HTC One: BlinkFeed, User Interface, Zoe Photo and Many More!

HTC One has created quite some hype on the Internet because it is first of its kind in HTC's smartphone history. All I want to say is, I love the design of this phone! It is as good as iPhone's hardware design, if not superior. In this post, its focus is on the user experience of HTC One. 

Upon launching the phone, the first thing you would notice is the BlinkFeed. If you have used Flipboard board before, you can imagine how it looks like. It can be customized so that the information and updates you want to see will populate on the home screen. It can be news, like straits times or ESPN, apps such as Facebook and Twitter, and even Calendar items in the phone. In short, it's a one-stop information centre on the phone screen.

HTC Sense UI 5.0 is something I'd like to mention as well. Among all the Android UIs I have used, I like HTC's Sense the best. It is simple, clear and easy to navigate around. The settings are intuitive. In the app menu screen, instead of navigating the apps by swiping left or right, it's up and down. However, the screen can't stay at any random position, it is still displaying the apps page by page. 

The task manager screen is a bit different from other Android phones, much like a mini 'mission control' on Mac.

The font is sharp and layout is clear. 

The built-in weather app is awesome.

Even Play Store is customized to HTC style.

Thanks to 2GB RAM and Quad-core 1.7GHz CPU, it is pretty smooth navigating across the screens and very responsive when launching the apps. It supports LTE connection so download speed is not a problem. But I found the Chinese input in HTC One is not very user-friendly and even troublesome. Luckily I can download 3rd party's input from the Play Store.

The sound quality of HTC is impressive, too. With the dual frontal stereo speakers, and built-in beats amplifiers, the phone delivers much richer sound. It is perfect for playing the music or watching movies.

The biggest attraction is HTC One's camera. Unlike the usual marketing campaign, this time the focus is not on the number of megapixels. Interestingly, it's the opposite. HTC One's UltraPixel camera resolution is only 4 megapixel, but the pixel size is as three times as those 13MP phone camera. What does this mean? It means that it captures 300% more light. The largest aperture of 2.0 and built-in optical image stabalization make it more capable in low light situation. 

From the sample images above, indeed HTC One does a decent job in low light, however, because of its relative low resolution, image quality and details are somewhat compromised.

However, that is not the best part about HTC One's camera yet. Its best feature is Zoe. It works like as if you were taking a video, but in fact it is just a continuous stream of pictures with 4 second interval. You can stop at any point to choose the best shot it has got. Also, in each event folder, there is a video highlight that puts together all the Zoe and normal photos in one clip of 30 seconds. Some sample videos are below.

It is definitely a lot of fun shooting the Zoe photo/Videos and it makes the gallery more lively! However, one thing I don't like is that the video highlights is only auto-generated based on the photos and videos under the same event. Moving the photos and videos is not so easy that I could not edit on the best videos I have. 

Battery wise, it is more power efficient than my iPhone 5, at least it could last about a day with the Power Saver mode on. However, I notice that charging the phone through USB port powered by my laptop is extremely slow, which is not the case for my iPhone 5. Charging speed seems improving when I used the socket charger, but still it is not something as fast as I'd expect. 

Verdict

HTC One is something I would recommend my family or friends to have because it has unique metallic design, very intuitive user interface, fast performance and a lot of fun elements with its BlinkFee and Zoe photos. The downside is that the built Chinese input isn't that great, the photo quality is compromised due to lower resolution and slow charging speed. If you are now looking for a new Android phone, this is definitely the one you should at least consider. 

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