The HTC One (M8) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Joshua Ho on March 26, 2014 7:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Mobile
- HTC One
Video
Since the rear facing camera only has a 4MP sensor resolution, there’s no support for 4K video recording - the maximum supported video resolution is 1080p. The available video modes are: 1080p30 (20Mbps High Profile H.264), 1080p60 (also 20Mbps High Profile), slow motion (720p) pand HDR video.
The camera preview in the video modes is pretty good. I noticed some dropped frames when recording 1080p30 but nothing substantial. The preview window when recording HDR video definitely dropped frames, to the point that it was fairly distracting. The resulting video itself was consistent in frame rate but not smoothly responsive to changes in dynamic range.
Extreme Power Saving Mode
This is a feature that seems to be all the rage these days. HTC now includes support for an Extreme Power Saving Mode that can be manually or automatically set to turn on when your battery reaches 20%, 10% or 5% remaining capacity. In the Extreme Power Saving mode you’re locked out from all but five apps (phone, messages, HTC Mail, HTC Calendar and Calculator ). The display brightness is clamped to 170 nits and max CPU/GPU frequency is limited to 1.2GHz and 320MHz, respectively. All four cores remain capable of being plugged in. Background data is also restricted - only SMS/MMS and phone calls will come in automatically. Emails need to be manually refreshed, and all other apps are quit upon entering the mode. The sensor hub is powered down, which disables features like the Motion Gestures and Pedometer.
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The Extreme Power Saving Mode features a large, simplified UI. The 5-inch display is evenly divided into large touch targets for each of the five apps as well as a button to exit the mode. The notification shade is disabled as well. You’ll still get alerts for things like open WiFi networks, but you’ll have no way to join/dismiss them while in this mode.
HTC claims up to 15 hours of standby time on the new One when running in Extreme Power Saving Mode (with 5% battery remaining). I still haven’t devised a good battery life test for these modes but I plan on measuring screen on standby time as soon as I get an opportunity to do so.
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Mugur - Friday, March 28, 2014 - link
What I hate about the onscreen buttons is when you are using the phone in landscape mode and they take a lot of real estate of the screen... So I think I will stay another year with my "old" One (M7) - unless they cannot replace/repair under warranty my broken focus of the camera...martinpetrov1568 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Anand u say it is difficult and takes multiple exposures to create a photo such as the duo camera, but it is not. A normal photo with no blur from the depth of field simply needs a gaussian blur filter along with a soft brush in photoshop. I can do it, along with anyone else in this planet in 3 minutes tops. I'm sure there is a mobile application for this toosevenmack - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
But most people don't have Photoshop, Martin, and many of the photo apps out there focus on other kinds of filter (including ones that change colors) instead of Gaussian blur. So Anand is correct that it can be hard for the average person without graphic design software to do.NesuD - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Double tap will put the screen back to sleep but only when the phone is in a locked state.NesuD - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Been using mine for a day and a half now and everything about it has impressed me so far.djw39 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Reading this review on chrome for Android and the aspect ratio of the still pictures is offwillis936 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
It looks quite nice but aside from the bump in screen size, battery and CPU I don't see much in the way of improvements. There are small things like faster radios and of course everything software related and that rather interesting dual camera trick, but for the most part it's just the generational gimmicks. All of this is well and good but the unnoticed significant regression in display quality and loss of OIS is crucial. OIS in particular. That's one of the best things you can put on a phone camera and just disappeared from the nicest looking android.marcn404 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Using a pair of stereo images, a depth map can be created. UFocus probably uses this depth map to blur part of an image which is at a certain depth. That's why in the picture above, the table is in focus as well as the main subject, since both are at the same depth. That's how it should be with a real camera, so this shouldn't be regarded as a limitation.ccd2 - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
My best guess is that the market is going to move away from "kitchen sink" phones like the S5 or even this phone. I think market, particularly for premium phones, will start to break into niches. Some people like larger phones, others may place a premium on the camera, still others may want a business orientation to their phone or want the phone to emphasize entertainment. As an example, as a Note 3 owner, I could care less about the S5. But this is my second Note phone and am leaning towards getting another Note when the time comes.chang3d - Thursday, March 27, 2014 - link
Your cellular band support chart on the front page for Sprint is missing some information. Sprint's model does support the same GSM/WCDMA bands that the Verizon model has.