Jealously eyeing up new phones from afar is something of a South African pastime, and one of those we’ve been most eagerly awaiting is HTC’s new flagship, the One (M8). If you’ve been looking at overseas reviews, fear not. It was launched here last week, and is currently on sale from both Vodacom and MTN for a recommended price of R11 119.
And we’ve finally had chance to get hands-on with one. It’s sitting on my desk and about to be most thoroughly reviewed.
The first thing we noticed the first time we got our paws on the HTC One was the incredible attention to detail in both the design and assembly of the phone. Gone is the polycarbonate inserts from last year’s HTC One and One Mini with aluminium making up almost the entire build of the new M8 model. The gunmetal gray colour of our review unit is broken only by the HTC logo, the dual camera setup with its accompanying dual flash and two slim bands which house the wireless connection aerials and the noise cancelling microphone.
The back is curved with the edges having been rounded to sit comfortably in your hand while you are holding it and sit comfortably it does. We tested the HTC One with our motley crew of journalists with hand sizes varying from the petite hands of some of out female staff to the frying pan sized mits of our gaming editor Deon. One rather poignant reaction was that the HTC One is a goldilocks phone, not too big or too small for anyone but rather, just the right size.
Moving to the front of the phone the BoomSound stereo speakers that we loved from last year’s HTC One return sans the (recently acquired by Apple) Beats Audio logo that was present on HTC phones past. The speakers are embedded behind a pair of drilled speaker grills and sound absolutely fantastic with all manner of audio. Bass is deeper that we would expect from smartphone speakers and there is solid performance in both mid-range and treble sounds.
The display is a full HD 5 inch Super LCD which, at 441 pixels per inch, produces crisp clear text and great colours even in direct sunlight. The 4 megapixel ‘Ultrapixel’ camera has been drastically improved from the one used in last years model with fast focusing and shutter response from hat we can already see. We’re going to be putting it through its paces to find out how good it really has become during our full review.
From the outside the HTC One (M8) looks to be a phenomenal phone that could very well lead the pack, however we’re not putting the crown on just yet. Check out the gallery below to get a closer view of the phone.
