With its sleek aluminum body, a live home screen that streams all of your favourite content, a photo gallery that comes to life and dual frontal stereo speakers, we were more than happy to inspect this cheeky wee gadget, the HTC One smartphone…
The gadget
The new HTC One smartphone.
The damage
Buy it now for around £450, or on a pay monthly deal for about £32/month (plus handset £29).
The colour
The matte silver finish ticks off this season’s metallics trend in a subtle yet stylish way.
The launch:
With a nod to the HTC One’s super sleek zero-gap aluminium unibody (a world first), I was invited to take part in an exclusive aluminium jewellery-making workshop with one of Britain’s finest contemporary jewellers, Stephen Einhorn (he designed the stag beetle necklace Charlize Theron wears in Snow White And The Huntsmen and fang necklaces for the cast of True Blood).
HTC’s new One smartphone is crafted from one single piece of aluminium, y’see, so the challenge was to make a piece of jewellery (a ring) from a single piece of aluminium, too. Mine’s the (rubbish) one, first left:
Handbag test:
Light as a feather (just 143g) and measuring up at a super slim 137x68x9mm, this smartphone would easily fit into a weeny across body bag, like the smallest Chanel Boy handbag.
Bits to brag to your friends about:
- The sound. Oh, the sound! Gone are the days of needing a tinny little speaker dock for your iPod/Phone. This bad boy BOOMS, literally. It’s actually insanely good. The HTC One is first phone EVER to have front-facing stereo BoomSound speakers with a dedicated amplifier and Beats Audio integration. Which basically means you can give annoying teens playing their crappy music out loud on the back of the bus a REAL run for their money. If they don’t steal your handset, that is.
- Stupidly sharp HD display. If you oftentimes find yourself squinting into your iPhone, especially when you’re tying to take a selfie in the sunshine, the HTC One’s Super LCD 3 screen (protected by Gorilla Glass 2, we kid you not) gives you a whopping 468 pixels per inch, which is excessive bordering on silly.
- Social media integration. The HTC boffs ain’t stupid. They get how must of us use our smartphones. So they’ve invented BlinkFeed which provides a personalised live feed of updates from your go-to social networks, applications and news channels direct to the home screen, that refreshes instantly. So you need never miss an update from that bloke you’ve been stalking on Facebook *ahem*
- Cool camera action. I’ve been testing the handset without a phone connection,
stealingusing WiFi where I can. But I’ve also been using the device as a stand-alone camera, it’s that good. Turns out less is more in terms of numbers of pixels. It’s actually the size of the pixel that counts, and the HTC UltraPixel Camera has the largest pixels available in a smartphone. The Optical Image Stabilization also means no more blurry/shaky images, no matter how shit-faced you are.
- HTC Zoe. We don’t know who she is, but what we do know is that when you enable Zoe, you get a living breathing gallery of media with just one click. It’s like your photos come to life, complete with a 30 second highlight reel of the best bits, just like when an X Factor contestant gets booted off.
The verdict:
This is one slinky gadget; smoother than Daniel Craig in a silk jumpsuit and twice as slippery as a bar of soap (seriously, be careful you don’t drop it). If you’re a social media addict, surgically attached to your smartphone for all the latest updates, this is surely the handset for you. We also like the fact that it sets you apart from all the other iPhone clones, and for that it gets the full Le Blow seal of approval.
Find out full deets, read more reviews and shop the HTC One at htc.com/uk/smartphones/htc-one
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