HTC One Specs Review: A Jet Li of a smartphone
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HTC is one of our favorite smartphone companies. No, really. They have proven it numerous times that they can think outside the box. We've seen it in some of their earlier Android smartphones, which could easily stand out from the crowd thanks to their characteristic design features and highly-customized software experience. Once the Android mania exploded, though, and Samsung started swamping the market with countless handsets, HTC became a runner-up, trying to get its smartphones noticed among the hordes of other devices. Obviously, that's one area where the company failed, as it has been going in a steady downward motion for the last one or two years, seeing its profits dwindle to a minimum and its brand reputation fall dangerously low.
Many consider last years One line as a step towards HTC's reinvigoration, but we're not really sure if the flagship One X and the other two handsets were really a step in the right direction. At least, HTC's market performance doesn't seem to reflect such a thing. But 2012 is now history, and HTC is once again looking to stabilize its image as a reputable Android smartphone maker by introducing its new killer handsets - the HTC One. This top-end smartphone clearly has a lot going for it. For starters, it has an amazing design and a vastly overhauled user interface. It also introduces numerous new features that will try to become an inseparable part of your daily grind. How far has HTC gone in its effort to surpass what is currently available? Will it be able to regain its lost positions and prove to be a real challenge for the juggernaut that is Samsung? These are all questions that we can't really answer right now, but we can closely examine the HTC One and try to make a few educated guesses. Want to be a part of all this? Then you simply need to read on!
You don't even need to see the HTC One in person to understand that it's easily one of the better looking smartphones around. However, you do have to see it in person and hold it in your handset to appreciate the quality materials and sturdy construction of the handset. HTC has always paid attention to the appearance of its phones, but it's evident that a great amount of love has gone into the HTC One's design. More than usual! The handset has a striking appearance with two large speaker grills situated above and below the display, with contrasting colors between the metal unibody and the glass covering the screen. The handset is available in three colors: white, dark grey and red. Overall, we'd say that the appearance of the front slightly resembles that of the iPhone 5 or the BlackBery Z10, which is a good thing. Unlike those handsets, however, the One doesn't have a flat back side. The back side has been curved like in most other HTC smartphones, in an attempt to give it a more ergonomic shape.
Screen
We're glad that HTC hasn't bumped the screen size further than 4.7 inches - it's stayed the same as in the HTC One X. That's a great thing, because we don't like our phones to be gigantic. The resolution has been improved, however, and it's now 1080x1920, delivering an amazing pixel density of 468 ppi. Yes, everything that's shown on this display looks super sharp and clear. That's in case the content you're enjoying has the needed resolution, of course. The screen itself uses the Super LCD 3 technology, so we're happy to say that we'll be enjoying an overall image that is both natural and vibrant. And since you don't want to cover that beauty in scratches, it'll be protected by a Gorilla Glass 2 panel.
Processor and memory
Things don't get any less interesting when we see what's under the hood. In contrast to its previous flagship, which used the Tegra 3 SoC, HTC has armed the One with the new Snapdragon 600 chipset. We're yet to see this CPU in action, but we're naturally expecting it to be bloody fast. The Snapdragon 600 features a quad-core processor clocked at 1.7 GHz. To provide some perspective - the recently launched Sony Xperia Z has the last-gen Snapdragon S4 Pro at 1.5 GHz, which is also quite powerful, but the 600 should be even better. Meanwhile, the Nexus 4 by LG is also an S4 Pro-powered handset, so for the time being the HTC One will be well-positioned to take the lead in the performance department, in case it comes out on time, that is.
Camera

HTC has prepped up some pretty intriguing things with regards to the camera of the One. Guess what, the company refuses to participate in the megapixel war any longer, and instead of introducing a sensor with 8, 13 or more megapixels, has gone a totally different way. The pictures taken with the HTC One will max out at about 4 megapixels. Now, this might seem like a low resolution to you, but we really wouldn't worry too much about the MP count here. The thing is that instead of increasing the megapixel count, HTC has decided to increase the megapixel size. Thanks to this, the camera sensor should be able to capture a lot more light, allowing you to take more detailed images, with less noise and better exposition. Low-light photography should also be significantly better than what's possible with a conventional smartphone camera right now. Indeed, no one should worry about the relatively low number of megapixels in this camera. After all, Sony praised its 13 MP camera in the Xperia Z, but we all saw how badly this ended up.
Software
But what good is an amazing hardware if there isn't amazing software to make use of it? On top of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, there's the brand new HTC Sense user interface. It seems HTC has listened to its fans and critics and has streamlined the UI even further. In fact, that's the first Sense UI version that introduces major design changes. For example, the home screen will now feature a much simpler clock and weather widget, while most of the space will be dedicated to the BlinkFeed feature, which will act like a livestream of social updates, communication, images, news, articles and other stuff like that. All of this content will appear in a visually-rich way, with large images and even video. How well this is going to work in reality remains to be seen, but we're glad that HTC has tried to think out of the box with this new UI layout.
Some other neat goodies have also been implemented by HTC in order to make the whole user experience with the One better. HTC BoomSound and HTC Sense Voice come to mind here. The former is the name of all the technologies that will make sure you are experiencing a loud and clear audio from the stereo speakers (yes, Beats Audio included), while the latter is a real-time audio processing technology that will try to fix and enhance the sound quality during calls. We are really into such kind of features because they can make the experience of using the phone significantly better, without you even realizing they are there. Still, we have to point out that some of HTC's competitors have already employed some similar technologies, and it's not yet certain exactly how well they features are going to perform, so we'll have to wait until we get to play with the final units before we can make any brave conclusions.

For the time being, the HTC One seems to be the smartphone to rule them all in Android land, but we'll have to wait and see what Samsung has in store for us with the Galaxy S IV. Thankfully, that will happen in just one or two months from now, so we won't have to wait long. Actually, the time gap between the launches of both smartphones will be quite small, because the HTC One will be globally released in March. In the US, the phone will be offered by AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Well, the message for Verizon customers is that they will probably have to make do with the DROID DNA, which is still a marvelous smartphone.
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