HTC One M7 (2013) review

When it was launched around a year ago, the HTC One was a revelation. In a sea of plastic smartphones, its gorgeous metal body made it stand out compared to the competition from Samsung’s Galaxy S3. The Galaxy S4, another lump of plastic, was then followed by the plastic-fantastic Galaxy S5, and even Sony’s experiments with glass in its Z series smartphones couldn’t derail the One as the handset of choice for the phone design connoisseur. The One has now been replaced with the One (m8), however, with HTC renaming the original to the HTC One (M7) to better differentiate the two handsets. The newer model is another all-metal beauty, but has a faster CPU, streamlined design and unique Duo depth-sensing camera – so is the original model still worth your time?

Most smartphones drop rapidly in price in the months after launch, but the HTC One proved highly resilient. While the Samsung Galaxy S4 had dropped from around £500 to £350 over the course of a year, the HTC One, which was also around £500 when it came out, had only dropped to £414. Now the One (m8) is out, prices are dropping further, but we still can’t find the original One for less than £330.

This makes it pretty expensive for a handset which can’t match the latest phones in our benchmarks, for all its other qualities. However, it’s still around £130 cheaper than the One (m8) SIM-free, and significantly less on contract; you can get the One for free on a £26.50-per-month contract through Vodafone, complete with 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of 3G data, but you’ll need to find £33 a month to get its successor.

You won’t have to worry about buying a software dead-end, either; HTC has pledged to bring Android 5.0 Lollipop to the One M7 within 90 days of receiving the source code from Google, meaning it should get an update no later than the 15th of January if you buy a SIM-free handset. Handsets locked to a particular network may be a few weeks (or even months) behind, depending how long it takes for Lollipop to pass the respective certification processes.

If you want a metal phone but can’t stretch to the One (m8), then the One could be the phone for you; just bear in mind that by the time your contract ends the One could be looking rather old hat.

First impressions are great. The One is still a gorgeous phone, and we think it wipes the floor with the Sony Xperia Z. The combination of metal rear, bevelled metal edges and edge-to-edge screen are class itself, and make the Xperia Z feel square and tacky, despite its glass rear. The HTC One’s curved back also makes it comfortable to hold – a minor downside is that it’s tricky to type when it’s lying flat on a desk.

The metal-backed HTC One is a thing of beauty, and even out-classes the Sony Xperia Z’s glass chassis

We were also seriously impressed with the screen. It’s a 4.7in model with a Full HD 1,920×1,080 resolution, leading to a huge pixel density figure of 468ppi. When compared side-by-side with the Xperia Z’s display, we preferred the HTC One’s screen, thanks to its superb contrast. It has incredibly deep blacks (for an LCD at least), and our test photos showed rich, vibrant colours and plenty of shadow detail.

The Xperia Z had the advantage when it came to looking at web pages, however; its slightly larger 5in display meant text was ever-so-slightly larger and easier to read when web pages were fully zoomed out, helped by brilliant white backgrounds, compared to the very slight grey tinge on the HTC One.

Last year it was 720p, now Full HD 1080p screens are becoming the norm on top-end smartphones

The HTC One wins out when it comes to web browsing performance. It has a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, and completed our Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in a super-fast 1,123ms. This is far faster than the 1,890ms we saw from the Xperia Z, but we think much of this is down to the speed of the Xperia Z’s browser. For comparison, we ran the same test using the fast Dolphin browser, and the HTC One remained ahead of the Xperia Z with a score of 1,120ms compared to 1,357ms.

This difference was borne out in our subjective web browsing tests. Both phones rendered graphics heavy web pages at a similar speed, but when zoomed in and panning around a web page, the Xperia Z would stutter when coming across a large image – a problem we didn’t have with the HTC One.

Luckily, HTC has provided a huge 2,300mAh battery to power the fast processor and bright screen. The handset managed 8h 32m in our continuous video playback test, which is a strong result and bodes well for all-day battery life.

If we have one major gripe with the HTC One, it’s is lack of expandable storage – unless you buy the top-end 64GB model, you could quickly find yourself running out of space if you take a lot of photos and video, or use your handset as an MP3 player.

HTC is preparing to rectify this problem with an updated model which includes a removable rear cover, much like the HTC One Max. Known as the HTC One 802w in China, where it’s already on sale, it will simply be called the HTC One Dual SIM here in the UK.

It will still be made of aluminium, rather than plastic like the HTC One Mini, but include a microSD card slot as well as twin SIM card slots.

This is somewhat rare for the UK, as dual SIM handsets typically aren’t very popular with customers. They are much more popular in developing nations, but twin SIM card slots could still be a welcome inclusion for anyone that wants to keep work and home life separate without carrying two phones.

If you’ve been put off by the HTC One’s limited storage you may want to wait a little longer – although no release window has been confirmed, you can pre-order the handset for £495 through the HTC Store.

Unfortunately, you have to make a choice between extra storage and faster internet speeds, as the dual-SIM model doesn’t support 4G LTE networks. If you live in an area without 4G coverage, however, it could be an easier decision.

An Android smartphone can be beautifully designed and have an amazing screen and top-notch chipset, but none of this will make any difference if the software is rubbish. HTC sails closer to the wind than most on this front, as it heavily customises Android with its latest Sense interface.

Sense has always divided opinion, but this time HTC has really pushed the boat out. Running on top of Android 4.1.2 is Sense 5.0, and with it comes the end of the traditional Android homescreen, with its mix of widgets and icons.

Instead, you get what HTC calls BlinkFeed. This consists of a rolling grid of tiles, containing information aggregated from various news websites and your social media feeds. You can add all the major social media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr, but the choice of news websites is quite narrow; you get the Guardian, the Independent and Reuters for news, and CNET and TechCrunch for technology. For those used to getting their content from a wide variety of sources the BlinkFeed selection will seem very narrow.

BlinkFeed replaces the standard Android homescreen, and shows you news feeds and social networks in chronological order

It looks like the BlinkFeed needs to be specifically supported by the corresponding news outlet or website, so it remains to be seen whether overstretched publishers will be keen to support yet another platform. We found BlinkFeed more useful for keeping an eye on our Twitter and Facebook feeds, though, and often used Twitter links to find news stories anyway.

BlinkFeed is a clever idea which is in tune with how many people actually use their smartphones; to keep an eye on what’s happening in the world and among people they know. Of course, if you prefer to use your Android smartphone to check your calendar widget at a glance on your homescreen before opening your email, you will most likely hate it.

The app tray is a smooth-scrolling lovely bit of design

The standard Android homescreen isn’t completely dead and gone, though. Swiping right from the BlinkFeed takes you to a standard Android homescreen with space for the usual apps and widgets, and you can add up to three more screens if you need more room.

Most importantly, you can set a standard Android home screen as your default screen (the one that appears when you unlock the handset). BlinkFeed is still there, sitting to the left of the default screen, while your other home screens are off to the right.

Meanwhile, pressing the icon in the middle of the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen takes you to the app tray, which is rather lovingly designed; we like the way it scrolls smoothly through pages of icons rather than continuously, as this makes it easier to keep track of where you are.

Although the HTC One shipped with Android 4.1, the company has announced that it is updating the OS to Android 4.4 and Sense 6.0. The update is ongoing and HTC has also confirmed that the original HTC One will get Android L 5.0 when it launches later thsi year.

HTC has made a big deal about music playback ever since it first stuck a Beats by Dr. Dre logo on one of its phones, and the One is no exception. It has what HTC calls BoomSound – a pair of stereo speakers at the top and bottom of the phone – or left and right when watching video in landscape orientation.

Amazingly, these speakers sound reasonably good. It’s the best sound quality we’ve ever heard from a phone, but the bar is set pretty low. The speakers are loud and produce audio with some definition, but the sound is certainly harsh with a definite high-end emphasis, but that’s to be expected from speakers this size. We’re also not convinced that putting loud speakers in a phone is a great idea, as most bus journeys we take are hellish enough as it is.

The One also has built-in twin microphones, which HTC says are designed for recording gigs. We didn’t have any upcoming gigs during our time with the phone, so we decided to simulate one instead. We played back a Crowded House gig from YouTube on our PC with our speakers turned up high, and recorded the result on the HTC One.

When we played back the recording and compared it to the original, the concert sounded clear with little distortion, but there was a marked lack of bass compared to the original. You can compare the original video clip and the version recorded on the HTC One in the two YouTube clips below.

The original Crowded House recording…

And the same clip recorded with the HTC One’s video camera

As if replacing the Android homescreen wasn’t radical enough, HTC has also gone against popular convention with the One’s camera. Instead of racing to fit as many megapixels as possible on a tiny sensor, which is normally a recipe for huge amounts of noise, HTC has made a sensor using what it calls Ultrapixels. These are larger-than-average pixels, which means that instead of having 12 or more megapixels on a small sensor, the HTC One only has four megapixels.

This should mean that there’s less interference as light hitting one of the sensor’s pixels scatters onto those around it, which is a key contributor to noise in digital images. HTC also claims the camera lets in 300% more light than a standard smartphone model; we’re not sure how the company came to that figure, but the 1/3in sensor, F2.0 lens and optical image stabilisation all bode well.

Shake-free indoor shots with little noise indoors from the HTC One – click to enlarge

The Xperia Z can’t manage the same level of detail, but colours are marginally more accurate

We were impressed with the HTC One’s indoor shots. We saw camera-shake free images under poor indoor lighting, with little visible noise or noise reduction. However, we did find colours rather muted. The Sony Xperia Z’s camera captured shots with more vibrant colours, but they didn’t have the same level of detail as those from the HTC One.

The phone also picked up a large amount of detail in very dark conditions – far more than the Xperia Z could manage. There was one problem; a light source in our test scene caused artefacts elsewhere in the image, which is a problem we’ve also seen on the iPhone 5. We suspect this is due to internal reflections in the camera’s lens.

Under very low light, the HTC One (top) picks up an impressive amount of detail compared to the Sony Xperia Z (bottom). However, artefacts are visible to the right of the monkey’s ear

When we went outside, the One’s camera was again impressive in some ways and less so in others. The camera captured plenty of detail in the medium distance, and shots were much sharper than on the Sony Xperia Z. However, once again we found the One’s colours to be rather muted, and shots from the Xperia Z were both more vibrant and with more true-to-life colours.

The HTC One (left) produces sharper photos, but the Sony Xperia Z (right) has more accurate colours

However, when taking shots outdoors we noticed the limitations of the HTC One’s low megapixel count. Photos were fine at short and medium distances, but detail tails off significantly in the distance, leading to smudgy details and pixilation.

Pixilation is evident in the HTC One’s shots (left) when you zoom in, showing the limitations of its 4-megapixel sensor

Like all smartphone cameras, then, the HTC One’s model is a compromise. If you mainly use your phone for taking indoor shots of friends and family, you’ll definitely appreciate the impressive low-light performance. It’s also fine for outdoor snaps, but if you like your smartphone to be a replacement for a compact camera for holiday snaps, you’re better off with choosing one with a higher-resolution sensor such as the Sony Xperia Z, or even maybe the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4.

HTC has pulled off a blinder with the HTC One. It’s a gorgeous phone with a beautiful screen, and we think it’s a more desirable handset than the Sony Xperia Z. The low-light capablities of its camera are a big plus against rival devices while its sleek metal chassis is only surpassed by the newer and more expensive HTC One (m8). All said, the HTC One is now quite an old phone, despite only being released in March 2013.

Newer Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3 have newer and faster components, but if you don’t feel the urge to always upgrade to the latest phone then the HTC One is still an excellent handset. HTC has also promised to update the phone with Android 5.0 L, which will keep it feeling new and fresh. If you want a seriously classy phone and your budget doesn’t stretch to the HTC One (m8), then the original HTC One is a great choice.