So now it is time to discuss a little about the videos without spoiling it for you to watch them, both of these videos are reviewed by adrianisen and in the first video titled “HTC One vs. iPhone 5 iOS 7 – Review, “ which is 15 minutes 20 seconds long talks about the phones side-by-side, but some of the commenter’s believe that doing a vs on a beta version is not the right way to go.
The comments in the video are a little harsh, and yes it goes back to the argument in, which phone is best. The video talks about the features on both phones including apps, widgets etc and much more.
The next video titled “Sony Xperia Z vs. iPhone 5 iOS 7 – Review” is a similar review with different phones, but the comments under the video are like the first one, the arguments continue.
The reviewer in these videos is not getting any brownie points, look at our previous article here covering the Samsung Galaxy S4 vs. iPhone 5 with iOS 7 beta, we got a few comments on this article with one commenter saying “I have a GS4 and everything about it is awesome. This guy didn’t know anything about how to work an Android. The GS4 is the best phone on the market and will even be better than the iOS7. Phones Review is not here to slate any phone because everyone has a choice, we all have a favourite and it is fair to say we can all choose what smartphone we like the most.
After watching the two videos by adrianisen, it does look like he plays with iOS 7 side the most. Now we know this is a new beta so maybe he wants watchers to see more of it, but to review two phones side by side looking at the UI you should review both phones equally.
Anyway, we will let you watch the HTC One vs. iPhone 5 iOS 7 and the Sony Xperia Z vs. iPhone 5 iOS 7 videos below, please do post your comments below.
HTC has always made a virtue of build quality and the One makes the most of that heritage. It's a little smaller than the others, making it a bit more pocket-friendly, but it's distinguished by its metal unibody casing which is the equal of the iPhone 5 for class and heavy duty build.
Its display offers an HD resolution of 1,920x1,080p -- the same as its two rivals in this test, but with its slightly smaller screen measuring 4.7 inches it's arguably a little bit sharper, delivering an eyeball-piercing (not literally) 468ppi. That detail is pretty much all in the spec however, since side-by-side they look just as good as each other.
The quad-core 1.7GHz processor is certainly fast, and it needs to be to cope with HTC's busy Sense interface. It looks lovely with some nice, smooth animations, and extra widgets include BlinkFeed, which offers a Flipboard-type service that pulls together your favourite media and social networking updates into a magazine-style interface. The problem is you can only use the news feeds that HTC has approved and it doesn't really offer any improvements on Flipboard, which is available for free fromGoogle Play. The other problem is that you can't turn it off.
Nate Lanxon
The four-megapixel camera marks a departure from the norm. With other camphones upping the megapixel count HTC has pointed out that picture quality isn't necessarily dependent on the number of pixels, and instead made great play of its large F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens. The idea is that less, but bigger, "Ultrapixels" on a larger sensor will let in more light and so result in better pictures.
It's a good effort by HTC, which has been plagued by concerns about its relatively low-quality cameras over the years, but in terms of sharpness, vibrancy and detail, it suffers in comparison with both the Xperia Z and the Galaxy S4.
As with all of our superphones, battery life is the problem that recurs again and again. While none are likely to deliver much more than a day of standard use, the HTC One's is the smallest, and lags just a little behind its peers.
HTC has been incorporating a very basic version of the Beats Audio processing technology and headphones into its handsets for a while now but the One takes it a stage further with good-sounding stereo speakers on the front, especially handy for movie watching.
It's available with 32GB or 64GB of memory on board, but with no microSD card, there's no way to augment this like you can with the other two.
The Galaxy S4 doesn't feel quite as classy as its rivals here, despite its price (it's the most expensive in our round-up) and the wealth of tech packed into its innards. That's because Samsung has chosen to continue its use of thin plastic covers that don't feel much different to their low-spec cousins at the budget end of the market. There's method in the apparent madness, since it helps to keep the weight down (it's the lightest on test at just 130g) but that gain is also likely to be offset by the fact that many people who want the best phone also want it to look and feel like the best. If the HTC One is the Ferrari of Android smartphones, the Galaxy S4 is closer to the understated charm of a Bentley, with its operational excellence hidden beneath a relatively dowdy exterior.
The five-inch touchscreen offers a resolution of 1,920x1,080p -- the same as theXperia Zand both screens offer 441ppi, though both are slightly behind the slightly smaller screen on the HTC One's 468ppi.
Unlike its rivals, the S4 has a physical home button beneath the screen, flanked by touch-sensitive back and multi-tasking buttons. It may be an echo of Apple's design, or it may just be something that focus groups like. Either way, it's a comforting and reliable way to get back to the beginning if you ever get confused by the bewildering range of options.
Samsung
And options there are many. Samsung's TouchWiz interface is even more intrusive than HTC's Touch. It's packed with extras, including 36 preloaded apps with everything from S Health (which uses the phone's barometer and motion sensor to track your general health) to WatchON (which uses infrared tech to turn your phone into a universal remote), many of which you can add to the programmable side bar. There's an advanced range of gesture controls such as Smart Scroll, which scrolls through a page of text as you tilt the phone and Smart Pause, which pauses the video you're watching if you look away -- handy perhaps, but it doesn't always work. Air View also allows you to hover your finger over the phone to bring up extra features, like the controls when you're watching a video.
There's also the picture-in-picture feature that allows you to watch a video in the corner of the screen while you're doing something else, like checking your email or browsing the web.
The 13-megapixel camera marks pretty much the apex of Samsung's steadily developing camera know-how. There's an impressive suite of options both pre and post-shooting, which will keep the happy snappers busy, but don't get in the way of point-and-shoot, since the automatic settings will be more than acceptable for most. Unusual modes include Eraser, which allows you to edit out unwanted moving elements in a pic, such as passers-by, and Drama takes several pictures of a moving subject and lets you combine them into a single pic with a still background. Gimmicks aside, pictures are sharp and detail-heavy and it's certainly the best camera here.
The S4 is the only handset in our trio which was able to offer Android 4.2 Jelly Bean out of the box (the other two launched with 4.1 and promises of updates) and this should hopefully put it ahead of the queue for version 4.3 when it arrives over the summer.
The Xperia Z can make a claim of being the toughest of the three on test here. With toughened glass front and back it's also water and dust-resistant. It can handle total immersion in water for up to half an hour, making it the essential choice if you're likely to use it in the bath.
It's also the cheapest, and though its specs are very similar to its rivals, you should be able to pick up the Xperia Z for considerably less.
On paper, the Xperia Z's processor is the least powerful here. Clocked at 1.5GHz it's behind the One's 1.7GHz and the S4's 1.9GHz, though all three are supported by a full 2GB of RAM memory. In AnTuTu benchmark it delivered the lowest score -- 18,440, behind the One's 22,420 and the S4's 25,394 but in practise though, there's really very little difference to the performance. They're all very fast phones, opening apps in a twinkling and delivering consistently smooth performance when browsing, watching HD videos and even playing HD games.
The 13.1-megapixel easily outperforms the HTC One but in terms of quality it's very close indeed to the S4. It has an impressive range of modes and features including Sony's Exmor R sensor, designed to improve the quality of pics taken in low light, as well as touch focus, face detection and image stabilisation. It loses out to the S4 in terms of the sharpness of image (just about) and it doesn't have quite as many features, but there's not a lot in it. Like the other camphones here, it can also record 1080p video at 30fps and also like the others it has a two-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls.
Sony
As we've come to expect with high-powered smartphones, battery life isn't great and you'll struggle to get a full day's use out of it. There is however Stamina Mode, which powers down all the phone's functions when the screen goes dim. Good for the battery, but not always so good for communication, though you can customise the settings to leave certain functions on, depending on what you need doing.
Of the three user interfaces here, Sony's is the least intrusive. The shortcut icons look different to standard Android, and there are a few unique widgets, but otherwise it's pretty much the same as what Google intended.
Comparison conclusion The HTC One is arguably the best looking, but it lets itself down on the quality of its camera, poor battery life and lack of expandable memory. The Sony Xperia Z is the value for money choice, with specs similar to its rivals, and a tough, water and dust-resistant shell, but costing considerably less.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the most expensive, despite looking the cheapest. But for the power of its processor, the mind-boggling amount of tech that it's managed to cram in, and the quality of its camera, it's the standout favourite.
HTC has sold about 5 million units of its newest flagship phone, the One, according to one company executive quoted by the WSJ.
It's a decent start, but HTC has sold half as many Ones as Samsung has sold of its new flagship Samsung Galaxy S4. Samsung announced today that it's sold 10 million Galaxy S4 phones so far. Both phones launched around the same time.
Even though the Galaxy S4 is selling better, most critics think the HTC One is a better phone because it has a prettier design and fewer gimmicky features.
It’s a rumor that wont seem to die — the HTC One “Google Edition.” We’re not sure if that makes it more legitimate, or if it’s because it’s an Android fanboys wetdream. In any case, this rumor has been given new life, this time thanks to Geek.com‘s Russel Holly. This is the man behind the leakedSamsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition, the day before it was announced at Google I/O. Going by that track record, we’re inclined to listen.
Once again, it’s being whispered from “multiple sources” that the fabled HTC One “Senseless Edition” is, in fact, a real thing and that it will launch sometime in the coming weeks, starting first with the US. It’s this very specific region that suggests it could also be made available in the Google Play Store, but that’s only speculation.
We all know the story. During the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition announcement, an HTC rep tweeted from her personal account that we could either buy the GS4 running stock Android or… “wait.” Wait for what? Well, HTC’s Senior Global Online Communications Manager Jeff Gordon was quick to address blogs taking this as a confirmation from HTC that a Google Edition One was in the works. His words? “HTC is not currently planning a ‘Nexus Edition’ of the HTC One.” Very cut and dry.
It’s true HTC is well aware of the ever growing Android modding community, a very vocal minority that demands a stock Android experience from their devices, tinkering around with software, flashing custom ROMs, and drinking chicken blood around an iPhone set afire. To help deal with these wild boys, HTC formed HTCDev — a special group of their own developers working together with the modding community. HTCDev helps flashing addicts get their next fix by releasing kernel sources, and the stock RUU safety nets.
With HTC already providing a Developer Edition of the One with a fully unlocked bootloader — is there really any need, point, or more importantly demand for an HTC One Senseless Edition? As Holly points out in his article, HTC’s best features are its camera and front facing speakers — both of which rely on HTC’s software tweaks to make them great. One could argue that by providing an HTC One Google Edition with diminished camera and audio quality, it would do nothing but hurt HTC’s image, something they’ve been working so hard at building back up with the One.
If nothing else, there are other options. If HTC could simply work with Google to include the HTC One Developer Edition into AOSP, that could be an easier, less costly route. As for a release date on this rumored HTC One running a stock Android experience, Geek’s sources claim it will be announced within the next 2 weeks and released in the summer. That means we wont have to wait long before we find out if this is rumor pans out, so we can finally put it to rest.
The HTC One comes with a new trick indeed in the shape of Zoe, a mode on the camera that takes 0.6 seconds of HD footage before you press the shutter button and three seconds afterwards, meaning you get a 'moving photo' to give all manner of information about what's actually been happening.
In reality, it's more of a quirky feature that does at least take on the notion that you have to have still images in the gallery all the time, as instead of loads of people staring blankly at you from a grid of snaps, the gallery is an orgy of motion as cats bounce about, people walk out of shot and blinking brings a tidal wave of eyelids.
It's a cool idea though, although one big issue is that you have to hold the camera up for a while to capture the Zoe properly, and while many people are used to posing for a while for a cameraphone snap, three seconds feels like an eternity while you wait for that red bar to fill up while the image/movie is captured.
The HTC One also confusingly will turn this high res movie into many, many images in the folder. This won't show up in the gallery, but if you want to share a photo with a third party app like Facebook you'll suddenly find you've got hundreds of snaps when you thought you'd only taken 15. Also, the file sizes are massive, with a single event (made up of around 10 Zoes) taking up half a gigabyte of space on your unexpandable hard drive.
You can save these to an HTC Zoe Share server to show to family and friends and free up valuable space, but they will expire after a month rather than living there indefinitely. Of course, you can use something like Dropbox here, but it doesn't really solve the fact that long term you'll need to be really frugal with your memories.
But enough of that - let's get onto the good stuff, and that's the ability to see your memories in a really fun 30 second video highlight reel. The HTC One will look at your snaps and auto-create the short video based on a date or location for the photos being taken (if you've enabled geo-tagging of your snaps).
The results are really rather pleasing, meaning a few pointless snaps of a cat or your Mum being, frankly, hilarious are turned into something that looks a lot more professional.
The downside is that there are only six effects to choose from, each with their own way of mixing motion and still from the Zoes you've made, and to different music and effects each time. HTC has promised that it's working hard on making it so you can create your own effects to your own music, but the issue there is beat matching, as the scenes will change based on the rhythm of the music itself.
While the idea of this is initially quite strong, it gets a LOT more complicated if you want to have a level of control over these video highlight reels. In addition to the Date or Location grouping, (which don't always work, as you might take loads of photos in a certain place, or on a certain day, that you don't want to see in the highlight reel) you can choose an Event to make a video highlight reel for.
However, to make an event isn't easy, as you need to press a few times to get to your photos, then open the settings, then select 'Move to' before setting up a new album. And the size of the Zoes dictates that this moving process takes a while, which is annoying as it should just be an internal tagging process.
Once that's done, the video highlight reel is created without an issue, and that works pretty well. You can choose the 13 pictures that make up the reel itself, so if there's something that doesn't quite have the desired effect you can scrap it to include something more dynamic, and if you took a photo with the highlight footage in mind you can make sure it's included.
It would also be great if you could choose your establishing shot - the one at the start of the movie - rather than it working chronologically, as otherwise it can really take a while to get things going highlight-wise.
HTC has also acknowledged an early bug in the shape of not properly being able to choose the pictures used for the event. While you can go in and select up to 13 to populate the highlight reel, it will still show you items that you didn't want in there, which can ruin the effect.
While we sound rather negative about this new feature, that's not the intention at all - once you know how to create them, the highlight reels and Zoes are a really, really neat feature, and being able to share them to Facebook with a simple tap is nice.
A Zoe is no use if you like to share specific snaps, as you'll need to go into the short video and choose a frame to save as the photo - only have the Zoe idea turned on if you like making highlight reels.
It's just there's a lot more that could be done here to make the whole process more slick, and not eat up so much space on your phone - but then again, if you're after a handset with expandable memory, the HTC One isn't the one you're looking for.
BlinkFeed is HTC's attempt at moving away from the traditional homescreens of old on Android phones and bringing users something that will make the HTC One (and other models in the range) a little more unique.
The feed is a simple interface that borrows heavily from the Live Tiles of Windows Phone, which HTC is a main contributor to. The tiles are various sizes though, which makes things a little less repetitive for scrolling through to 'snack' on content.
The idea is a really sound one: giving a mish-mash of content, be that from curated news feeds on certain topics, videos shared from the HTC Zoe camera app or social network updates from your buddies.
There's an interesting rhythm to the content, as while news is clearly the most 'snackable' of all on offer (rather than hearing what TV programmes your friends are watching at that point) they obviously wane at certain times of the day, meaning you're left with a sea of Twitter updates.
We were initially very sceptical about BlinkFeed when we were told all about it from HTC before the One launched - and a lot of the reservations we had then still pervade.
For instance, the feeds are grouped by topic, and there's no mechanism to select specific outlets that you trust, or to add your own RSS feeds to the mix.
We understand a little why HTC is doing this: to preserve the UI, so sites with very poor pictures won't be filling the blocks on screen with loads of pixelated images. However, users ALWAYS prefer content control over an ideal, so an option to enable this has to be enabled. In fairness to HTC it's promised such functionality will be on the way, but it's never good to launch without the full arsenal.
Similarly, there's no 'learning' involved here either, so you can't vote up or down certain topics, or exclude certain people from being shown on the timeline. Again, we're not too bothered about this latter feature as BlinkFeed is actually pretty adept at getting things right, using data from Facebook and Twitter to see who you interact with regularly. Turning off retweets would be welcome though.
But more interesting than all of that is that BlinkFeed actually works much better than we thought it would. In the few days we had between turning on the phone and it become part of the daily routine, we found that time and again we returned to the feed to just get a feel for what's going on rather than opening the specific Flipboard, Facebook or Twitter apps themselves.
We particularly like the fact that tapping an article will show the picture and text in a reader-style mode, without the need to open the browser. It would be nice if this downloaded more quickly or cached over Wi-Fi (although you can auto-refresh the feed) as sometimes we're left waiting for more than a few seconds to read an article. Otherwise, all ace.
There's a pleasant 'snick' when you pull down the most recent story to refresh the feed, and in a move taken from Apple, you can tap the top of the screen to get back to the top of the list when you've gone a little too deep into your BlinkFeed - something that we only found by accident when we realised that scrolling all the way back up to the top was going to take a LONG time.
The overall UI is incredibly pleasing, not just because of the different sizes of the tiles. The weather and clock at the top of the app are a strong replacement for the traditional widget we're used to from HTC, and offer the information just when you need it. On top of that the slight pull down from the top of the list is a natural gesture to get you to the settings and ability to customise your feed - it's touches like this that show HTC has stepped things up with the One.
This is also the place to search through the current feed, which is actually a hugely valuable too. So often we want to mention something we read, but can't find it instantly. A quick BlinkFeed search will find all mentions of that term in news, TV or among your friends' missives, and brings a more holistic feel to the listing.
Sharing is meant to be part of the experience on the HTC One's BlinkFeed, and while you can put up statuses on Facebook and Twitter directly from the feed (with the 'posted from HTC Sense' tag) sharing news is a whole other issue. Instead of the story it will post a note that says 'HTC News' with no notion of what it's about, and then a link to a cached version of the article.
While that makes it easy for others to read on the mobile, it doesn't help spread the original article properly, which is what sharing is meant to be all about.
It's a shame that BlinkFeed isn't present on the lock screen, but given you can disable the lock screen altogether (a feature we're surprised hasn't been offered on more phones) it's not really needed.
Over time, you'll find your dependence on BlinkFeed will diminish as it becomes a mobile commodity - it's not a bad thing, but because you can't customise it very well at all, it's not very addictive.
The method of choosing categories is overly complex and while we like the results, there's so much more to come here. Also, not being able to turn it off from your home screen (not that we'd want to) is going to irk some users.
Overall, we were very impressed with BlinkFeed compared to the hopes we had for it; there's still a lot to do in terms of making the app more personal, as well as being able to choose and exclude the feeds and friends you get information from, as some news 'sources' are nowhere near such a thing.
However, on multiple occasions we found ourselves reading really interesting articles that we wouldn't have done previously, so for that reason alone we have to give BlinkFeed a big thumbs up as a USP on the HTC One, and look forward to the updates in the future that should address at least some of our wish list.
A big change on the HTC One is the camera: it's 'only' a 4MP sensor. It should be put into context though: the camera has a smaller sensor but much larger pixels to allow in more light, and therefore more data, to make your pictures look that much better on the go.
The Ultrapixel method is one to be applauded, as it's pushing back on the 13MP image sensors that are being crammed into ever-thinner phones these days. HTC has published a blog detailing how this process was conceived, if you're after a bit more Ultrapixel info directly from the horse's mouth.
But what does that mean in reality? Well, you're getting a faster sensor for one thing, and that means you can take more snaps on the go. In fact, it's so fast that we didn't notice that it had fired on the odd occasion, although at other times it would have a bit of a think before saving your picture.
The same range of HTC gizmos are on offer here as seen in the HTC One X - so you can alter the ISO levels, change exposure, contrast and sharpness and also enable HDR mode through the onscreen menu.
HTC clearly wants you to use the front facing camera too - it's been given a spec bump to 2.1MP, making it close in power to the rear of the phone (without all the Ultrapixel jiggery-pokery) and as such takes great snaps. You simply slide your finger up and down the screen to jump between the two cameras as well as enabling the countdown timer if you so wish - it's not a strongly advertised feature, but when you find it, it's really impressive.
The interface for the camera isn't the easiest to use at times, simply thanks to the fact the buttons to hit are so small and there's a great deal of scrolling to alter the effects. There's no intelligent shot mode like that found on theSony Xperia Z and LG Optimus G Pro, but it doesn't matter in many situations.
But if you want to fire the text mode (which alters the contrast of the picture) or get a little closer up to stuff using macro, you'll have to scoot through a few menu options.
It's also annoying that you can't use HDR (high dynamic range, where multiple exposures are captured of the same photo and stitched together) mode when shootings Zoes (more on that in a separate section) as this really improves the pictures no end.
Given you can use video HDR mode as well on the HTC One, we're not sure why it's not an option. HDR is a much better option than it used to be on older HTC phones, as it can manage to process in no time at all now. In fact, we wish it could be enabled by default rather than having to switch it on each time.
So onto the good stuff: is the HTC One camera actually any good given the bold move made on the camera front? The simple answer is yes, photos taken in a variety of scenes look pretty darn nice.
There's a lot of noise thanks to the lower pixel count at times, but the range of light levels you get to shoot in compared to other camera phones is excellent. We were surprised how trigger happy the flash was in auto mode given this ability. The HTC One DESTROYS the Galaxy S3 at low-light ability, as you'll see in the photos below.
And the photos we took looked stunning at times on the phone screen, which HTC says is where most of them stay - which we agree with to a degree. However, on the computer screen things are oddly different, with higher exposure and some loss of detail.
You probably won't look at many photos this way, but if you're thinking of uploading them to Facebook, you probably will get some people checking out your efforts at a larger size.
We've noted some criticism of the HTC Ultrapixel system already, and yes, if you really care about photos on the go, working hard on scene composition all the time and fiddling with the exposure chances are you won't want this phone. Ultrapixels work well enough, but there's definitely a lot more to come from the technology.
Another 'failing' some perceive for the HTC One is that, by default, the phone shoots in 16:9 size, rather than the traditional 4:3. Well, again, if the photos are only ever going to be viewed on the screen on on a social networking site, then it makes sense that they should fill the display. We know there are many good reasons to have photos in the 4:3 format, but the user base of the HTC One is less likely to be bothered by those.
However, for most people they'll be overjoyed with the photo quality on the HTC One. The combination of fast shooting, accurate focus, sharp continuous shooting and a nippy HDR mode, combined with photos that look good on the phone screen, will impress many.
And let's be honest, that's the reason we buy a phone with a camera on it, right?
Although low-res, the 4MP camera picks out detail well
