Recipient of T3 Magazine’s coveted ‘Phone of the Year’ and ‘Design of the Year’ categories for 2013, it is easy see why the HTC One is so highly rated by critics and users alike. Originally released in March this year, the HTC One is credited for single-handedly reversing the Taiwanese company’s ailing fortunes in the smart phone market and is still highly desired even after the introduction of behemoths like Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and Note 3 and Apple’s iPhone 5S and 5C.
One is not only the best looking phone HTC has ever built, but arguably the best looking phone ever. The gadget is unbelievably thin yet reassuringly rigid and its sleek aluminium body beautifully melts into the 4.7-inch screen, without a single gap in sight. And speaking of the screen, it is eye-piercingly sharp, boasting a 1080p full HD resolution and making a mockery of Apple’s Retina display, with a pixel density of 468ppi.
Running on Android’s Mobile Operating System (version 4.2.2), the One’s slightly-tweaked user interface is simple and smooth, with texts, pictures, videos, and games looking incredibly sharp, clear, and detailed on the device. Powered by a slightly outdated 1.7 GHz quad-core processor, it still feels blazingly fast when compared to the latest smart phones running on octa-core processors. The 2GB of RAM on board the One is capable of complimenting the strikingly beautiful screen with incredible performance, which can especially be observed while running graphics and memory intensive applications, games, videos, and websites.
Although a four-megapixel camera on a flagship device might seem like an unforgivable flaw, especially when top end smart phones boast cameras of 13-megapixel upwards, HTC in fact packs an Ultra Pixel sensor into the Ones’ cameras, which means that your detailed image capturing needs are not compromised. As expected, the gadget is capable of capturing videos at full HD resolution and a mode to capture slow motion videos is a welcome and seriously fun addition.
One comes equipped with most standard connectivity options including LTE, NFC, DLNA, MHL, HSDPA, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth to fulfill your internet and multimedia needs, while an infrared blaster on top of the phone is an extremely handy addition, which is to be used as a universal remote control.
Although the HTC One lets down with its non-expandable storage (max 64GB phone memory only) department and a non-removable 2,300mAh battery, it is too stunningly designed to ignore.
Yantrick’s verdict: the HTC One is capable of matching other smart phone giants pixel by pixel and at Rs 65,000 is a complete bargain.