HTC One M8: Reg man takes spin in Alfa Romeo of smartphone world If phone companies were car manufacturers, HTC would be Alfa Romeo to Samsung's BMW. Customers look at the HTC One, see how it matches the Galaxy spec for spec, how it's that little bit more interesting and significantly nicer as a physical object... and then buy the Samsung anyway. HTC One M8 The road less travelled? HTC's …
...'cause what we really need is something to differentiate us from the rest. How about a site that people can upload photos/videos and share them?
Genius!! I wonder how many (wo)man years were wasted developing that pointless system that's clearly doomed to failure before anyone's even heard of it.
MyPhoneExplorer struggles on Android 4.3 onwards - been using it since 4.2 on a HTC Desire Z. Main issue for me is it duplicating the address book on your phone or not syncing it properly. It's one of the complaints on their forum but one they seem little interested in fixing (having said that it is free).
" b) syncs to the PC/Mac without any cloud nonsense in the middle"
You call it nonsense, I call it a very useful feature. 2 phones, 2 tablets, 2 laptops, all with fully synched calendars without having to be anywhere near each other.
If I had to be in the same room to synch them all, I'd be looking for another solution.
Absolutely disagree on the remote control aspect - I use the thing constantly on my One. The guide is great and the faves/reminders setup is really good, simple integration.
Also I can turn off the screen in the estate agent window opposite each evening after work and turn the footy volume up in the pub when the barmaid leaves the music on.
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That struck me as a poor bit of reviewing; re. IR it simply says "But really it is something that must have just seemed to be good idea at the time. It isn't."
So why isn't it a good idea? Doesn't work at all? Limited range of devices covered? Lousy UI? Reviewer just feels daft pointing a phone at the TV?
Without a few more specifics we're really not being given enough to go on.
HTC == Alfa Romeo - idiosyncratic, often stylish, powerful, but doesn't support you when you really need it.
Samsung == Ford - mass produced, plasticky, dull but dependable, everyone has one. No-one really likes or dislikes them, no-one really cares. Everyone would choose something else if they had more money or taste.
Apple == BMW - well built, recognisable, performant, quite stylish, mass-upmarket, but neither as exclusive, nor as powerful, nor as good looking as their owners think.
All the phones make and receive calls, all the cars will get you up and down the A1.
HTC == Alfa Romeo - idiosyncratic, often stylish, powerful, but doesn't support you when you really need it....
All the phones make and receive calls, all the cars will get you up and down the A1
Except the Alpha, which will be stuck at the garage with yet another electrical or electronic problem. However, as you own an Alpha, you expect this, so will be happy to drive your spare old banger until it is fixed.
An apt analogy, given that I've had a very weak signal on THREE different HTC One's, which were on the same network as a friend's GS4 that had full bars. (Why three? There was a cabbage soup incident, and a rocking chair incident).
Also, I thought the M8 had a 5" screen? It's the original model that has a 4.7" screen as the article reports.
Every Alfa owner I have known has loved the cars but ditched them as they spent more time getting fixed.
Then again having seen other peoples suffering with HTC phones possibly it s a suitable analogy.
Although my wife and I both had the original HTC Desire and really liked them but between the poor update policy (and sense bugs that where never fixed) and the final insulting android release that didn't leave enough space to install even the most minimal apps it was time to switch.
More SAAB than Alfa?
Having owned a HTC Desire and drive a 10yr old Saab 95 I have to take issue with your analogy. The Saab just keeps on going. You can't say that for the Desire. I threw it in the recycling bin a few days after the warranty ran out. It kept going wrong. first the screen than the touch. Even a replacement phone failed to solve it. Then the security update to Android 2.3 arrived and wiped my apps.
Finally, when the warranty expired I tried yo load Cyanogen into it. Result was a totally bricked phone.
The Saab on the other hand has done 175K miles and never broker down. The only time it has been off the road was when I put it in a ditch after hitting some black ice in 2009. Saab cars a dull and boring. Alfas are broooom brooom go-go machines between their increasingly frequent visits to dealers.
Every Alfa owner I have known has loved the cars but ditched them as they spent more time getting fixed.
Yup, typical Italian engineering - great to look at, but falls apart rapidly. Reminds me of when my Italian wife asked her Mum what brand of washing machine to buy. "Indesit, they last very well, a couple of years at least" was the answer. So I bought a Bosch, since I expect a washing machine to last a bit longer than a couple of years ...
Rather than rely on "bloke down the pub" information, let's look at what people who actually own Alfa Romeos experience. These are MOT failure rates for Alfa and its competitors ( Figures from the very useful MOTAngel: http://www.motangel.co.uk/discover-mot-fail-rate/ ). Lower is better.
Failure rates for 2011-registered cars, C Segment:
FIAT Bravo: 28.21%
Skoda Octavia: 21.22%
VW Golf: 20.2%
Ford Focus: 19.88%
Opel Astra: 18.68%
BMW 1: 18.11%
Audi A3 : 17.55%
Honda Civic: 16.48%
KIA Cee'd: 15.05%
Mercedes A: 13.85%
Toyota Auris: 10.5%
Alfa Romeo Giulietta: 7.89%
.
B-segment cars (2011 reg):
Mini Cooper: 60% (yes, sixty)
FIAT Punto: 22.22%
Ford Fiesta: 19.77%
VW Polo: 17.72%
Skoda Fabia: 13.08%
Alfa Romeo Mito: 7.89%
Aww, with both Samsung and Sony going waterproof I was hoping HTC would too (and include wireless charging as that seems a no-brainer to go with the waterproofing).
My OneX is getting close to needing to be updated and the Xperia Z1 work have handed out kind of shows that up, however I'm not sold on Sony's UI and would like to stick with HTC, having used sense since the Windows Mobile days I'm kinda used to it ;)
That (and for me personally using LCD instead of OLED screens) has been the biggest problem with their phones.
I also like the trend towards smarter screens - these phone with their huge screens need protecting but in a way that minimises the impact on usability. There's a way to go on this but it's nice to see work is being done: differentiation is possible.
Unfortunately, now google has managed to break most use cases for the SD card with the WRITE_MEDIA_STORAGE idiocy in kitkat. This article on android police - http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/02/17/external-blues-google-has-brought-big-changes-to-sd-cards-in-kitkat-and-even-samsung-may-be-implementing-them/ - explains well what happened, if you ignore the apologetic last paragraph.
Apple == Jaguar, fast enough, very stylish - but you still know you are more stylish than anything German because its a JAAAG.
Android == BMC in the 70's, miss-match of companies spouting badge engineered products, you know they were made in a horrible place with cheap plastic. Its going to break down, get hacked and generally make your life a misery. Even the expensive model has the underpinnings of the cheap model.
It's far from useless. I have it on the LG G2 (which, by the way, this review has made me even more glad to have chosen), and it's so handy that I get annoyed at absent-mindedly trying to do the same on the tablet. Phone on the arm of the chair in the evening, or on the desk at work, and want to check time or whatever? Just double-tap the screen - no more claw-hand trying to hold the phone still while you press the power button.
I know, I know, if you're reading this and haven't tried it it sounds really petty and a stupid thing to pick out, but once you've used it you'll wonder why every phone doesn't have it.
one of the benefits of the single (multi purpose) physical button on the front of an iPhone. Easy enough to poke to get a quick view of the lock screen for time / notifications, and with the sensor on the 5s, it's a poke to see the lock screen,then you just keep your finger there to unlock.
it's one of the (many) things that i don't like about so many of these phones that (apart from the often awkward power button) only have software buttons.
But not any more convenient than double tapping the screen for the same purpose.
One of the things I despise about iphones is the single solitary physical button, rather than the 3 mandated buttons in Android. One of which will always be the equivalent of a "right click" in every app, to get a menu, with settings etc. Figuring out where the hell that's been hidden in the gui of any given new iphone app you choose is a constrant irritation.
Sooo...
Double-tap to wake? Nokia N9.
OLED standby screen that shows time, date, and notifications (and next appointments, battery level, and more?) N9.
And intelligent enough that it pops up when you take it out of the pocket using the proximity sensor? N9 again.
A "newsfeed" view concentrating Facebook, weather, Twitter, the first two lines of any messages and all RSS feeds? The N9 once more.
You know, this phone I've been carrying around for two and a half years? Look, Ma, an interface with ZERO buttons.
Touching the phone to see the time, how quaint - no matter if it is a button or a double tap.
The time and notifications are displayed on Lumias as you pull it out of the pocket or bag without the need to actually turn on the phone display. The rationale (seemingly backed up here) is that phones get switched on an awful lot for just this purpose (has anyone sent me a message? what have I missed/What is the time?).
If the phone happens to be out of the pocket, waving across the screen in general will display the info for a short time.
Also can be set to display the same info constantly while on charge meaning it is always on view for those night time bleary-eyed sojourns.
More elegant, better battery life, mo' better.
People who think its acceptable to play YouTube music videos to their mates in the pub beer garden should be barred, it's true.
That said, I often use the internal speaker in my phone when it can't bother other people. Listening to a podcast in the bath, or to spoken word radio when doing some housework - a passable internal speaker is a useful feature. Music, however, requires either big speakers or earphones.
IR is a great feature, I use it on my (previous model) One a lot. As for the camera, the One may have many fewer pixels than other phones, but still makes great photos. People subscribing to the 'more pixels is everything' idea are being short-sighted.
The new One sounds like a relatively mild evolution of the previous model, so won't be rushing to upgrade, but given how superb the existing model has been, this will get strong consideration.
HTC were considered for my purchases until I discovered that they did not produce a model with a replacable battery. With smartphone batteries caned down to 0%, fitting a new battery to a phone is a several monthly job, as lion batteries really don't live long under those circumstances.
Get a phone which doesn't drain the battery in a normal day then. I have two-year-old phones with perfectly usable batteries which had hardly ever dropped below 40 or 50% or so during the day.
Long day ahead travelling or otherwise knowing the battery will die?, take a backup pack. Sure, they are bigger than a spare battery but they charge more things and have larger capacity and can be shared with others.
I am not against removables per se obviously, but it wouldn't stop me buying a particular phone - especially as there are benefits to solid construction - and the fact that it is just not that hard to open my phone to replace the battery anyway.
What in the hell are you doing to your batteries?
Mine gets run down to between 5-10% daily and I have NEVER had to replace it or those of any of my previous phones! (And they have always been replaceable - I totally disagree with fixed batteries just in case they do develop a fault)
Modern batteries should be good for 1000+ full charges and still hold >70% of their original charge!
You get badly punished for living/working somewhere with spotty signal. If i'm off work for a week and my phone stays with me at home (it's not a work phone, so the usage pattern doesn't change much) I can usually go 3 or 4 days without charging it.
As soon as I bring it into work the battery starts to run down at an alarming rate as it starts hunting for signal inside the giant faraday cage that is our building. I left it on my desk over night one time, and it was dead by morning. I get the same thing every time I go out to my parent's place in the wilds of rural Oxfordshire where there's no signal at all. Battery all just drains away looking for a tower to latch onto.
Run that pattern for a couple of years and you'll kill an ordinary phone battery stone dead. It's one of the reasons I really _do_ care about a removable battery. (Before we get into carrying a spare around for extended trips where you might not be able to get to a charger but can't possibly be without a phone.)
Yup some one has to ask and yes I am one of those who got a Qi charging pad for their present phone (Nexus 4). Jokes aside I don't regret the pad, however it's a pain looking for a new phone that will use it. Having played a little with the M8 it is rather tempting ....
... so does anyone know if it will wirelesly charge or if there's an official Qi case for it (as Samsung are supposedly brining out for the Galaxy S4 and S5) ? (though it'd be a shame to put a case on some thing that looks and feels the way it does).
Good analogy - Alfa vs BMW. I just wish HTC would produce a Windows Phone 8.x version of this thing ! There must be some mileage in that given how everyone save nokia pay lip service - yet it would win much kudos and I reckon a lot of sales for HTC amongst the professional crowd who don't want the hassle and vulnerability of android.
Apple - definitely Audi. The internals are basically out of the top bins of the VAG parts warehouse, but are fundamentally the same as everything made for the rest of the group.
Samsung - Volkswagen. Everything from the UP to the BMF*s of the SUV world. Make an awful lot of the parts used in Audis.
HTC - FIAT (including Alfa). Nice design but reliability still suspect. Does its own thing to a degree on hardware.
BlackBerry - Morgan.
*Big Mother Fondlers.
That's funny you should say that, as Chrysler had a similar fate after allying themselves with a giant German company that in hindsight nobody should have trusted.
Today, Mercedes are neither beautiful nor reliable. But it wasn't Chrylser that did this.
Chrysler's quality actually nosedived after Daimler came on board, simply because the German engineers didn't understand how to do mass-market car production. The Mercedes brand had relied heavily on retroactive quality fixes on failed units during manufacturing; something you can afford to do at Merc's margins, but not on a Dodge. So, they started to abandon the few things that were working in Chrylser (notably its then-new lean-manufacturing quality programme) without addressing the problems.
Luckily, with some Italian technology and manufacturing know-how from Alfa Romeo/FIAT, their quality problems are becoming a thing of the past. Mercedes, well... less so.
(The worst car I ever owned for reliability was a Mercedes A140, Bought from new, it had three gearboxes fitted before I gave up and accepted that 2nd-3rd would always grind the box; then the steering and suspension failed, outside of the very short warranty, leaving me to pay £1200 to fix it. All within 24,000 miles.)
yep the same here, non removable battery = deal breaker.
My note 2 is on its second battery as the original was not holding charges that well, took a few seconds to change and away i went.
The htc one x i bought and promptly gave to my wife as i hated it is only a month older and she struggles to last 9hours on standby, if she checks her mail or god fobids makes a call it dies within a few hours.
Im glad htc has taken on board the sd card slot - but they ignored the removable battery side, until they do that i will be purchasing sammys.
And if you want to keep your phone going past three years, assuming 18th months for the each battery? Then you're out of luck.
Assuming, of course, that they replace your phone when you ask the first time -- a situation where you've handed control to someone else.
Replaceable batteries for me...
I liked that HTC One M8 so I thought I'll try it out in a shop. That's where I noticed that terrible screen flicker. It's very noticeable when inputing text on a white background.
There is no way I depart with €700 for a flickering screen. I find it hard to believe they actually ship phones with such bugs. It's a shame cause otherwise it looks like a really good device.
+1 for making an IR remote more expensive than Logitech's.
-1 for still not supporting landscape in Home and AppList.
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