Hands On With the New HTC One M8
HTC has finally launched the new HTC One M8 for the Global markets, the only phone from the Taiwanese Manufacturer that manages to be available at the time of launch in major markets in the world. India and all South Asia Countries will have to wait to get their hands on this design marvel from the company.
HTC has made just the right amount of changes, and left out some major expectations that users would have had, and the company could have easily added into their mix of hardware. For the first, the display on the HTC One M8 has been left to a 1920 x 1080p display vs a 2k display that could have easily been achieved. The camera does not capture 4k video as many of the recently launched competition, instead it sticks to 1080p video.
HTC has however taken the one thing that was amazing about the HTC One (M7) and made it better on the M8. The all metal design on the HTC One M8 is far superior to that on the M7, its more rounded has a better “cold to touch” feel in the hand and takes in 20% more metal in the design compared to the outgoing model. The M8 uses 90 % metal in the main body vs 70% that we saw in the M7 and we simply cannot complain. HTC has also retained the original BoomsSound design and enhanced it allowing for 25% more space in the sound cavity, therefore, louder sound with deeper audio. A new inbuilt amp also improves the output and ensures that there is no cracking. Heard it and we are impressed.
The camera is what really runs the M8, the dual camera feature is something that at first people will ignore or not notice. This however will change and it will change fast. The camera app and the ease with which you can manipulate the focus points really highlights the effort HTC has put into thinking and executing the camera features. Its the simplest we have used and we think will change the way we share our social pictures especially in the like of Instagram.
The UI has also been cleaned up, it now takes in from the various flaws of Blinkfeed from the HTC Sense 5.0 and basically eliminates them on Sense 6.0. The UI is far more fluid and custom, cleaner and more minimal, yet big and bold at the same time. Simply put this has to be the best first impression we got on a custom UI.
HTC has also stuffed in a good set of hardware, this time going with the flagship chipset the Snapdragon 801 (vs the 600 they chose last year when the 800 was available) storage capacities are also the same at 16 and 32 GB however you get a microSD card slot for upto 128 GB expansion. Enabling app loading directly onto the external storage means that there will be a lesser chance of the phone slowing down with future use.
Stay Tuned for our Hands on Video!
