HTC unveils its new Android flagship, the HTC One

[Roadkill]

I've got an HTC One SV. Three very minor gripes:

1. Like my old Desire, whenever I'm not actually using it, it forgets about my home wifi network and goes back to 3G for no apparent reason.

2. It doesn't have a menu button, which one or two apps still seem to need, although doubtless updated versions of them will cure that soon enough.

3. I've got an error message telling me that HTC sense needs to be authorised to connect with my facebook account. I don't want it to, and can't find a way to tell it that, so I'm stuck with the permanent error message.

Aside from that I can't really fault it. Excellent phone.

*e2a* The camera is anything but shit, too.

 

[renegadechicken]

I received my phone today....slightly surprised to get a set of Beats by Dre solo headphones free with it..apparently i wouldn't look stupid walking down the street wearing them plugged into my phone...or so the wife says.

Anyway back to the phone.....after having iphones for the past 5 years the thing is a piece of pure beauty, it feels extremely well made and a decent weight without feeling heavy. The sound is astonishing through the speakers for a phone...i did some comparison tests with music through the htc, iphone and a s3 and its much better than the other two. The hd quality of the screen for movies again doesn't disappoint, it's crisp and sharp.I dont really use a camera that much on a phone so cant really do any comparisons to other cameras but the Zoe bit lets you take some inventive photos, took some great ones of the dogs playing in the dusk, and the video records 1080 @30fps which again is great.

One thing though I'm pleased i have such big hands, as the phone appears huge. Its just all screen, and some of the buttons take some reaching one handed.

Took me a while to learn what i suspect are some basic things to old android hands, i have spent 4 hours just playing with all the settings, setting up the blink feeds, playing with htc sync, adding stuff, removing stuff, factory resetting, setting it up again.....and thoroughly enjoyed my self.

It's fast, and the only issue i had at one point was due to internet speed rather than the phone.
I also downloaded videos from the web and via dropbox and yep it took me a while to work out how to delete the video from the phone, as it doesn't appear as straight forward as the iphone was.

It was easy to transfer contacts etc from the iphone, which i had visions of having to type them all in.

All in all pretty bloody happy with it.

 

[renegadechicken]

Just thought I'd add that I've now had this phone for three days and i am so in love with it.........

not just for the looks (it is good looking i want to put it in a case to protect it, but i keep taking the case off when i go out as the looks and feel are awesome) but it is fast, easy to use and i just keep on discovering new ways to do things, nothing appears to be too out there to try...and mostly they have worked.

I now know my way around it after extensive play, and yes there are a couple of issues, the UI on certain apps/processes could be more intuitive, the blink feed can get annoying and its slightly limited at the moment to what feeds you can have, I'd love an option to have u75 notifications appear as i can with Facebook,twitter,Google+ etc but at the moment that's a no unless i am missing something. The video codec support isn't great, hoping this will be rectified at some point, as I'm not the only one saying this. Battery isn't great but it isn't bad i get a full day's use out of it and that includes downloaded,synching,streaming and i don't have the power saving turned on.Compared to my old iPhone 4 the battery is longer lasting for the same amount of use.
But i guess these are really just personal niggles rather than faults with the phone.

 

[Roadkill]

2. It doesn't have a menu button, which one or two apps still seem to need, although doubtless updated versions of them will cure that soon enough.

Turns out I just hadn't read the instructions. The 'recent apps' button doubles as a menu button if you hold it momentarily.

 

[ohmyliver]

1. Like my old Desire, whenever I'm not actually using it, it forgets about my home wifi network and goes back to 3G for no apparent reason.

have you fiddled with the settings in networks>wi-fi settings>menu>advanced>wi-fi sleep policy ?

 

[Roadkill]

have you fiddled with the settings in networks>wi-fi settings>menu>advanced>wi-fi sleep policy ?

Ah! I'd not found those options. Just altered the wifi sleep policy and it seems to have worked. Thanks.

 

[renegadechicken]

Hmmmmmmm.....i had the phone out of the case, on the table some 3 foot from the floor when the dog ran into the table, the phone left the table hit the laminate floor and i now have a cracked screen from the right hand lower button to the edge of the screen on the left an inch from the base of the phone, the top corner of the right hand side of the screen is also cracked, in a thumb nail shape, no damage to the aluminum case though. These are not scratches these are proper broken glass.

Not impressed with that as my iphone has fallen out of my shirt pocket, on a few occasions, onto concrete and no damage to the glass at all.
HTC are going to collect it on Monday and decide whether the glass was faulty or if I was just very unlucky with physics. My guessing is that I'm gonna have to pay for the screen replacement.

The ironic thing is i had it out of the case to fit a screen protector, which may or may not have saved it.

Having said the above I'm not looking forward to being without it for 7-10 days and having to go back to me iphone. I'll miss it a lot.

 

[gawkrodger]

really beginning to like this phone. A few niggling things but sure I'll sort them out fairly soon

 

[renegadechicken]

As my phone has gone back to HTC for repair... i've gone back to the iphone 4s and i bloody well hate it...can't wait for the HTC to come home.

 

[gawkrodger]

quick question - I'm probably being daft but how can I add multiple gmail accounts (through the gmail app, not the mail sectuion which I think is far inferior)?

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

quick question - I'm probably being daft but how can I add multiple gmail accounts (through the gmail app, not the mail sectuion which I think is far inferior)?

Yes. Open the Gmail app, hit "menu", then "settings", and there should be a "add Account" button.

 

[gawkrodger]

cheers - yes, I was being daft

 

[stuff_it]

Looks OK and I want HTC to gain a bit of market share, so I hope it works.

I'll have a play next week. Still no SD (who cares) or removable battery? (I do)

I'm not very impressed by the lack of removable battery either - especially as the only way I'll be getting a top-end phone is on a 24 month contract.

 

[renegadechicken]

Ouch screen replacement is £214. Carphone warehouse insurance just cancelled as they state that this accidental damage is 'cosmetic' and therefore bill is mine.

 

[mauvais]

Ouch screen replacement is £214. Carphone warehouse insurance just cancelled as they state that this accidental damage is 'cosmetic' and therefore bill is mine.

You could break it some more?

 

[renegadechicken]

HTC don't operate like that, you have to send the phone in for them to check, they then provide a quote to repair it.

 

[mauvais]

Well that bit makes sense, but not the bit about the insurance refusing to cover it.

I haven't looked at a teardown of it, but you could probably do it yourself with an eBay screen for much less.

Edit: turns out you can't, because it's really difficult. Not buying one of those, then!

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Ouch screen replacement is £214. Carphone warehouse insurance just cancelled as they state that this accidental damage is 'cosmetic' and therefore bill is mine.

This sounds like one of those good reasons not to get mobile phone insurance tbh. "Cosmetic" - like screens are just a minor bit of decoration on phones

 

[renegadechicken]

Well that bit makes sense, but not the bit about the insurance refusing to cover it.

I haven't looked at a teardown of it, but you could probably do it yourself with an eBay screen for much less.

Edit: turns out you can't, because it's really difficult. Not buying one of those, then!

It got 1 out of 10 in a teardown
opps missed your edit.

TBH i'm kinda dreading getting it back and the casing is damaged etc - hopefully HTC know how to repair their own phones

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Esp

This sounds like one of those good reasons not to get mobile phone insurance tbh. "Cosmetic" - like screens are just a minor bit of decoration on phones

Especially as it's normally half the cost of a new phone at least over those two years.

 

[povmcdov]

I've had mine for a couple of weeks now. Overall I'm very pleased.

The camera is awesome at the sort of jobs you want a phone camera to do. In low light conditions it is very fast, rarely needs the flash and theres very little noise in the images. You wouldn't want to blow up the images too big, but IMO use a proper camera if you want to do that. You can access the camera straight from the lock screen without going through your security too, which is handy and new to me. The best thing about it is the speed though. Compared with my old desire HD you can point and shoot without much worry about motion blur or missing shots. I havent used the "zoe" feature yet but it could well be useful, however with the non-expandable storage I'm slightly worried about file size.

The display is truly gorgeous.

As far as problems go:

Build quality is ludicrously good as usual from HTC. If anything its a bit too slick as I find its smoothness and lack of the old style HTC projecting camera lens makes it a little droppable. It also has a habit of falling out of trouser pockets. Get the black one as the silver shows dirt a lot.

The sound is amazing for a phone and really good for watching video etc, however it is TOO GOOD! Even on the lowest volume setting it is quite loud, so headphones are a must if you want to watch stuff with anyone else in earshot. Additionally, because one of the big speakers is used as the phone speaker, in call volume is too loud on the lowest level. No doubt I will be able to fix this with some app, but at the moment everyone can hear my calls.

The home and back buttons are not backlit which does mean I keep missing them using it in the dark. This is not helped by the fact that the back button is now on the other side of the phone compared with my old Desire HD. They really should have a menu button too rather than the non-functional HTC logo.

Blinkfeed is a waste of time IMO unless you use social media a lot. I don't. It cannot be turned off completely, but I've hidden it and killed its data use, so it may as well not be there.

NB: One thing I didn't realise before purchase and isn't being advertised is that the handset comes with a 2 year 32Gb dropbox subscription free. This is presumably because you can set it to backup the phones contents to dropbox during setup, something I didn't bother with.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

You don't need that much for contacts! It's for you pics... I got it as well with my new phone, quite nice to have.

Nice right up btw.

 

[povmcdov]

Cheers man,

I should just say that I realised last night that the buttons do illuminate, just at low light levels.