<div>When i first held the HTC One in my hands, I wanted to dump everything and bolt off with it into the blue, never to be heard from again. The beautifully crafted gadget, in all its understated classy elegance, called out the gadget lust in me like few other devices. Most people will agree that the One is the best designed and built phone out there right now, except perhaps to say that it borrows something from the look of the iPhone, the device that’s been the benchmark of desirable design, globally. If only the troubled HTC could deliver and market this smartphone to the hilt, we’d have serious competition in the mobile space. Instead, the company is struggling because of its product cycles and marketing that doesn’t cut it. But — let’s see if the One can help HTC get back on track!<br /> </div><div>This smartphone has to be held and beheld to be believed. Its smooth aluminium unibody is curved on the edges and back, and lightly bezelled to give the gorgeous screen plenty of space. It’s solid while still being light and very thin. Over the last few phones, HTC has been fine-tuning its minimalistic design skills, a fact that can be seen right away in the neat look of the HTC One. <br /> </div><div>The buttons, in particular, are barely there. They’re so flush against the phone that you need to know where they are to use them. Yes, one will have to get used to that, but it takes a day or two and the effort is worth the while. <br /> </div><div>The top-level specs of the HTC One go to power a beautiful high-res screen on a phone. I thought the HTC Butterfly had a lovely enough screen, but now there’s this as well. I do think the Butterfly is still a worthy contender, by the way. What’s nice about this screen is its crispness and colour and superlative viewing angles. It’s just a pleasure to look at.<br /> </div><div>The screen needs to be nice to see because right on the home screen you have one of the differentiating features of this phone, the BlinkFeed. This is an endless scroll of content in all its picturesque glory for you to browse when you pick up your phone. You can set your social network feeds and content from other sources that have tied up with HTC. <br /> </div><div>It’s very attractive looking and a perfect showcase for the screen, but it’s greeted with mixed reactions because many don’t want to have their home screens decided for them. You can easily shove it off to the side and choose to customise another home screen with regular widgets and use that. The updating and refreshing can be set to happen on wifi.<br /> </div><div>There’s some worry about this taking its toll on the 2,300 mAh battery but you can move it aside and turn off services. I didn’t find the battery draining out over the day but this was with moderate usage, not on 3G and not with gaming, though there was enough video and music. I did feel that the phone readily became a bit warm though. <br /> </div><div>It takes a while to charge up. And while we’re on to music, the HTC One happens to have the best sound I’ve heard on a phone — you won’t need any of those little external speakers for personal listening, though hooking it up to a sound system is always nice. The sound has well rounded full frequencies and is quite pleasing, even if it goes by the silly name of Boom Sound. <br /> </div><div>The HTC One comes with a refreshed version of HTC’s interface, Sense 5, with which the focus is to be smooth and not get in the way, a goal which it achieves. Everyone expected the One to be exorbitantly priced but at Rs 42,900, it’s the same as other top-tier phones —and it deserves to be. <br /> </div><table width="200" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4" border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td><img width="336" vspace="3" hspace="3" height="257" alt="" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=fda55f81-895a-4ab8-84a1-03541600fcee&groupId=816580&t=1366223084630" /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><strong>HTC One Camera: Up To 4 Megapixels</strong></div><div>With everyone moving up to 13 megapixels, HTC decided to reverse the megapixel race and actually drop the count to 4 megapixels. But they kept the sensor size the same as it is on higher megapixel cameras. They now have 4 megapixels, but bigger ones, and they call them ultrapixels.<br /> <br />The idea is that now, more light will be let in for indoor photos. And yes, it’s true that this does happen. Taking pictures with a small lamp in a room, I was able to get light-filled shots which were not that grainy or noisy and not shaken up. This was with both normal and night mode — minus flash, of course. File sizes were just shy of 1MB. In daylight, pictures were okay but with slightly overdone colours at times. The camera has an f/2.0 sensor and focuses quite fast, though it’s awfully noisy. There are plenty of settings and effects. While this camera doesn’t have the capabilities of, say, the Nokia 808, it does work very well for people taking casual shots of friends and family. Video too is quite decent. <br /> </div><div>A distinctive feature of the One’s camera is ‘Zoe,’ the results of which users may enjoy for casual sharing. Zoe takes a short video, going back a bit to capture a snap before you started. You can pick the best pic. But more than that, multiple Zoes can also be set to music in a longer little clip. Just a fun feature that comes out quite nice.<br /><br />mala(dot)bhargava(at)gmail(dot)com<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: normal;">(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-05-2013)</span><br /><br /><br /> </div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
