The HTC One has a lot of people excited. The new phone was released on Tuesday, Feb. 19 and it looks great.
But despite the beautiful curved backside and sleek, thin lines on the new handset, some reviewers and commenters are having their doubts.
There were glowing reviews and skeptical ones. Gizmodo loved the phone, calling it "exactly how you're supposed to build a phone." CNET said that HTC's lack of "marketing muscle" may doom the phone in the face of brand juggernauts like Apple and Samsung.
The actual hardware was a hangup for some. The One comes with a non-removable battery. One Gizmodo commenter said "it makes the whole phone disposable as the battery ages." The HTC One is also missing an SD card slot, which will make the phone much less desirable for developers.
The phone's camera is also worth noting. The HTC One features a 4-megapixel camera, half the megapixels of the iPhone 5 and comparable Android devices. HTC claims that this facilitates low-light shooting (fewer pixels on the same-sized screen means bigger pixels means more captured light). The choice of 4 megapixels also shows a company consciously staying out of the "megapixel rat race" and focusing on quality over quantity, although side-by-side comparisons with the iPhone 5 don't show any dramatic difference in low-light shooting quality.
The HTC One's interface also features the new "BlinkFeed," which allows for "information snacking." Basically, BlinkFeed is like an RSS feed on the home screen of your phone. HTC claims this is best used when standing in line or waiting for food, to quickly entertain without having to boot up an app. While this is a novel idea, why encourage a subprime experience instead of more "nutrious" information gathering? Do we really need to "snack" while wasting time on our phones?
As Ars Technica points out, "the BlinkFeed seems to be for people who don't care a whole lot about what they put into their brains, as long as it sates the desire to be entertained."
