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by Taylor Martin | June 10, 2014 6:21 PMRead OnIn terms of smartphone offerings, this year is shaping up to be one of the most impressive ever. Not only are manufacturers managing to pull together some of the most advanced specifications into a single device, they are also (finally) focusing on things like user experience, software optimization, and sheer performance. And to top it all off, some are giving design and hardware more attention than in past years. The end result is stellar smartphones, all of which run well, look gorgeous, and offer a horde of useful features. Don't get me wrong. While these phones are more well-rounded ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 4, 2014 10:09 AMRead OnGoogle may have taken its sweet time in getting around to the release of Android 4.4.3 – evidence of the build had been hanging just out of reach for months before Google finally went ahead with distribution this week – but now that it's here we're seeing updates waste no time at all in becoming available. Unsurprisingly, Nexus models led the pack, though Motorola wasn't too far behind with news of updates for its own recent Androids. But before we let Motorola distract us and start checking-in with every OEM under the sun to see where they stand with update availability, what about ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 3, 2014 4:19 PMRead OnLast year's HTC One was a critical darling that nonetheless failed to turn those glowing reviews into big sales figures. Indeed, by fall the company was showing signs of floundering, experiencing its first reported quarterly loss. Would 2014 see its fortunes improve? Ever since the launch of the One M8 we've been trying to get a handle on how its sales were doing; some reports sounded good, while others sounded bad, but HTC itself kept a positive outlook. Today the company posts its May revenue figures, and after a brief surge in April, income is already on a downward slump. Remember, the ...
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by Stephen Schenck | June 3, 2014 12:30 PMRead OnAll the way back in April, we checked out a leaked render of the HTC One M8 in red, sporting some Verizon branding. Considering how we saw a red One M7 last year, and red was even among rumored M8 launch colors, the find wasn't too surprising. And indeed, following additional leaks of the red One M8 in May, we finally saw the manufacturer formally confirm the new option, with sales of the phone beginning in Taiwan. What we didn't get, though, was much of a sense for HTC's global plans for the model; would the red One M8 eventually be everywhere its existing color options were sold? We're ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 30, 2014 3:09 PMRead OnNew York City is a fine place to sneak a peek at some unreleased devices, and that's just what we did this week with the LG G3 event (streamed from London to an airy presentation room in a Chelsea skyscraper) and AT&T's ASUS PadFone X announcement (held on a posh rooftop lounge near the Flatiron). At one of those events, Daniel Bader of MobileSyrup was our seat neighbor, so we thought we'd invite him on this week's podcast to discuss the more globally significant of these high-profile launches. Join us as we share our impressions of the LG G3: how it stands on its own and how well it ...
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by Taylor Martin | May 28, 2014 6:27 PMRead OnIf nothing else, HTC has always been renowned for its keen sense of design. Its software may have taken a detour down a treacherous path, but the hardware has rarely ever let us down. The Nexus One, One X, One M7, One M8, One S, DROID DNA, DROID Incredible, and many of the in-between devices were all rather pretty and built exceptionally well. (We'll go ahead and forget the ThunderBolt, Rezound, and Inspire 4G existed, Deal? Deal.) In particular, though, HTC has been on a hot streak for the last year and a half. The One M7 was – and still is by many – considered to be one of the most ...
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by Taylor Martin | May 28, 2014 3:31 PMRead OnThe last few years have not been the best for HTC. Its market share, revenues, and profits have all been sliding while its largest competitor, Samsung, has been raking in more sales, profits, and the like. Such has been the case for most smartphone manufacturers (who are not Apple and Samsung, of course), but HTC's journey, in particular, makes for an interesting story. Despite its several fumbles and missteps since 2011, it still has a massive, die-hard following around its smartphones. Whether it's due to the elegant hardware and design, ultra high standards in build quality, or simply ...
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by Stephen Schenck | May 28, 2014 1:21 PMRead On“Five point five inches” sounds gigantic – well, for smartphones, at least. Even the original Galaxy Note, the model that got the phablet craze going and had everyone saying “that's way too big” only had a 5.3-inch display. Has LG utterly lost its mind with the G3, giving a mass-market flagship a phablet-sized panel like this? LG swears that it's made some really smart engineering choices with the G3 to keep the handset's overall size down, despite that billboard of a screen, but is that really the case? We went hands-on with the G3, comparing it to the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC ...
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by Taylor Martin | May 26, 2014 6:44 PMRead OnI'll be the first to admit I was a little hard on the One M8's camera abilities and HTC for its decision to stick with only 4.1-megapixels in its flagship smartphone's camera. I'm not here to beat a long-dead horse. I've explained multiple times that 4.1-megapixels is simply a gross camera resolution in a day and age where QHD displays are common on laptops and tablets and 4K televisions are a increasingly common thing. Even today, while I'm more impressed by the M8's camera than I ever thought I'd be, I'm still turned-off by its output resolution more than anything. The absolute best ...
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by Jaime Rivera | May 26, 2014 2:34 PMRead OnSurely one very cool feature that we find on the HTC One M8, is the phone's Duo-Camera system, which can not only create some neat effects with your shots, but can also allow developers to do something with this feature as well. Still, if you thought that this is simply a matter of snapping two cameras on a phone, that's not really the case. The One M8 uses some unique software and hardware techniques to pull this off, and Qualcomm wants to bring this to more OEMs. Qualcomm's senior director for cameras and imaging, Tim Yates has just announced that the company is working on bringing ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 26, 2014 3:01 AMRead OnA mini, metal One M8. That’s the idea with HTC’s new One mini 2: miniature yes, but with a fit and finish meant to make it impossible to ignore its flagship ancestry. So if the larger One M8 caught your eye but proved too big for your hand, is the One mini 2 a viable alternative, or has HTC made too many sacrifices on the road to a smaller footprint? That's what we aim to find out with the HTC One mini 2 vs HTC One M8 comparison video below. We take a tour of each phone's anatomy, from fit and finish to software to the wildly divergent cameras. You'll learn what you'll gain and what ...
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by Michael Fisher | May 26, 2014 3:00 AMRead OnHTC already offers a beautifully crafted Android smartphone with the One M8 – but for all its beauty, it sure is big. So for those who put a premium on pocket space (or pocket change) comes a smaller, cheaper alternative. The new HTC One mini 2 hits shelves this summer with a mission to bring the One M8’s high-end user experience to the midsize category. But the landscape of mini smartphones is a pockmarked one, cratered with cut corners and dotted with disappointment. Is the One mini 2 truly something different, or just another compromise in disguise? Let's find out. • Video ...
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by Rithvik Rao | May 25, 2014 7:21 AMRead OnOur European friends toting HTC One M8 phones are receiving an update today to version 1.54.401.10, with several stability improvements, bug fixes, and various other changes. Most of the changes are things the average user won't notice much, presumably, because the changelog isn't the beefiest we have ever seen. The radio, camera, video highlight, and FM radio features have all been made a bit more stable in everyday use, and we cannot complain about that. The full changelog can be seen in the image below. The update itself is 67MB in size, so folks on tiered data plans may want to ...
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by Joe Levi | May 21, 2014 2:00 PMRead OnComparing a mid-level smartphone to a high-end smartphone isn't exactly what you'd call "playing fair" -- then again, it's not supposed to be. Here's how the HTC Desire 816 stacks up against the HTC One M8. Both devices run Android Kitkat 4.4.2 with Sense UI 6, although certain features found on the One M8 are missing in the Desire 816. Tap-to-wake is missing on the 816, as are the quick gestures to launch the camera. UFocus and Zoe are missing, too. Rounding up software, we doubt there will be a Google Play edition of the Desire 816, but thanks to all the refinements in Sense UI 6, ...
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by Stephen Schenck | May 20, 2014 4:16 PMRead OnWe just shared with you the latest imagery purporting to depict the HTC One M8 Prime, and while that's the highest-profile HTC smartphone we've been hearing rumors about, it's not exactly alone. There's also been this confounding talk of an HTC M8 “Ace,” which has been quite difficult to get a read on. An early leaked pic revealed little besides a red body, and subsequent rumors painted the handset as a plastic, more affordable version of the M8. But would this be a new Butterfly – like that B2 we've heard of – or something else entirely? Today we turn to the latest Ace rumors out ...
Posts tagged with: One M8