With the myriad of Android smartphones on display at MWC, and the HTC One having just been announced to lots of hype, my expectation was fairly high. Unfortunately, I came away from testing it feeling very underwhelmed, especially as there were some much better phones on offer at the show.
The design was unoriginal. A certain phone from a certain company in Cupertino was released earlier, and it’s clear that HTC was influenced in some way. Having said that, it was made out of aluminum (I wonder where that idea came from?), so it felt quite well built.
The performance (the most important thing) was disappointing. Playing some fairly graphics intensive games, it didn’t match up with a lot of other smartphones, for instance the Huawei P2 or the Xperia Z. That’s not to saying it was abysmal, however there is much better out there.
I also feel that HTC invested rather pointlessly in the screen. It’s got a higher resolution than a Retina display, but it doesn’t make one ounce of difference. To humans, both will appear exactly the same, and HTC should’ve focused on improving the performance/Android optimisation.
To finish on a high note, the camera (despite only being 4MP) and sound were pretty good. The latter was heavily played up by HTC at the event.
The HTC One was average at best, and if I’ll remember anything from my visit to their booth, it will be the impressive parkour demonstration.
