HTC One M8 review: Not worth it in 2018

The HTC One M8 is now four years old, and to be honest, it shows. Although the external design has aged beautifully, if you buy one today you’ll find the performance sluggish and the camera a disappointment.

The follow-ups, fortunately, have all been solid improvements. While the HTC M9 was steady-as-she-goes, the HTC 10 was a great handset, and the U11 Plus was even better. Obviously the U11 Plus is the one to choose, given it has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset as the fastest phones around, but if your budget only goes so far, the HTC 10 remains a solid choice.

The original HTC One M8 review from 2014 continues below

HTC One M8 review: Design and build quality

It certainly still makes a striking first impression, and the One M8 is one of the few Android phones that can truly compete with Apple in terms of design. The M8 is almost 90% metal, with the few slivers of plastic left only being used to ensure the best possible reception for the internal antennae.

The curved back fits your hand comfortably and the brushed metal finish on our metal grey review unit glints in the light, making no mistake that the phone is made from metal rather than plastic.

HTC One M8 review: Display

The HTC One M8 is slightly larger than the original HTC One, to make room for the bigger 5in LCD display. Both phones have the same 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, which means pixel density has dropped from 469ppi on the 4.7in original to 441ppi here, but in practice, it’s still impossible to see individual pixels.

The M8 looks incredibly sharp; even the tiniest of fonts are still legible and images are incredibly detailed. Image quality is fantastic, with natural colours and pure bright whites, along with impressively deep blacks for an LCD panel.

With a peak brightness of 491cd/m2 and an sRGB colour spectrum coverage of 93.7%, the M8 is among the best LCD screens we’ve seen in a smartphone, rivalling the iPhone 5s in terms of brightness and contrast.

HTC One M8 review: Sound

HTC’s front-facing BoomSound speakers are a great match to the beautiful display, and make watching YouTube videos a joy; they are impressively loud, but also very clear, with no signs of distortion or clipping when pushed to their limits.

There’s even a small amount of bass, so you won’t instantly need to reach for a pair of headphones when someone sends you the latest viral video.

HTC One M8 review: Camera

It’s at the back where you’ll find the biggest change though; the Duo Camera is such an important feature that it almost deserves a review in itself. It uses the same 4-megapixel ‘Ultrapixel’ main sensor as the original HTC One, which has an oversized 1/3in sensor and larger 2.0um pixels to capture more light information than its competitors.

However, this time it’s paired with a second, depth-sensing camera. Used together, they let you choose the point of focus in an image even after you’ve pressed the shutter button, or add stylish bokeh effects to your images. Sadly optical image stabilisation has been cut to make room for this feature.

Because it uses hardware, rather than software calculations to assign depth values to your images, the M8 is much faster than competing smartphone’s efforts. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and the LG G Pro 2 both take five shots at once then stitch them together, giving you five possible points of focus but taking several seconds per shot.

With the HTC we could take three or four different shots in the same amount of time. In practice, the effects make portraits and macro shots stand out, but sometimes refocusing an image would blur areas we wanted to keep in focus; there’s no way to select the strength of the effect, so you’re stuck with what the phone chooses for you.

In terms of picture quality, we were worried that by sticking with the same sensor as last year’s model the M8 would suffer from the same issues – namely a lack of detail when taking wider landscapes and a lot of noise.

In our outdoor test shots, the M8 captured plenty of detail in the foreground and middle distance, but objects in the far distance weren’t nearly as well defined. Zooming in revealed smudgy details and a fair amount of pixellation. We also noticed a tendency for the sensor to over-expose scenes, with light sources bleeding into an image leaving unwanted bright spots.

If you’re more of a night person, however, you’ll love the M8’s low-light abilities. Moving inside, it captured plenty of facial detail when shooting portraits; it was also quick to focus and quick to save each shot, which could make it the perfect nightclub companion.

It also has a True Tone flash, which automatically adjusts the intensity and colour of the twin LEDs to produce more accurate low-light images. In our still life tests, it helped create a more even colour balance than other smartphones.

^ U Focus lets you selectively blur parts of an image

^ Tapping anywhere on screen will refocus the image, in less than a second

^ Outdoors, the M8 captures plenty of detail in the foreground, although colours are muted

^ In comparison, Nokia’s Lumia 1020 takes more vibrant photos

^ High Dynamic Range (HDR) effects are very strong, with no way to tone them down. You also lose refocusing abilities when using any mode other than Auto

^ In low light, the M8 did a great job at preserving details, although noise is still visible once you zoom in

You can control white balance, ISO and shutter speed to negate some of this effect, saving your settings as a specific ‘lens’ that can be called up from the menus at any time. There are also a huge number of filters, effects and tools to choose from once you’ve taken a snap too, including the clever Dimensionalise mode which uses the depth data to add a 3D effect, where tilting the phone moves the image around. It’s impossible to share these images online and preserve the effect, but it’s a nice touch that can add a bit more interest to your photos. HTC’s custom Camera app is sensibly laid out and very responsive, making it ideal for spur of the moment photography.

HTC One M8 review: Software

Note: The One M8 can now be freely upgraded to Android v6.0 Marshmallow.

The HTC One M8 is now available with Android 5 Lollipop after the firm speedily released updates to its HTC Sense Android skin. Those already familiar with the features of Android 5 will be pleased to know that most of Google’s additions have made it past HTC’s developers and work largely as they would have on a vanilla install of Android 5.

Phone, Messages, Mail and the browser are all unique to HTC, and while there’s nothing particularly wrong with them, they don’t really do anything special that makes us want to stop using Hangouts, Gmail, Outlook and Google Chrome for our daily tasks.

Multitasking has been improved, with a tap of the window selection button (officially called Overview, below, right) revealing your recent apps in a card-style list that’s easy to quickly scroll through. This area now has a built-in Google search bar, so if you were using a widget on one of your home screens for Google searches, you can save some space and delete it but still have easy access to it. It’s here you can also “pin” your apps: this allows you to lock your phone to one app for when friends or family are using your phone.

The notifications pane has been overhauled(above, left), with the slide-down pane now a translucent colour instead of opaque. Slide down from the top of the screen with one finger and you’ll get your notifications. Slide again and you’ll get customisable quick-access options such as Wi-Fi, silent mode and mobile data. These can be added and removed simply by tapping the edit button. This area is much easier to use than the stock Android 5 version and we think it’s a big improvement.

From the notifications area you can also access the Settings menu, which is largely the same as before. The one enhancement here is that you can now search for settings (above, middle) by typing instead of hunting around the menus for an option you almost never use.

HTC’s own-brand media apps for music, photos (below, left), radio and TV (below, middle) are largely unchanged, but they remain easy to use and handy for those who need them. The TV app is a unique addition, as it lets you use the IR blaster built into the top of the phone to control your home cinema system. It learns the IR signals based your brand of TV, set-top box or AV amplifier, so most models should be supported. You can also use it to check TV listings for Freeview, Virgin, BT Vision or Sky packages.

Blinkfeed, HTC’s news and social network aggregator, Blinkfeed (above, right), is still present on the leftmost homescreen if you choose to have it enabled. It picks up content from suggested websites, RSS feeds and your social networks, collating them into one picture-heavy list.

The HTC One M8 employs a dedicated low-power processor for gesture launch controls. This lets you double tap or swipe the screen to wake the phone and take you to the homescreen or Blinkfeed.

These work well, but we found ourselves turning them off because we found sliding the phone into a tight pocket with a thumb or finger on the screen would activate a gesture, switching the phone on and causing awkward pocket dials.Whether this affects you will depend on how you use your phone and which pockets you put it into; but it was annoying enough for us to want to stop using it.

HTC One M8 review: Storage

HTC has also added a microSD card slot to the HTC One M8, letting you add up to 128GB of extra capacity to the 16GB or 32GB of internal storage (depending on the model).

Unfortunately, Google’s revised permissions in Android 4.4 make it a bit harder to edit or move the files saved to external storage, but anyone that uses their smartphone as an MP3 jukebox or portable video library will still appreciate its inclusion.

HTC One M8 review: Performance

The M8 is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 801 processor, which seems to have made its way into almost every flagship smartphone in 2014 so far. The quad-core chip runs at 2.3GHz and is paired with 2GB of RAM, which translates to incredibly fast performance. Even with Sense 6 running on top of Android 4.4 KitKat, the phone felt incredibly responsive, loading apps quickly and drawing image-heavy websites like BBC News and The Guardian with no noticeable lag or slowdown.

This translates to impressive benchmark scores too; the M8 managed 662ms in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, making it the fastest Android-powered smartphone we’ve fully tested to date when it comes to web browsing. The Adreno 330 GPU is also more than adequate for playing any game in the Google Play Store today; it played demanding 3D titles like Real Racing 3 smoothly and scored 20,465 in the 3DMark Ice Storm test.

HTC One M8 review: Battery

We expected this power to come at the expense of battery life. The HTC One M8 has a 2,600mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the original One, but the larger screen and faster chipset could have easily meant less time between recharges.

Thankfully, the M8 proved to be a frugal performer, lasting 13 hours 28 minutes in our video rundown test. That’s a significant improvement over the original One, which lasted a mediocre 8 hours 32 minutes, but still falls behind Sony’s Xperia Z2, which lasted more than 16 hours.

HTC has added two battery saving modes, which we’ll be testing throughout the week to see how battery life improves when the CPU is kept in check.

HTC One M8 review: Accessories

HTC launched a set of official cases and covers for the M8 alongside the phone itself. The first is the Dot View case, a flip cover made from rubberised plastic with an entirely perforated front. It protects the phone’s four corners with hard plastic bumpers and keeps the screen free of scratches when in a pocket or bag. The cover sits flat on the screen and flops closed under its own weight when opened flat on a table.

The really clever bit is how the screen adapts once the phone recognises you’re using the case. Whereas a double tap would wake the phone by itself, here it shines the time, weather and any notifications through the perforated front cover to save you having to open it. You can also use the power button, which has the same effect as a double tap.

When you get a call you can swipe up to answer or swipe down to ignore. If you pick up, another swipe when you’ve finished the call will hang up. You can also dismiss alarms by swiping down, without having to open the cover or unlock the phone.

Text messages, missed calls and emails are all represented by Lite Brite-style icons. The screen is bright enough that it’s easy to read in the daylight, and it switches off automatically after a few seconds to save battery power.

It’s a useful feature if you’re constantly checking your phone for missed messages or the time, but the front cover can get in the way when taking pictures; if you’ll primarily be using the phone for photos you may want to find a bumper case or gel cover instead.

The Dot View case is available in black, blue, green, orange and red. You can buy one from MobiCity, although it costs a whopping £35. That’s a lot to ask for a plastic case with no internal electronics, however much protection it provides.

HTC One M8 review: Verdict

HTC has played it safe with the HTC One M8; it isn’t a radical departure from the HTC One, but it made all the necessary upgrades in order to compete with other flagship handsets in 2014. It improves on the original in every.

It improves on the original in every way, and is right up there with the Samsung Galaxy S5, but now you’d be better off buying the OnePlus 2 for £249 rather than saddling yourself with an old handset. The OnePlus 2 not only has a faster, more powerful processor, but it also has a vastly superior camera and double the amount of storage, making it a much better use of your money when buying SIM-free.