One X+, HTC crafted the One out of a single block of anodized aluminum, sprinkled with polycarbonate accents throughout. It’s incredibly intricate: each unit goes through at least 200 minutes of CNC machine cuts, and the aluminum is etched into channels filled with polycarbonate — a technique called zero-gap injection molding. Add chamfered, polished edges that connect the sides of the phone to the glass (Gorilla Glass 2, to be specific), and you have a handset with one of the best industrial designs we’ve ever seen. The amount of detail here is staggering, and it reflects just how crucial this device is to HTC’s future.

Much like the Windows Phone 8X and Droid DNA (globally known as the Butterfly), the One has a pyramid-like internal setup: larger components like the display and battery sit up front, with the parts getting progressively smaller as you move toward the back of the phone. This gives the rear cover a sleek curve that makes it utterly comfortable to hold. Though the One is even slimmer at 9.3mm (0.37 inch) than the 10mm (0.4 inch) 8X, it’s easier to grasp because the edges are contoured the way they are. At 5.04 ounces (143g), it feels a little weightier, but less than you might have guessed; it’s actually relatively light given the materials used.

Ultimately, we’re smitten with the One’s design for all sorts of reasons: it’s sexy, it feels secure in the hand and the combination of unibody aluminum and polycarbonate ensures the phone won’t shatter into a million pieces if it were to hit the ground (although it may get dinged or scratched up a bit, depending on the angle).

While industrial design, ergonomics and build quality are a good start, there’s much more to this skinny slab of aluminum. The front of the device is home to some of the biggest changes, headlined by a 4.7-inch S-LCD3 panel with 1080p resolution and two capacitive soft keys just below it — a departure from the standard three-button setup. A tiny HTC logo sits where the home button once did, smack-dab in between the two soft keys. In fact, it’s almost a little deceiving: it looks as if the logo should double as a button (we’d prefer it), but unfortunately there’s nothing more than meets the eye. Aluminum strips line the top and bottom of the phone’s face, with a set of BoomSound speaker grilles designed to offer stereo sound when you’re watching movies or listening to music. (The grille setup isn’t unlike what you’d find flanking the keyboard of some laptops.) An LED notification light resides under the top grille, toward the left. A 2.1MP wide-angle, front-facing camera is located in the top-right corner, while a pair of sensors sits over on the top left.

The front is by far the busiest part of the phone, while the edges and back have a more minimal design that helps keep the phone looking refined. The polycarbonate-laced sides angle inward until they meet the Gorilla Glass on the front, with only a chamfer to connect them. The left side is uninterrupted, save for a micro-SIM tray and miniscule ejection port. A micro-USB / MHL port and mic are on the bottom, and the right is taken up by a single volume rocker that uses the same ridge-like exterior as the Droid DNA.

The top end is where things get a little more interesting. The 3.5mm headphone jack is nothing new, but the power button has a dual personality: it doubles as an infrared (IR) blaster capable of transmitting and receiving, allowing you to use the handset as a TV remote. Because that power button is housed on the left, the act of locking and unlocking the One could be a bit more awkward for folks who tend to hold their phones in their left hands.

Now we turn to the back, which itself is a study in symmetry and simplicity. Two strips of polycarbonate line the top and bottom, lining up neatly with the top and bottom of the 4.7-inch display on the other side. Squint hard enough and you may see a noise-cancelling mic in the top strip. The camera lens sits in the middle of the back, just barely below the top strip; it’s encircled by a thin layer of polycarbonate and is slightly recessed to prevent the glass from getting scratched. You’ll see an LED flash to the left of the camera; there’s also the obligatory HTC logo set in the absolute center of the device, and Beats Audio branding has a spot just a smidgen above the bottom strip. An NFC transmitter is built into the back around the camera module. Unfortunately, though, one thing you won’t find back here is wireless charging. Sorry, folks.

Finally, as you’ve likely already surmised by now, the 2,300mAh battery inside the One isn’t removable or even accessible. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has used an HTC unibody flagship. There’s also no place to stick a microSD card, so the 32 or 64GB of internal storage will have to suffice.

There’s plenty more going on underneath the shell: the One is powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T), an Adreno 320 and 2GB DDR2 RAM. While there are two basic versions of the device — the UL and LTE-less U — there will be six different SKUs that feature six different sets of LTE and HSPA+ bands. All of the units are quad-band GSM/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz), but it gets more complicated as the speed goes up: our review unit, which was made for European frequencies, sports 900/1900/2100MHz UMTS/HSPA+ (3G) and 800/1800/2600MHz LTE. The “U” offers the same three frequencies and adds 850MHz for good measure, while Asia’s variant uses 850/900/1900/2100MHz 3G and 1800/2600MHz LTE. Confused yet? Let’s throw the US models into the mix. AT&T will offer 850/1900/2100MHz 3G and 700/850/AWS/1900MHz LTE. T-Mobile’s has 850/AWS/1900/2100MHz 3G and 700/AWS LTE. Finally, Sprint’s version uses 700/AWS 3G, 800/1900MHz CDMA and 1900MHz LTE.

If that last paragraph of specs didn’t wear you out, maybe the full data sheet below will. We hope not, because we have a lot more to discuss.

	HTC One
Dimensions	137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm (5.41 x 2.69 x 0.37 inch)
Weight	5.04 oz. (143g)
Screen size	4.7 inches
Screen resolution	1,920 x 1,080 (468 ppi)
Screen type	S-LCD3
Battery	2,300mAh Li-Polymer (non-removable)
Internal storage	32/64GB
External storage	None
Rear camera	4MP, BSI, f/2.0, 1/3” sensor size, 2µm pixel size, OIS
Front-facing cam	2.1MP
Video capture	1080p, 30 fps (front and back)
NFC	Yes
Radios	Depends on market — see hardware section
Bluetooth	v4.0 with aptX
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T)
CPU	1.7GHz quad-core
GPU	Adreno 320
RAM	2GB
Entertainment	MHL, DLNA, IR sensor
WiFi	Dual-band, 802.11a/ac/b/g/n, WiFi Direct
Wireless Charging	No
Operating system	Android 4.1.2 (upgradeable to 4.2), Sense 5 UI

Display

We praised the One X’s 720p S-LCD2 display when it first showed up on the scene last spring, and there was even more to love a few months later when the Droid DNA came out with a 1080p S-LCD3 panel. Having built up this much momentum, we weren’t expecting anything less than the absolute best from the One. And on paper, certainly, it doesn’t disappoint: the One features the same number of pixels as the DNA, except they’re crammed into a 4.7-inch screen (4.65 inches, to get technical). For the pixel density fanatics out there, this means the One offers an incredible 468 ppi. The setup sounds great on paper, but how does it translate into real life?

To be honest, the display is the area in which we feel the most nitpicky, because the 1080p panels we’ve seen on other flagships so far feature simply jaw-dropping quality. And to pick up on minute differences between these incredible displays, you’d have to really start splitting hairs. In particular, 1080p displays don’t offer nearly as noticeable a difference over 720p as we saw with 720p over qHD. Given how far we’ve come in terms of resolution and pixel density, the only way for screens to stand out above the crowd is to offer the best color, viewing angles, brightness and readability in daylight.

The One’s display does very well in all four areas. It’s slightly brighter than the DNA’s and significantly better than the One X+’s S-LCD2; the darks are sufficient, though still not as rich as what you’d find on an AMOLED; the other colors are incredibly close to fully natural; viewing angles are just as good as the One X+ and DNA, because it’s difficult to get any better; and we could see the display without a problem in the direct sunlight. Movies look amazing on the One, and if we want to get exceedingly picky, the text on the One is slightly more crisp than on the DNA — but this is something that’s only noticeable when you view the two side by side. Tiny details aside, the One’s display is the most gorgeous we’ve seen thus far.

Camera

In the days leading up to the One announcement, HTC promised a whole new imaging and sound experience on its new flagship — and it certainly wasn’t exaggerating. With the exception of Nokia with its PureView line, all of the company’s competitors are busy increasing the megapixel count on their latest and greatest cameras. HTC, however, boldly chose to go the opposite direction: it decreased the resolution to 4MP. As you would expect, there’s a lot more to the story than a simple drop in pixel count — in fact, HTC coined the term UltraPixels to describe its new imaging innovation.

The idea behind the UltraPixels is to take a physically large sensor and combine it with big pixels that are capable of gathering more light than standard-sized ones. Whereas the typical smartphone camera features 1.1µm pixels, the One proudly boasts a one-third-inch BSI sensor with 2µm pixels capable of absorbing 330 percent more photons. But that alone isn’t enough to excel at low-light photography, so HTC also uses a 28mm f/2.0 AF lens and optical image stabilization (OIS) — and just in case you still can’t capture enough light, an LED flash is thrown in for good measure.%Gallery-181323%

HTC’s also developed a next-gen image signal processor (ISP), aptly named ImageChip 2. Despite a lower megapixel count, the new chip is capable of continuous autofocus in less than 200ms, reduced noise, real-time lens compensation and 1080p HDR video recording. It also offers a buffered-capture cycle with pre- and post-shutter recording, not unlike what you get with BlackBerry’s Time Shift, Scalado’s Rewind, Samsung’s Best Face and Nokia’s Smart Shoot. In other words, don’t worry about the resolution on the camera — instead, let the images do the talking.

The front-facing camera hasn’t been neglected either. The 2.1MP module comes with an f/2.0 wide-angle (88-degree) lens and is capable of capturing up to 1080p video, much like its compadre on the back of the One. Even though it can’t do the same fancy scene modes (for video or stills) as the rear camera, you can at least grab HDR shots and tweak white balance if necessary.

In a nutshell, all of the usual customizable settings are there: white balance, ISO up to 1600, exposure control, HDR, face detection, a specific macro mode, panorama, three crop styles, plenty of filters and a post-shot photo editor. There’s a clever UI trick that lets you switch between rear and front cameras by dragging your finger down from either side of the phone. The only thing that’s sorely missing is the ability to touch and hold the on-screen shutter button to lock exposure and focus, even when the One’s burst-shooting mode is disabled.

When it comes to performance, there are so many places we could start, so we’ll begin by discussing the megapixel myth. It’s so easy to just naturally assume that a camera with lower resolution is worse than one capable of capturing a larger number of pixels, but that isn’t always the case. Indeed, cameras with higher resolutions allow for better cropping and digital zooming. When shots are viewed at their regular size, however, there isn’t any visible degradation of detail. Colors are impressively natural, and white balance is excellent as well. The only issue we found with stills was that the camera tended to overexpose subjects in direct sunlight.

The One camera truly outshines almost everything else in low-light situations. It usually produces better shots at night than the Nokia Lumia 920, and comes in second only to the current imaging king, the Nokia 808 PureView. We were amazed by how much errant light it picked up; the One could snag perfectly usable shots on pitch-black streets, and the OIS worked like a charm. The only time noise actually became a problem was in extremely dark scenarios, but otherwise we were quite impressed by how clear most of the images came out.

In short, even though it’s not perfect and we’d love to be able to get more detail from zoomed-in shots, the One’s UltraPixels methodology appears to be completely sound. We’re confident enough in its quality, in fact, to declare the One as our new go-to camera.

On the video side, there’s plenty to keep you occupied as well. Since the ImageChip 2 is capable of recording 1080p video at about 30 fps and 720p at 60 fps (this includes HDR functionality as well), you can take these options out for a spin at any time, in addition to HTC’s signature slow-motion mode. We’ve compiled samples from each mode above for you to check out. In our time with the One, daytime videos were not only crisp and smooth visually, the One’s noise-cancellation mics did a great job filtering out wind and other unwanted background noise, while picking up our own voices very well at the same time. HDR videos are pretty good, but we noticed the occasional weird artifact on some frames, while brightness mysteriously jumps at times. Videos taken at night were quite clean, though the frame rate appears to suffer, dropping down from 30 fps to around 20, and there are fairly minor issues with white balance as well.

As if the UltraPixel camera isn’t enough indication that imaging plays a huge part in HTC’s strategy to gain market share, it’s also introduced a unique feature called Zoe. When looking at one, it’s hard not to envision an old-fashioned zoetrope spinning around and around to create a short movie. The feature is capable of capturing four to five full-res stills per second while recording a few seconds of 1080p video. In the end, what you get is a short video segment and a burst of roughly 20 images — think of the moving pictures in Harry Potter, and you’ll get the idea. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like this would be of any practical use, but we started to appreciate it as soon as we saw animated images pop up in our photo gallery. Once we saw the highlight reels and Zoe Share, however, we were completely sold. We’ll discuss these features in the next section.

Sense 5

At its core, the One is an Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) device. HTC, however, would much rather have the focus be on the custom skin job it’s put on top of Google’s mobile OS. Known as Sense 5, the next generation of the user interface is very much an evolution from previous iterations — we’d dare say that it’s a completely different experience, much like Sense 4 was from version 3. The fourth iteration was a noticeable improvement, as HTC had finally merged many of its ideas with Google’s general design guidelines. Now, with Sense 5, the UI has changed on nearly everything once again, from the home page to core HTC apps; it’s better than Sense 4 in some ways, but in other ways it’s a step back.

For basic navigation, Sense 5 devices use two soft keys. This is a huge departure from Sense 4 devices, which use a three-button setup consisting of back, home and recent apps (with the latter being customizable to work as the menu button if desired). The One, on the other hand, offers only back and home keys. A long-press on home activates Google Now, while double-tapping the same button brings up a new recent apps menu that is much improved over the card-style version on Sense 4 that reminded us too much of Windows Phone and webOS. Cards are still present this time around, but they’re much smaller and you can view up to nine in total. It’s still possible to flick each one up to remove them, but since we often like to have more than nine apps open at the same time, this limit is too restrictive for our tastes.

Because Sense 5 eschews a menu key, it means many third-party apps have to throw in the virtual menu key at the bottom of the screen. This feels like a step backward to us, especially after the One X was updated to allow menu functionality on the recent apps soft key.

The most striking change in the UI is BlinkFeed, which takes over as the default home page. Thanks to its many tiles of various shapes and sizes, the tool is reminiscent of Flipboard, Motorola’s Blur UI and even Windows Phone. (Dare we say it even brings back memories of the Microsoft Kin?) The idea behind the service is to bring in content from your favorite publications and social networks — Engadget, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Flickr are just a few examples — and put it all together for easy browsing. In fact, the word “casual” should be the main focus here: outside the usual notification bar, BlinkFeed won’t feature your emails or any other critical updates. If something of interest pops up in your feed, just tap on any tile to read the associated post or status update. There’s also a modernized clock and weather widget at the very top, but it only shows up on the main screen — it disappears as soon as you start scrolling down into the depths of your feed.%Gallery-181220%

Fortunately, you still have full control over BlinkFeed through a hidden pull-down bar nestled in between the tiles and clock widget, which is accessed by dragging your finger down on the starting page (you can also use this gesture to manually update your feeds, although you can set it to auto-refresh on mobile data and WiFi or WiFi-only). A tab on the left lets you pick and choose which feeds you want to look at; for instance, you can opt to view only updates from Engadget or go for the whole kit and kaboodle of topics that interest you. If you want to change which feeds are highlighted, just head to the settings, found in the BlinkFeed menu. Additionally, you’ll also find options to post to Facebook or Twitter directly from this bar.

An SDK will eventually be offered so that devs can publish their apps to BlinkFeed as a means of making the service more useful. This is something we look forward to; the entire concept just feels like it’s too drastic a shift from stock Android. Fortunately, in case you’re not a fan of BlinkFeed being the default screen every time you unlock your phone — and let’s face it, it’s a huge departure from anything we’ve seen on Sense or Android in general, so it’s not going to please everybody — you can choose a different home page. There doesn’t appear to be any way to completely disable it, however, so you’re stuck with it taking up one of your five main panels. This leads to our major frustration: while the idea behind BlinkFeed isn’t terrible (and we imagine serial social networkers and news junkies may find it quite handy), it makes Sense feel a little too cluttered with unnecessary bloat and users should be given the option to disable it if they don’t get any benefit out of it.

We should note that BlinkFeed’s tiled layout isn’t restricted to that main panel; it’s actually a recurring theme in the gallery as well. The app uses tiles to let you choose between your own photo galleries, your friends’ Facebook albums and other online services like Dropbox and Flickr. When you go into your own photo albums, you may see a few images moving on their own — those Harry Potter-like movies hanging out in your once-stagnant album are Zoe shots. Each picture (Zoe or otherwise) can be starred as a “highlight” so you can show your friends and family the best images from last month’s Disneyland vacation instead of, you know, all of them. You can also upload those precious memories to Zoe Share, a service that generates a URL displaying up to 10 photos which you can share with whomever you want — whether they’re Zoe or plain, old stills. Each website is active for 180 days, in case loved ones or stalkers want to visit over and over. (We’ve generated a sample URL for you to take a peek here.)

Admittedly, Zoe Share is a much slicker feature than we first gave it credit for, but there’s another clever way to share these five-second clips: the One can take your collection of Zoes and stills from that day and create a professional-style highlight reel complete with images, clips, special effects and music. There aren’t a lot of song choices available yet, and you can’t use your own music, but the stock tones offered are at least diverse. Each individual song comes with its own theme — one comes with an old-timey filter, for instance — and the pictures are synced almost perfectly with the music. These 30-second movies can be uploaded to Zoe Share on a unique URL for 30 days, or it can be uploaded to other services such as YouTube. We had a hard time believing that the resulting movies weren’t done by a human, but this is just one creative way to take advantage of the Snapdragon 600 chipset.

The main home panels on Sense 5 really aren’t that different from what we saw on the previous version. The iconic Sense clock and weather widget is missing by default, but don’t panic, fans — it’s still offered as a widget, so long-press the main screen and you’ll get the standard Sense setup that lets you pick out which widgets, shortcuts and apps you want. You may also notice that the font is different from Senses past, but it’s actually Roboto, the stock font on Android 4.0+ (albeit, Sense uses a different weighted version). The notification bar uses the same setup as before, but it also takes advantage of the new font and a slightly modernized style.

Besides BlinkFeed and the gallery, the other area that received a major revamp is the app menu. The grids, which offer a more Holo-style look than the ones found on Sense 4, are aligned vertically instead of horizontally and come in two different sizes: 3 x 4 and 4 x 5. By default, the grid shows up as 3 x 4, and just as we saw on BlinkFeed, the Holo-style clock and weather widget take up the top row of icons on the very first screen (for either size). App placement is different here than on the stock app tray: you customize your docking tray from here instead of the main screen, you can create or manipulate folders and another pull-down bar with tabs and settings sits between the app icons and clock. This tab allows you to change the grid organization to show alphabetical order or recent apps (folders are non-existent in these modes).

The One makes good use of the included IR blaster with Sense TV, a Peel-powered feature that blends a program guide and universal remote into one app. Stateside, Hulu Plus is integrated and all major cable services are supported; in the UK, Virgin Media, Sky, Freesat and Freeview will be included in the offerings. We’d love to see Netflix supported as well, but HTC hasn’t announced any plans on that end yet, so we’ll become more virtuous by exercising heaps of patience. (It’s a win-win, really.)

As for the remote itself, it still works pretty well but not as flawlessly as the Optimus G Pro’s iteration. It comes with a library of IR codes to support nearly any TV brand, cable service and home theater setup you can think of. The software guides you step by step as you attempt to get your phone properly set up with all of your equipment, even going as far as to tell you to align the One with your universal remote if it’s unsuccessful at getting everything programmed correctly. Once you’re ready to actually use the remote, your mileage may vary depending on your TV brand and cable provider. We weren’t able to turn off the Dish DVR despite easily being able to control the menu, and a Hitachi TV recognized the input menu button on the remote but refused to let us select any of the options in the menu. Aside from this little hiccup, everything worked as advertised. As another nice touch, you can access basic controls and recent channels in the notification tray, use the remote on the lock screen and even tell the app to remind you of upcoming TV shows in BlinkFeed.

Sense 5 also brings with it an updated HTC Sync Manager. This feature is primarily aimed at new users hoping to move their information from iPhones or other Android devices. If you’re coming over from an Apple, you can use Sync Manager to go into iTunes and grab your contacts, calendar appointments, photos, videos and music (DRM-free, natch). If you’re coming from an older Sense device (3.6 or higher), you’ll be able to transfer all of the above as well as texts, bookmarks and preferred settings. You can achieve similar results on other Android phones (2.3 and up) by installing an HTC app from the Play Store, whereas any other devices can still transfer contacts the old-fashioned way — via Bluetooth. Sense 5 also makes it possible to store encrypted backups on your Dropbox account (or Sina, if you’re in China), which is then tied to your Facebook creds. Using this method, you can back up all of your settings, apps, widgets, BlinkFeed, TV, home screen layout and account information.

Finally, HTC’s partnered up with Zoodles to add Kid Mode. The app serves as a password- or gesture-protected launcher that your children won’t be able to exit. Once enabled, you have the ability to restrict which apps your children use, while also offering a place to make drawings and read storybooks. Speaking of storybooks, the service lets you record stories via the front-facing cam, so your kids can watch you read The Three Little Pigs to them, even if you’re out of town. There’s also a video mail feature that allows you and your young ‘uns to exchange messages back and forth to each other.

Since your offspring are likely all sorts of ages, each individual child can have their own specific mode in which their favorite apps and preferences (along with your own parental customizations) pop up. As a parent, I found the service to be incredibly handy — it’s no secret that kids have just as intense a love for electronic gadgets as we do, so it’s important to keep them (not to mention our personal data) safe as they play with our phones.

Performance and battery life

Outside of that stunning design, the star of the show is the One’s Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T) chipset, which pairs a 1.7GHz quad-core CPU with an Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB RAM. This particular piece of silicon is the next logical step up from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro (APQ8064). The CPU features Krait 300 — a bump from the S4 Pro’s Krait 200, which results in a 15 percent improvement in instructions per clock (IPC) and a “speed-enhanced” Adreno 320 GPU. The 600 is also built using a 28nm process, just like the S4 Pro, and offers support for LPDDR3 — even though the One uses LPDDR2 specifically — and 802.11ac support on the WiFi side (in addition to the standard suite of a/b/g/n). This is the same chipset used in the LG Optimus G Pro and ASUS PadFone Infinity, and doubtless countless more over the next few months. It won’t stay king of the Snapdragon hill for long, since Qualcomm expects the 800 to be available in mid-2013.

Still, the fact is that, as of this writing, the Snapdragon 600 is the strongest processor on the market, and the benchmarks — as you’ll see in the chart below — indicate a solid improvement over the S4 Pro chip. We’ve compared the One with its predecessor, the One X+, as well as the S4 Pro-powered Droid DNA and Snapdragon 600-powered Optimus G Pro, so take a look at how the One holds up.

	HTC One	HTC One X+	HTC Droid DNA	LG Optimus G Pro
Quadrant 2.0	12,495	7,457	8,028	12,435
Vellamo 2.0	2,429	1,897	1,752	2,254
AnTuTu 3.1	25,140	15,832	14,474	19,300
SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms)	991	1,107	1,150	904
GLBenchmark Egypt 2.5 HD Offscreen (fps)	34	12	31	27
CF-Bench	25,267	14,558	18,386	20,019
SunSpider: lower scores are better

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to see the One edge out HTC’s older flagships, but it also handily beat the G Pro in all but one benchmark (SunSpider). Since the silicon itself is essentially the same, this likely indicates that Sense 5 is more optimized than LG’s Optimus UI. In any case, the differences aren’t visible to the naked eye. When they’re both that good, tiny discrepancies in performance just aren’t as noticeable: but for what matters most, the One definitely does the job, and does it well. It runs buttery smooth and the screen is quite responsive. We strained our eyes looking for any sort of lag with no success and the graphics in games like Shadowgun, Asphalt 7, Real Racing 3 and Riptide are as quick and detailed as we’ve come to expect with high-performance phones, if not just a little bit more so. (This reviewer’s personal performance when playing games, however, is a completely different story.)

The One’s 2,300mAh battery is a solid improvement in size over previous flagships — the One X used a 1,800mAh cell, while the One X+’s was beefed up to 2,100 — so we were hoping to see a measurable boost in how long its battery held up. Now for the moment of truth: in our rundown endurance test, in which we play an HD video on endless loop, the One made it through six and a half hours before all of its juice was sucked dry — an average result. As a disclaimer, our initial real-world usage tests were conducted on AT&T’s 1900MHz network, which admittedly doesn’t offer consistent HSPA+ speeds in our area; with this in mind, we got almost nine hours of constant use, which consisted of emailing, social media, taking pictures, making a few calls and an assortment of other random activities.

Update: Our UK team just received a unit with full LTE coverage and has had the opportunity to take it for a spin. Noble gentleman Mat Smith shares his experiences, which are quite similar to ours: “On the UK’s EE LTE network, we were picking up download speeds around 10 Mbps, while uploads were often even higher, circling around 22 Mbps during our tests in central London. Further afield, however, it was closer to those 10 Mbps down speeds. During a standard day’s use on LTE (including a heavy-use three-hour stint in a hospital waiting room), our European review model powered down just after eight hours’ use — not far off our HSPA rundown, possibly thanks to Qualcomm’s integrated radios in its new 600 series.”

As flashy as the One is, it’s an actual phone first and foremost — and even this aspect of the device is specced out to the max. HTC has thrown in a pair of HDR microphones designed to cancel unnecessary background noise and handle a wide range of sound levels without saturating. Call quality was solid, but what really stood out to us was what we didn’t hear. At one point in a recent conversation, we told the person on the other line to excuse the UPS truck passing by right behind us; our friend couldn’t even tell that anything was in the background, let alone a noisy truck.

Remember those stereo speakers taking up all that room on the front of the One? They’re the best set of external speakers we’ve heard on a phone so far, and as afraid as we are to admit this, Beats Audio may have something to do with it. HTC’s BoomSound technology makes it so you don’t have to use earbuds or an on-ear headset to take advantage of the various codecs Beats has to offer. If you don’t want to annoy others — and why would you? — the phone uses the same 2.55v headphone amp used in the Droid DNA, giving you similar bass levels even when you’re not listening through the speaker. In any case, if you do decide to go the no-headphone route, the result is a much fuller audio experience. Not only that, we cranked the volume as loud as it could go and we couldn’t hear any distortion whatsoever.

Wrap-up

Regardless of how well Samsung’s soon-to-be-announced flagship does on the market, we’ll continue to have a soft spot for the One. Last year, we were very impressed by the One X, but that wasn’t enough. HTC pushed itself and made its sequel even more polished than the original. We love the phone’s industrial design and the camera, while the Snapdragon 600 chipset and 1080p display aren’t bad either. We’re not sold on every aspect of Sense 5, such as BlinkFeed and the One’s two-button layout, but overall the user experience is much improved. As far as we’re concerned, HTC has a hit on its hands.

Update: Here’s a ZIP file containing most of our un-retouched full-size HTC One photos along with matching shots taken with other handsets.

Myriam Joire and Mat Smith contributed to this review.

This article is automatically posted by WP-AutoPost Plugin

Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/12/htc-one-review/

The HTC One was one of our favorite smartphones of 2013. It featured a gorgeous industrial design, a fantastic display, great camera and top-of-the-line performance. HTC poured its heart into it, as evidenced by nearly every aspect of the device. The phone exceeded nearly all of our expectations, but that also left a big problem: We now expect history to repeat itself. After all, if the original One was such a great device, its successor should, in theory, be even better, right?

Of course it should be. But does this year’s version of the One have what it takes? On paper, the answer is yes: It has a larger screen, offers two curious-looking rear camera sensors, boasts an improved version of HTC’s Sense UI and features a chassis with even more metal. It appears, then, that there’s a lot to love here, but it’s difficult to take our breath away twice in a row. Here’s what impressed — and what didn’t.

Hardware

We can’t remember the last time HTC made an unattractive flagship smartphone. In the last two years, the company has cranked out beautifully crafted unibody devices like the One X, One S and Windows Phone 8X. However, its crowning achievement was last year’s HTC One, also known as the M7. The phone’s fantastic industrial design and anodized aluminum shell are just two reasons it remains one of our favorites to this day. Of course, our high opinion of the M7 doesn’t just mean we’re excited to play with its successor; we’re also holding it under a lot more scrutiny.

There’s no mistaking the fact that the new One (aka the M8) inherited a lot of traits from its predecessor, including BoomSound speaker grilles, a curved back and horizontal stripes. After all, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? And believe it or not, the phone is made from even more metal than last year’s model: roughly 90 percent of the chassis is made from aluminum, compared to 70 percent for the M7. That means the phone no longer sports polycarbonate accents on the top, bottom and sides; instead, metal wraps all the way around until it reaches the display. Throw in some rounded corners and a brushed-metal finish on the back, and you’ve got yourself a beaut. Still, beauty is also in the eye of the beholder: A few Engadget editors prefer the new M8, while others would rather hang onto last year’s M7. Our unit came in gray, but you’ll also be able to buy the phone in silver and gold.

The brushed finish we just mentioned presented a huge challenge to HTC’s design team. According to lead designer Scott Croyle, his team had to invent a new production method just to make it work. It was challenging to figure out how to apply the finish on such a curvaceous phone without it coming out looking clumpy and inconsistent. Croyle didn’t get into specific details on how his team overcame the problem, but the end result is obvious: a body that looks even sleeker and more premium than the M7.

All told, it’s incredibly polished — almost too polished. As beautiful as the new One is, it’s as slick as a bar of soap. Not only is the new finish slippery, but the One also has fewer places to get a firm grip since it evolved from a 4.7-inch screen with blunt sides to a 5-inch screen and sides with sharp curves. I can’t find a place to rest my fingers without feeling like they’re going to slip off, so keep in mind that you’ll need to be careful with the phone if you buy it. It’s comfortable enough to hold — so long as can get a good enough grip on it.

One other thing to consider here is that while the One’s all-metal exterior looks great and is quite durable, it’s still susceptible to small scratches, if not more so than the previous model. Even if your phone has only fallen victim to wear and tear, it likely won’t look as brand-new as the day you bought it. In fact, in the brief time I’ve been using the One, I’ve already noticed a couple of dings around the edge of the device.

In comparison to the (now) old One, this new model is just as thick (9.3mm) but is taller, wider and heavier. None of these should come as a surprise: The 2014 One uses a larger screen and is weighed down by the increased use of metal; of course it’s going to be bigger and heavier. That said, the phone isn’t uncomfortably heavy and isn’t an awkward fit in my hand, either.

HTC made a few changes to the layout of the buttons as well. The power button now sits on the top right. Since I regularly hold the phone in my left hand, this setup is much less awkward than it was on the M7, which put the same button on the top left. Granted, the M8 has new motion gestures that almost make the power button unnecessary, but we’ll dive into that later. We praised this button on last year’s flagship because HTC managed to integrate the IR blaster into it, but the company didn’t feel it was necessary this time around. Instead, the IR is housed underneath a piece of smooth-looking plastic that looks like it belongs on KITT. (Update: the IR is actually built into the power button again, just like on the M7.)

But enough about the top of the phone; there are plenty of other sides to get to. The volume rocker still sits on the right, but it’s not completely flush with the chassis anymore. On the original One, we often grew frustrated at how difficult it was to know if we’d actually pressed the volume buttons, so we’re happy to see that it now pokes out a little bit. Even better, it has a new neighbor: a memory card slot! Indeed, the microSD spot can take cards up to 128GB, which will come in handy since you can only get up to 32GB of internal storage on the new One. Turning to the bottom of the phone, you’ll find the micro-USB QuickCharge 2.0 port and 3.5mm headphone jack, while the left side houses a slot for the nano-SIM card. Sadly, the charger that comes included in the box only supports QuickCharge 1.0, which means you’ll need to pay for an optional accessory just to take advantage of the faster charge time.

If you’re annoyed to hear that HTC’s reduced the size of the SIM card, you’re not alone. However, company reps gave us two reasons for the change. First, every millimeter of space underneath the hood matters. Second, by switching to a smaller size HTC was able to make room for a second nano-SIM without making sweeping changes to its internal design. Many manufacturers have to redesign their phones entirely, just to find a way to stick a dual-SIM setup inside. HTC’s essentially eliminated this problem by planning ahead and building the dual option into the phone from the very start. (This doesn’t mean every variant will contain dual-SIM capability — it just means that it’s accessible in the phone’s design.)

If you used the original One, the back of the new model will look quite familiar — arched back, flash, camera, logo, horizontal stripes, another camera. Wait, what? Yep, there are indeed two “cameras” on the back, as well as two LED flashes, but we’ll go into more detail in a later section. Turning the phone over to the front, you’ll see a much-improved 5MP front-facing camera near the top, as well as virtual navigation buttons and a logo below. There’s also BoomSound, which earned our praise last year. This time HTC promises richer and louder sound by using a new amp, throwing in a new DSP and deepening the chambers housing the speakers.

If you liked the 1080p Super LCD3 display on the original One, be prepared for essentially the same experience. The M8 retains its predecessor’s resolution and display tech, but steps up to a slightly larger 5-inch screen. Display snobs will note that this results in lower pixel density, but unless you’re looking at the two displays side by side, you’re probably not going to notice. As on last year’s model, the panel looks sharp, bright and vibrant; viewing angles are wide and the display is easy to see in direct sunlight as long as you push the brightness up to 75 percent or higher.

The screen itself is protected by a slab of Gorilla Glass 3, which is, of course, designed to be scratch-resistant. Since the glass is raised a bit above the rest of the phone’s body, should we be concerned about possible chips? Croyle tells us that the answer is no: The company applied a special protective coating to prevent additional scratches and impacts that may normally weaken the glass.

Lastly, the M8 is also rated for IPX-3 liquid protection, which means it’s protected from water spraying onto the phone at a pressure of 80-100kPa for five minutes at any angle up to 60 degrees from the vertical. It can handle a volume of 0.7 liters per minute. Note that this doesn’t mean you can accidentally dunk your phone into a pool or sink, but you’ll at least feel more comfortable walking through a rainstorm.

(Update: one area we didn’t touch upon initially was the phone’s large bezel underneath the display, which essentially has no functionality and makes the M8 taller than we’d prefer. HTC explained that the company was aware of this concern in the design process, but there were too many space limitations inside the phone to make it feasible to shrink the bezel size.)

	HTC One (2014)	HTC One (2013)
Dimensions	146.4 x 70.6 x 9.35mm (5.76 x 2.78 x 0.37 inch)	137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3mm (5.41 x 2.69 x 0.37 inch)
Weight	5.64 oz. (160g)	5.04 oz. (143g)
Screen size	5.0 inches	4.7 inches
Screen resolution	1,920 x 1,080 (441 ppi)	1,920 x 1,080 (468 ppi)
Screen type	S-LCD3	S-LCD3
Battery	2,600mAh (non-removable)	2,300mAh (non-removable)
Internal storage	16GB (32GB version coming)	32/64GB
External storage	MicroSD (up to 128GB)	None
Rear camera	4MP UltraPixel, f/2.0, 2.0µm pixel size, 1/3″ sensor size, 28mm lens	4MP UltraPixel, f/2.0, BSI, 1/3″ sensor size, 2µm pixel size, OIS
Front-facing cam	5MP, f/2.0, BSI, wide-angle lens	2.1MP
Video capture	1080p	1080p, 30 fps
NFC	Yes	Yes
Radios	GSM/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900) (All); CDMA (800/1900) (Verizon, Sprint). HSPA+ EMEA: (850/900/1900/2100) with HSPA+ up to 42 Mbps Asia: (850/900/1900/2100) with HSPA+ up to 42 Mbps AT&T: (850/1900/2100) with HSPA+ up to 21 Mbps Sprint: (850/1900/2100) with HSPA up to 14.4 Mbps Verizon: (850/900/1900/2100) with HSPA+ up to 14.4 Mbps T-Mobile: (850/AWS/1900/2100) with HSPA+ up to 42 Mbps LTE EMEA: (800/900/1800/2600) Asia: (700/900/1800/2100/2600) AT&T: (700/850/AWS/1800/1900/2600) Sprint: FDD (800/1900), TDD (2600) Verizon: (700/AWS/1800/2600) T-Mobile: (700/AWS)	Depends on the market
Bluetooth	v4.0 with AptX	v4.0 with AptX
SoC	2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 (Asia variant uses 2.5GHz); Adreno 330 GPU	1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 (APQ8064T)
RAM	2GB	2GB
SIM slot	Nano-SIM	Micro-SIM
Connectivity	MHL, DLNA, IR, HDMI, GPS/GLONASS	MHL, DLNA, IR
WiFi	Dual-band, 802.11a/ac/b/g/n	Dual-band, 802.11a/ac/b/g/n, WiFi Direct
Operating system	Android 4.4.2, Sense 6.0	Android 4.1.2, Sense 5.0 (at launch)

Under the hood, the M8 comes loaded with a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset (it’s 2.5GHz in certain regions), 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 2,600mAh battery, dual-band 802.11a/ac/b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 with aptX. Data connectivity depends on which of the six variants you get: You can choose among versions for each of the four major US carriers, one for Asia and another for all of Europe/Middle East/Africa. (Both of our review units were the latter.) All six will feature the same quad-band GSM/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900), but it gets tricky from there — we’ll lay them all out in the table below, so check it out if you demand a special set of frequencies or support on a specific carrier.

Finally, one of the more curious hardware additions are the low-powered, always listening “Smart Sensors.” Accelerometers are nothing new, but HTC’s can be used by apps all day long without significant drain on the the battery (as they don’t fire up the processor etc). As HTC’s opened up the API for these — dubbed HTC’s Smart Sensor Hub — app developers will be able to hook into this information directly. In fact, HTC worked directly with Fitbit to create a custom version of its app that comes pre-loaded on the phone. With the M8, you don’t need a Fitbit wristband to track your steps: the phone will do that for you, and update the Fitbit app directly.

We’ve tested it against an actual Fitbit band, and it works pretty well. The amount of steps it tracked seemed within the same ballpark as the standalone device, and of course there was no need to wear a tracker, or sync over Bluetooth. It might not replace these devices entirely, however, as there are times when you might not want to lug your phone about — say, at the gym, or when going out for a run (it’s a fairly large phone, after all). Still, it’s a promising introduction to what these new sensors are capable of, and we look forward to more motion-sensitive apps in the future.

Sense UI 6.0

Let’s get one thing out of the way before we begin this section: Yes, HTC is calling version 6.0 of its new UI its “Sixth Sense.” However, the company’s latest Android skin, which is integrated with KitKat (Android 4.4.2), does not actually see dead people — not to our knowledge, at least. Obligatory groans aside, let’s explore the new firmware preloaded on the M8, which will later come to the M7 and other 2013 HTC devices.

As with most KitKat launchers, the M8 home screen feels more expansive because the status bar on top and virtual navigation bar on bottom are both transparent. You now have three soft keys representing buttons for back, home and recent apps; we weren’t big fans of the two-button setup on the original One, so this is a happy change. HTC put more emphasis on themes and colors this time as well. Most Sense apps and features comply with specific shades depending on which color theme you choose (by default, BlinkFeed is green, for instance), but you can change to other themes if you like.

BlinkFeed still sits to the left, and you can add panels to the right (you’re allowed up to five now, even if BlinkFeed is active). The app menu is in its usual place, though HTC removed the Sense clock from the top and made it easier to push apps from here to the home screen — pressing and holding an app lets you place it directly onto your home panel of choice. Unfortunately, this means you can’t have folders in the app menu, but undesired icons can be hidden easily. Additionally, you can still change the grid size from 4 x 5 to 3 x 4 if you desire.

Most of Sense has been tweaked in one way or another, but all of the basic mechanics are the same as the last version. This means that anyone who has used Sense 5 will experience little to no learning curve, and yet they won’t feel like it’s the same old skin. HTC uses a lighter, larger and more modern-looking font on the majority of its UI, which does a great job of making use of the new One’s extra screen space.

On Sense 6, HTC is following Google’s lead by making several of its proprietary apps available on the Play Store. The gallery, Zoe app and Sense TV are the first ones that receive this treatment. This is a smart move on HTC’s part: Now, the company can push out updates to individual Sense services anytime it wants, rather than having to bundle new features and bug fixes into a firmware update that can take weeks to roll out (even longer if you live in the US). If this strategy is a success, we’ll likely see HTC do the same thing with even more apps in the future.

There’s a new gesture feature called Motion Launch, with which we have something of a love/hate relationship. It takes Nokia’s and LG’s double-tap-to-unlock and expands upon the concept with swipe gestures. You can still double-tap to wake up the lock screen, but you can also swipe your finger in different directions to bypass the lock screen entirely and take you directly into specific functions (provided you don’t have any security locks in place). Swipe up to go into the home screen; swipe right to access BlinkFeed; swipe left to launch the widget panel; and swipe down to activate voice dial for faster calling. If you want to take a picture, hold the volume rocker and lift the phone up in landscape mode.

In theory, the only way you can trigger Motion Launch gestures is when the phone senses movement — it can tell that you’re picking up your phone and assumes that you’re wanting to turn the phone on. In practice, however, the gestures were too sensitive; I could wake up the phone when the One was sitting on my desk, resting in my pocket and when my thumb was firmly planted motionless on the screen. I’d also really like to customize the gestures to take me directly into apps that I use frequently, like email. Let’s give HTC credit where it’s due, though: This new functionality is pretty clever, and it’ll likely get even smarter with future software updates.

The reason we’re hopeful that HTC will improve its proprietary features is because it’s already done a pretty good job fine-tuning BlinkFeed. (Considering our distaste for it when we first reviewed the M7, that’s saying a lot.) Ever since BlinkFeed’s debut in the original One, HTC has continued to make it more customizable. For instance, if you’re interested in any given subject you can do a search for that topic and create a whole feed around it. On top of that, the company now boasts over 1,000 content partners, so there’s no shortage of reading material here. Also, HTC tells us it will soon be releasing a developer kit for BlinkFeed, which means developers will be able to add their own feeds and content.

Sense 6 also features a Do Not Disturb mode, and it does exactly what every other DND mode does: It silences your phone so your sleep isn’t interrupted by the latest eBay newsletter hitting your inbox. However, HTC’s option adds multiple presets, so you can change the hours based on which day it is; this is ideal for anyone who needs to be on call on specific days.

There’s also a new battery conservation feature called Extreme Power Saving Mode. This mode, HTC claims, makes it possible to extend the life of your battery by leaps and bounds; it’s supposed to last you 15 hours with just 5 percent battery left, and up to two weeks if you’re at full. To do this, it cuts all of your connections and background apps, and essentially turns your phone into a featurephone. It even comes with an incredibly basic launcher that gets you manual access to calls, texts, email (on the Sense app, that is), calendar and calculator. You likely won’t want to use it all the time, but it can save your skin in a pinch if you’re getting low on juice and expecting a phone call. It’s not quite ready for US users because it needs to get through carrier testing, but it should arrive in a firmware update soon.

HTC is continuing its tradition of offering cloud storage space, but it’s dropped Dropbox in favor of Google Drive. Once you agree to the terms and conditions, you’ll get 50GB of space for free for two years. This deal with Google is part of a program called the HTC Advantage, which the company introduced last month; on top of the extra storage, HTC has also committed to updating the M8 firmware (along with the rest of the One family) for two years. If you live in the US, you can also take advantage of HTC’s cracked-screen-replacement option, which allows you to swap out a shattered screen for free within the first six months after you buy the phone.

Camera

When last year’s One came out, we boldly proclaimed it our new go-to camera. Of course, the smartphone industry hasn’t stood still over the past year; during this time, we’ve seen spectacular imaging come from the Nokia Lumia 1020 (not to mention the 1520 and Icon), as well as the Sony Xperia Z1. And soon, in the coming weeks, we’ll also be able to take fantastic photographs with the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Oppo Find 7. Has HTC, king of the UltraPixel, done anything new on the M8? (Spoiler: The answer is yes, but we’re still unsure if it’s enough to best the competition.)

First off, HTC is sticking to its UltraPixel philosophy. In a nutshell, the idea is to take a physically large sensor and combine it with big pixels that are capable of gathering more light than standard-sized ones. Many smartphone cameras feature 1.1µm pixels, while the One proudly boasts a one-third-inch BSI sensor with 2µm pixels capable of absorbing 330 percent more photons. It also uses ImageChip 2 and a 28mm f/2.0 AF lens that helps grab even more light. HTC believes you don’t need a high-resolution sensor to take great pictures, and as long as you don’t need to zoom in on anything, the quality should remain near the top of its class.

Having used the original One’s 4MP camera for the past year, we’re still happy with its overall performance. However, we were hopeful that HTC would bump up the One’s resolution to something higher (8MP would’ve been a logical jump), but unfortunately the company didn’t increase it at all, opting instead to emphasize the new depth sensor and software optimizations. Even worse, it’s also done away with optical image stabilization (OIS). When we asked HTC about why the feature’s gone, we were told it was left out due to improvements to the module — faster autofocus was used as an example — as well as overall feature cost and the extra space needed for the mechanical component. The company feels that it’s less necessary to have this feature on today’s advanced hardware. Furthermore, reps explained to us that OIS is also incompatible with its Duo Camera tech (which we’ll discuss soon), which uses “smart stabilization” features like anti-shake.

Even if you don’t agree that faster autofocus is a valid reason for dismissing OIS, autofocus is still a nice feature to boast. The AF speed is now set at three-tenths of a second, matching what Samsung claims on the Galaxy S5. We’ll be intrigued to test the two devices side by side, but so far, we don’t see a noticeable improvement in focus time over the original One. The M8 also features a dual-LED flash, which is designed to get rid of glare and make nighttime photos look more natural. This has been done in quite a few smartphones already, such as the iPhone 5s, but HTC’s option is actually much brighter and produces more natural skin tones.

Although the rear camera’s resolution remains the same, HTC upgraded the front-facing unit to 5MP with an f/2.0 wide-angle lens, BSI sensor, HDR capability and 1080p video capture. The company recognizes that selfies are a critically important element of the smartphone camera experience now — heck, it even added a “selfie mode” that features the front-facing camera — and this will give HTC a solid advantage over Samsung’s 2MP offering on the Galaxy S5.

Along with Sense 6 comes a new user interface on the camera app. This version is streamlined with fewer options on top: videos, selfies, 360-degree pano shots (like Photo Sphere), dual-camera captures and Zoes are now all confined to separate modes that can be accessed on the lower-right corner. Each corner of the viewfinder has an icon (flash, settings, modes and gallery shortcut), and the only other UI element is the shutter button halfway down the right side. When you choose settings, you’re presented with a bar of options along the bottom of the viewfinder. This includes ISO (up to 1600 on the M8), exposure, white balance, filters, random settings and scenes; the latter option lets you choose between no fewer than 11 scenes, including HDR, Night mode, manual, macro, sweep panorama and anti-shake, among others.

Manual mode reminds us of Nokia’s fantastic camera app — it brings up a whole new set of options along the bottom, and each one reveals a slider that lets you adjust white balance (you can customize temperature in Kelvins), exposure, ISO, shutter speed and focus. You can see the results in real time, so you don’t have to worry about what the image is going to look like after you take the shot. But that’s not all: You can save your manual settings, add it to your list of modes and go back to it any time. If there’s a limit to the number of saved settings you can have, we didn’t reach it — we added seven more modes (there are six modes per page) before we stopped. It’s one of our favorite features on the camera. And that’s saying a lot for a phone that sports an extra lens on the back.

Duo Camera

With that, we’ll segue into HTC’s crowning photography achievement here: Duo Camera. This is the first time we’ve played with a phone that has two “cameras” on the back yet isn’t stereoscopic 3D. We used quotation marks around the term because the one on top isn’t technically a camera at all — it’s a depth sensor that, when used in tandem with the main camera lens, is able to calculate the distance of subjects in your image.

So what’s so great about that? There are several cool tricks that take advantage of the Duo Camera’s depth information, particularly when it comes to post-production effects. Arguably they do nothing to enhance the actual quality of your photos (in terms of overall detail), but you can sure make them look fancy and add some professional flair to each one. We’ll give you a few examples.

The first one is UFocus. Devices made by Nokia and LG (and soon to be Samsung) have a way to let you change the point of focus after the pic is taken, Lytro-style. With it, you can change depth of field and add bokeh, but there’s a catch: You have to be in a separate mode just to make it do what you want. This is typically because the camera needs to take several pictures over the course of five seconds to achieve the desired effect. When your child is having a cute moment, you rarely have time to figure out the best mode to use for the best picture; you have a split second to pull your camera out, point it and snap the shot before it’s too late. HTC’s Duo Camera, however, eliminates the need for these separate modes because it takes just one image and uses the image’s depth information to determine which part of the photo to keep in focus.

This feature makes it easy to “bokeh” the background of the image and blur out photo-bombers that sneak up behind your friends (friends don’t let friends get photobombed). Granted, it only lets you choose from two or three different places on the picture, blurring everything else out in the process, but this action saves you from wasting precious seconds to get into the correct mode — and you don’t have to regret your choice afterward, since you can keep the original photo while editing it as much as you want.

Essentially, the depth info can figure out which objects are in the foreground and which ones are in the background. It also desaturates the image and separates colors. This process makes it so you can add effects to the background while leaving your intended subject intact. Instantly, you could make the Eiffel Tower look like a “Take On Me” music video; the Statue of Liberty could turn into a cartoon; and you could apply motion blur to the Space Needle behind you and your significant other.

The Duo Camera also makes it possible to copy elements of one photo — say, your best friend Bob at last night’s party — and paste it into a completely different image (how did Bob magically show up at that wedding reception wearing a party hat?). You can also give photos a 3D-like parallax effect by tilting the phone from side to side.

Interestingly, HTC tells us that the Google Play edition of the M8 will utilize the same sets of API codes for the Duo Camera as the Sense version. The company hasn’t gone into more detail on how this will be implemented yet — we don’t know if Google plans to add this to the stock camera UI on the phone or if it’s just opening the phone up to third-party developers. (As an aside, we’re told that HTC plans to eventually release a developer kit for the Duo Camera, but it’s not saying when.)

HTC hasn’t forgotten about Zoe, even if the option has completely disappeared from the viewfinder. As a refresher, Zoe cranks out a burst of photos and a few seconds of videos, and mashes it together into a moving picture not unlike the newspaper from Harry Potter. It now functions as its own separate mode, as we mentioned earlier, which makes us wonder if too many users accidentally turned Zoe on in previous versions of Sense, an action that can potentially suck up storage space and battery life. Regardless, Zoe mode has a simple shutter button that can do one of three things: You can press it for a regular pic, hold it down for up to five seconds to get a Zoe or hold it even longer to produce a full video. This can be handy if you’re in Zoe mode and need to snap a quick shot right away, though we’re concerned that you might just want to record a Zoe, but accidentally hold the button for six seconds and record a regular video instead.

Highlights haven’t gone anywhere, and they’re now more collaborative. With Sense 6, you can now import pics shared from other people and put them together for a special reel. This actually makes a lot more sense, especially when you’re putting together a monster ballad montage of last December’s work party; if a co-worker snapped a funny moment that you didn’t see, you can now combine shots that were missing from your collection.

Camera performance

It’s not our go-to device whenever we need a professional-quality picture, but the new HTC One is great when you want to take a quick photo and add some schnazzy effects after the picture is taken. The natural flash works great, but the beauty of the UltraPixel tech is that you don’t need flash to take a good image in little to no light. The M8 is just as good as the Lumia 1020 in low light, but there’s some give and take involved. On the plus side, it seems to be a little less noisy in low-light scenarios than the Nokia Lumia 1020; the bad news is that HTC appears to reduce noise by blurring some of the fine details. It’s not immediately noticeable, but take a close look at the grain of the wood in the images above and you’ll see what we mean.

Photos taken during the day turned out nearly identical to the original One. That’s not a bad thing since we still love using that phone to take pictures, but it’s disappointing that there wasn’t much of an improvement in actual image quality. It seems that most of HTC’s resources were spent on getting the Duo Camera ready for action. Ultimately, the One still takes great shots for viewing and sharing on your phone or other mobile device, but they aren’t the kind of photos you’ll be framing on your wall. You’ll also need to get used to an aspect ratio of 16:9 if you want to take advantage of Duo Camera features or even the full 4MP image.

Update: our sample images were horribly compressed, so please go here to see more samples at full resolution.

Performance and battery life

Premium smartphones typically come out with the most powerful chipsets currently available, and in the past year we’ve seen the One step up from a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 to a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 (that’ll be a 2.5GHz clock speed in Asia). There’s not much improvement on the 801 that we didn’t already enjoy on the 800, but still, this is the best in the industry at the moment until the Snapdragon 805 shows up later this year. Here’s some food for thought, however: Most of the aforementioned software and imaging features would’ve been much more taxing (if not impossible) if weaker processors were involved. So even though you may not notice much of a difference in quickness unless you’re looking at them closely side by side, keep in mind that there’s plenty more to a faster chipset than you might initially expect. This powerhouse of a phone also comes with 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 GPU clocked at 578MHz, both of which help ease the burden on the main processor.

A good personal benchmark for any given chipset’s power is how little we actually notice it — it just works. In other words, it’s so smooth and snappy that we don’t have to pay attention to what’s going on behind the scenes. That’s the case with the Snapdragon 801 running the show; we had to try hard to catch any failures, and even then we couldn’t find anything sluggish enough to nitpick about here. We tried our darndest to make it crash by loading it with countless processor-intensive tasks and graphics-heavy games, but it stood its ground like a stubborn cow. If that analogy doesn’t do anything for you, we’ve also added our standard benchmarks to the table below.

	HTC One (2014)	HTC One (2013, AT&T)	Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Quadrant 2.0	25,548	12,104	23,278
Vellamo 2.0	1,804	1,435	2,501
3DMark IS Unlimited	20,612	10,698	18,828
SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms)	782	1,238	537
GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan Offscreen (fps)	11.2	5.0	9.3
CF-Bench	40,223	26,854	33,785
SunSpider: Lower scores are better, results compiled on Chrome. HTC Ones benchmarked on Android 4.4.2

Speaking of not noticing the chipset, there was one other aspect of the new One that we much prefer over its predecessor: It doesn’t overheat. Even under intense loads, we were unable to heat up the M8 to uncomfortable levels, whereas it was a standard way of living with the M7 regardless of what we were doing on it.

As much as we like power, we love battery life even more. The M8 comes with a 2,600mAh battery inside, which is 300mAh larger than last year’s version. Before reviewing the phone, we predicted that we’d see roughly the same life on this model as we did the M7, primarily because of the larger display and more powerful processor with a higher clock speed. The most important battery test we conduct on any smartphone is the real-life usage test — ya know, actually using the phone as our daily driver. We tested the One for a week, and at the end of most days of moderate use we had around 30 percent left when it was time to go to bed.

On days with heavier use, the tank was much closer to empty, but we rarely had to run for the nearest outlet. In comparison, this is a vast improvement over the original One, which seldom got us through an entire day; it’s still not quite as good as the Sony Xperia Z1, but in that case the smaller size is a major boon. This improvement was echoed in our standard video rundown test, in which our unit yielded nearly 11.5 hours while looping a high-def video eternally. Considering the M7 only made it 6.5 hours on the same test, we’d call that good news indeed.

Our European review units fared well in overall call quality, and BoomSound helped make the speakerphone easy to use for conference calls. Speaking of which, we could tell that BoomSound was louder than it was on the M7, and music sounds clearer. The only issue we had in performance was with the GPS; the blue dot froze on too many occasions, and although it typically caught up with us after 20 to 30 seconds, we sometimes had to exit out of Maps and restart the app to force it to find our new location. (As an update, we’ve determined that this particular bug is limited to the Google Maps app; in further testing, we haven’t duplicated the bug in Google Navigation.)

The competition

By the time you read this review, the new HTC One will already be available in select parts of the globe. As expected, the launch window of each market will vary, but it’ll be immediately available in the UK and the US after the phone’s launch. In the US, always one of the more complicated markets to keep track of, you can pick up a retail unit from Verizon before it’s available on any other carrier. You can order it through AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint online today, too, but you’ll have to wait until April 11th if you’re the type of person who prefers to waltz into a brick-and-mortar venue to get a new handset. The phone will sell for $650 off-contract, whereas the on-contract price ranges from $200 to $250, depending on the carrier. If you’re looking to tinker with your device or just prefer the stock Google experience, HTC’s got you covered from day one: The Google Play edition will be available in the Play Store today for $700, and the Developer edition will be sold on HTC’s website for $650.

This doesn’t give HTC much time to sell the M8 before its arch-nemesis, the Samsung Galaxy S5, arrives on the scene April 11th. The two devices will be direct competitors, which means the underdog One will have to find a way to stick out. We’ll publish a chart shortly that compares the two devices, so you can see for yourself which one has the right feature set for you (if either one fulfills your needs, that is).

Wrap-up

The new HTC One is a great smartphone that does a lot of fantastic things. We can tell that the company listened to feedback, focused on areas that needed improvement and added some innovative new features that are actually useful along the way. The new design looks fresh and inviting; the Duo Camera’s new abilities are fun and useful (a rare combination, it seems); the performance is fantastic; battery life has improved significantly; the new version of HTC Sense is even better than the last (but please, HTC, don’t make “Sixth Sense” a thing, okay?); and the company continues to improve features like BoomSound and BlinkFeed. Naturally, these factors are convincing enough for us to give high marks on the new One. And for good reason: it’s a fantastic phone.

The biggest challenge facing the M8 is that it doesn’t raise the bar much higher than the M7 did when it came out — and that’s going to make it difficult to stand apart from competing devices like the Galaxy S5. Yes, Samsung’s upcoming flagship is an iterative improvement as well, but for better or worse, the company will still sell millions of units while HTC’s success remains uncertain. Duo Camera is a clever touch that has some potential, but we also needed to see things that show us the company is changing the game once again, like improvements to HTC’s UltraPixel tech, hardware that’s just as easy to hold as it is to admire and other new mind-blowing features. Keeping up the momentum from the old One to the new is indeed tough, but we fear it’s the only way HTC can keep its head above the crowd.

Edgar Alvarez and Daniel Orren produced the video review; Sharif Sakr and James Trew contributed to the review.

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This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read their continuously updated list of deals at TheWirecutter.com.

You may have already seen Engadget posting reviews from our friends at The Wirecutter. Now, from time to time, we’ll also be publishing their recommended deals on some of their top picks. Read on, and strike while the iron is hot — some of these sales could expire mighty soon.

Canon PowerShot G7 X Digital Camera

Street Price: $700; MSRP: $650; Deal Price: $600

This is the first good sale we’ve seen on this camera after a $50 price drop back in early April and the lowest price we’ve seen to date.

The Canon PowerShot G7 X Digital Camera is our runner-up pick for best point and shoot camera under $1000. Amadou Diallo said, “The $700 Canon G7 X is our runner-up point-and-shoot camera. It’s just as pocketable as our main pick and, using what is widely believed to be the same sensor, delivers virtually identical image quality. You do give up an EVF (with no option to even add an external one) and surprisingly poor battery life means you’ll need to carry a spare to make it through a full day of shooting. You’ll also have to make do with much slower shooting rates and video quality that doesn’t reach the impressive heights of our top pick. Where the Canon trumps its Sony rival is with a slightly longer zoom that still lets in a lot of light at the long end.”

Nikon Monarch 3 8x42mm Binoculars

Street Price: $227; MSRP: $340; Deal Price: $198

This is the best price we’ve seen in almost two years on this set of binoculars. This version (compared to its big brother, the Monarch 5. which sees deals frequently) rarely goes on sale, typically staying firm at the $227 price over on Amazon.

The Nikon Monarch 3 8x42mm Binoculars are our pick for the best binoculars. Michael Zhao and Eric Hansen said, “You could spend a lot more money and gain few features, or spend a little less and lose a lot of value. The Monarch 3’s rugged, waterproof design and its lightweight and superb optical clarity under all types of lighting have earned high praise from ornithologists, hobbyists and retailers alike. In our tests, run by a notable professional birdwatcher, he says they are almost as good as his $2,000 binoculars.”

Oster VERSA 1400-Watt Professional Performance Blender

Street Price: $175; MSRP: $300; Deal Price: $160

This is a new non-Black Friday low price on one of our favorite blenders. It dropped all the way down to $125 for last year’s big sale, but there’s no way to tell if we’ll see a similar deal this year. This is still a good deal compared to non-Black Friday prices.

The Oster VERSA 1400-Watt is our pick for the best blender. Christine Cyr Clisset said, “The Versa offers the best balance between performance and price that we’ve found, and it also has the most useful combination of variable and preset speeds. At $200, it performs as well as blenders twice the price.”

She added, “We don’t think the Versa is the absolute best model out there, but its serious blending skills, solid seven-year warranty, and ease of use make this a great choice if you don’t want to plunk down half a grand.”

Bonavita BV1900TS 8-Cup Carafe Coffee Brewer

Street Price: $175; MSRP: $190; Deal Price: $155

Just yesterday this brewer was down to $150 or so, but even with this slight $5 bump it’s still a good price. We have rarely seen it go below $160 in a major retail space.

The Bonavita BV1900TS 8-Cup Carafe Coffee Brewer is our pick for the best coffee maker. Cale Guthrie Weissman said, “With quality, well-ground beans, some of our testers even compared the brew favorably to handmade pour-over coffee. The 1900TS was also the easiest to use among the competition—just one button to push—and it was the fastest to brew a full pot by over a minute. The 1900TS is quite small compared to most coffee makers, so it will easily fit on most countertops, and its sleek, stainless steel aesthetic looks good with any decor.”

Deals change all the time, and some of these may have expired. To see an updated list of current deals, please go to The Wirecutter.com.

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Pinball FX creator Zen Studios released a bundle this week featuring tables from Archer, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers and American Dad. The pack, called Balls of Glory, is available now across PS3, PS4, Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows 10, Steam, Android and iOS (whew). And all of this exists because of a tweet, as Zen Studios VP of Publishing Mel Kirk explains.

Let’s set the stage: It’s 2012. How did the idea for an Archer table come about?

At the studio, we have a top-secret whiteboard that we use to scribble down names, shows, movies and crazy ideas of things that we’d love to do. If we’re lucky, these scribbles can turn into pinball projects. Archer and Danger Zone were two such scribbles on the board, a potential dream project that the design team really wanted to do but hadn’t yet been fully realized. Then, one day out of the blue, we suddenly received a ton of social media chatter around a possible Archer table that stirred our community into a frenzy. Floyd County (Archer creators) got wind of this as well, and we got in contact with them. So, long story short, all of this led to Archer pinball.

We even covered the Archer-table Twitter storm. It seems the Twitter community was a driving factor behind this table’s development.

The Twitter community had an enormous impact on getting the Archer table greenlit from an idea and into production. Seeing the fan response and seeing the story get picked up in the media inspired a lot of confidence in us that an Archer table would be well-received. The team at Floyd County were very supportive, pushing the story up the chain at FX and Fox in an almost grassroots kind of way, up to the executive level, prompting serious consideration for a team-up. Ultimately, this led to, as Sterling himself would say, “Idiots doing idiot things, because they’re idiots,” paving the way for the Balls of Glory pack which also includes Family Guy, American Dad! and Bob’s Burgers.

Why do you think there was such a response to this table idea in particular?

The acerbic, dark comedy of the show is one of the main things that fans really rally behind. As Archer is chock-full of great one-liners and innuendos, it’s something that fans could very easily imagine in a pinball table. The characters and situations are very nuanced and layered, and the show itself features complex storylines and tons of personality that we were able to visualize and recreate on the table, with some examples being the alligator plunger (one of Sterling’s greatest fears [Ed. note: alligators, not plungers]) and the fight on a moving train mission (one of Sterling’s lifelong dreams). When you work with a property that has so many subtle in-jokes and gags, it makes it really fun to come up with ways of picturing them on a pinball table and present them to the fans who will pick up on them.

Did you work with Floyd County a lot? How was that?

Working with Floyd County was fantastic. We received ideas and feedback on a daily basis from them during all phases of production. It’s always great to collaborate with such talented people and see what they bring to the table. Just when we thought we’d run out of cool pinball ideas, we get fresh perspective from creative geniuses.

What’s the best part of the Archer table, in your eyes?

I think what we’re most proud of is that the vibe of the show and the smart humor really shines through. There is a really cool shooting mini-game, and Archer’s spy car actually drives onto the table and off a ramp. We’re taking players to the Danger Zone!

[Image credits: Fox/Zen Studios]

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/22/archer-pinball-fx-twitter-zen-studios/

Zen Studios has released an Xbox One version of Pinball FX2, bringing its collection of dozens of previously released tables to Microsoft’s latest console.

Previously pegged for a July premiere, the Xbox One version of Pinball FX2 was delayed in order to implement a fan-requested table transfer feature, allowing players to import content purchased in the Xbox 360 version of Pinball FX2. Pinball wizards can consult this FAQ for assistance regarding the import process.

Pinball FX2 arrives on the Xbox One as a free download, with multiple tables based on Star Wars and the Marvel universe available for purchase separately.

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/14/pinball-fx2-launches-for-xbox-one-with-table-transfer-feature/

NASA has been toiling away on its heavy-lifting Space Launch System since around 2011, and now those rocket plans have taken another giant leap toward actual usability. The Administration announced earlier today that one of the SLS’s three main configurations has successfully gone through its critical design review phase, two months after the program turned in its official findings to an independent review board.

In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on NASA’s new moonshot, “heavy lifting” means more than just delivering big payloads into orbit. The SLS is also meant to carry the new Orion capsule — and up to four brave spacefarers — on missions that could extend well beyond the influence of our blue marble’s gravity. It’ll still be a while before we get to that point, though; the configuration that just got approval from the brass is the weakest of the three, with the ability to lift a minimum of 70 metric tons with the help of two solid rocket boosters and four Space Shuttle engines on the launch vehicle’s core. And even with this milestone behind them, the unflinching power of space bureaucracy means there a few more major steps to be undertaken before the SLS goes on its expected maiden flight before November 2018.

Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Division, said that “all the major components for the first flight are now in production.” Once those parts have been meticulously pieced together, there’s going to be even more testing to make sure they work properly on their own and when all connected. After all that’s done, we’re looking at a design certification process, plus loads and loads of flight readiness tests. Oh 2018, you can’t get here soon enough.

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/22/space-launch-system-completes-review/

Upstarts like SpaceX might get most of the attention, but let’s not forget that NASA — you know, the folks who actually put 12 guys on the moon — isn’t done pushing to explore the heavens just yet. Case in point: the agency is working on a whopper of a rocket called (unimaginatively enough) the Space Launch System that’ll eventually propel a manned Orion capsule in Mars’ direction, and officials just green-lit that massive booster for development. The formulation phase is over folks, time to build this crazy thing. There is, however, a downside. You see, the SLS was originally slated to make its first official test flight with an uncrewed Orion capsule in December 2017, but it’s looking at this point like that inaugural launch will actually take place nearly a year later. Yeah, we can hardly wait either, but it was going to be a long while before all the development and infrastructure fell into place anyway — NASA associate administrator Robert Lightfoot reaffirmed in a statement that we won’t be flinging humans at the red planet until the 2030s. Think you can beat that, Mr. Musk?

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/27/nasa-space-launch-system-2018/

Facebook announced on Thursday that it will expand its search function to include every publically-available post in its archive, not just those of your friends and liked Pages. But this won’t simply be a firehose of information, Facebook will reportedly segregate and stack results depending on the source.

The top of the search results will be dominated by trusted sources like professional news outlets (CNN and the like). Below that section will be posts from your friends, presumably providing color commentary and insightful discussion of the headlined news — or, if they’re anything like my friends, it’ll quickly devolve into GIF wars and poop jokes. And at the bottom of the stack will be a Digg-like section of aggregated links related to the search topic. The returned results are reportedly personalized for each user based on 200 search factors. These factors include what subjects and Pages you like as well as your personal information and search history.

This change comes in response to criticism of FB’s existing search feature, which has been characterized as an “echo chamber.” By at least exposing users to thoughts and opinions beyond those of their immediate social circle, FB hopes to improve the overall discussion about breaking news. “You don’t just see what your friends and people around you are saying,” Tom Stocky, VP of Search, told TechCrunch. “You see the stories of people on the ground. It gives us a different level of perspective.” Though, if this new search function is anything like the bedlam of breaking news that is Facebook’s Signal news service, you might want to just stick with Google.

[Image Credit: Shutterstock]

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/22/facebook-expands-search/

Facebook recently updated its Graph Search tool to make it easier to find friends’ old posts. According to Reuters, though, the company failed to announced another change: it has apparently stopped showing Bing results, as well. The social network launched Graph Search in 2013, giving people a quick way to scour the website for posts, pages and users. It could also be used like a typical search engine (thanks to Bing), so you could, theoretically, research for a school paper without leaving the website. Both companies have confirmed the change to VentureBeat, even saying that it was implemented a while ago.

“We’re not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook,” the social network’s spokesperson said. It’s worth noting that we’re still seeing Bing results on our Facebook page, though it might be because we still haven’t gotten the latest Graph Search update. The companies’ friendship began in 2007, when Redmond invested $240 million in the then-fledgling social network. Both swear this revamp doesn’t affect that relationship, telling VentureBeat that they’ll continue to partner in “many different areas” and projects.

[Image credit: Alamy]

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Source URL:http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/13/facebook-nixes-bing-graph-search/