HTC One user reviews

Pros Pros:
Speakers - sound is awesome.
Display - while not as "wow" as the GS4, the color and clarity is better
Speed - as close to lagless as I have seen
Feel - Ergonomically great
Good stock keyboard
Camera - great low light ability.

Cons Too many stock functions removed
Blink Feed - dull and frequently out of date.
Button placement
Missing stock controls in notification bar
Stock icons dated
Home button on bottom left - should have kept the 3 button stock version

Summary Summary: The HTC One is a great device. Don't buy it for the looks only. For a seasoned HTC or Android user setup, adjustment and use will not be an issue. For all others, LG, Nexus, Samsung are far easier to use right out of the box. Unless you are set on this device, for the general user I recommend Nexus or Samsung. The HTC One is not your standard smartphone and will require more than normal setup. Yes, there is a learning curve with this device.

Purchased the ATT 64gb model (Silver) and have been using it for a week plus. The device looks and feel awesome. Until you use it. Keep in mind I am coming from an Olympus G and an iPhone 5. I am also very familiar with the Samsung GS3 and the Nexus 4. I bought the 64gb model as it does not allow the use of an mSD card. I feel this is a miss but can understand why.

The One feels good in your hand. Comfortable nice weight and texture. It looks awesome. When I turned it on I became aware of the buttons. I am ambidextrous and use my phone in my left hand. makes the Power button on top a bit difficult. Then there is the Vol Up/Down swith on the right side. It is way too sensitive. A light touch easily scales the volume up or down frequently resulting in my putting the device into silence mode unintentionally ... oops!

The display is flat out awesome. I have yet to see another device that can surpass it. It is that good. Add to this the stereo speakers (better sound than my notebook) and very decent headphone sound (better than my iPhone). I use a set of Sure headphone for daily use.

I have never been a fan of Sense. HTC takes out too much of the stock Android controls and does little to replace them with custom fucntionality. Samsung and LG do a much better job. I prefer stock Android; just saying.

The sound is great (on ATT) and everyone I talked to said it sounded great. However, in speakerphone mode there are times the voice is not as clear as I expected. I have had no issue with signal, download or upload speeds. Works great!

The camera was a bit of a disappointment for outdoor shooting until I discovered low-light. WHOA! this single feature more than makes up for it. When I compared basic photos, my current phones all surpassed the One. In low light the One was the clear winner. Have tried Zoe but haven't seen a significant benefit yet. more play will be needed and has potential.

I have not found any apps from the Play store that won't run on the One that will on the SGS3, LG, or Nexus. The only issue are some games in landscape mode (example: Bards Tale) where to play the game your hands interfere with the speakers. There has been some software bugs (listed below)

Pros:
Speakers - sound is awesome. Bests any cell/tablet/notebook I have heard
Display - while not as "wow" as the GS3/4, the color and clarity is better
Speed - as close to lagless as I have seen in an Android device
Feel - Ergonomically great, feels eal good in hand
Good stock keyboard (very surprised). for accuracy it is close to the best I have used
Camera - great capabilities and really good low light ability. This more than offsets the pixel affect when you zoom into HDR photos

Cons:
No Battery Percent - user needs to add app and that is on the left, not right
Far too many stock Android functions removed
Blink Feed - dull and frequently out of date. Flipboard is much better
Location in Blinkfeed is incorrect - very general, not precise
Battery in status bar is frequently incorrect - of as much as 24%
Use it left handed - way too easy to drop sound to silent
Missing stock controls in notification bar (wifi / airplane / gps / etc)
Missing multi panel wallpaper function
Stock icons (including folders) dated - circa Android 1.x
Home button on bottom left - should have kept the 3 button stock version
No ability to adjust home/back button light setting
Missing multipanel wallpaper


Other Concerns:
LG-E970 / SGS3 /Nexus 4 much easier to use right out of the gate
No mSD card ability

Bugs:
- Infrequent crash of stock browser when opening (loading stock Google page)
- In Gallery when you select "Set As" for a downloaded photo the screen locks and just sits there
- Lock screen sticks and will not gesture unlock. Restart is frequently required, other times repeated attempts needed
- BlinkFeed displays incorrect location (I live in Playa Del Rey and BF displays Downtown Los Angeles)

Updated on May 17, 2013

Update: I just received my updated Stealth (black) version from ATT.
Pros: better looking display likely due to the black trim.
Cons: this baby shows the fingerprints - not as bad as I thought but still noticeable.

Comparing the silver/black side by side, I have noticed the home/back buttons on the silver are not as sensitive. The alignment of the trim, inserts and buttons is better on the black. All other aspects look, run and feel the same.

Note: I loaded the stock Android browser apk on the silver model. This browser exhibits none of the crashing issues I sporadically see on the Sense browser.

Pros - great user experience, fast and no dragging feeling
- great camera, and a lot of fun tools
- nice screen, watched some HD video, pleasantly surprised
- seems to be pretty durable
- sleek and very elegant looking
- the sound is very clear

Cons - The auto-rotate is too sensitive, so I had to disable it most of the time.
- The earbuds included in the package are not very good. But I think none of them have good ones.

Summary First of all, I always like it when people come up with an innovative design for new device, instead of just packing on more power or more pixels. I mean, what's the point of having a powerful brick that's doing things the old way? The One is truly amazing. Kudos for the ingenious camera. I remember someone said that it doesn't produce as many pixels as the others. But I was certainly pleasantly surprised on how clear the pictures are from this camera. My friend, who was an architect, took a picture in a very low light environment, and the picture turned out to be very clear. It also comes with a lot of cool tools to edit the pictures.

The One is very fast and powerful, I never got the dragging feeling nor needed to wait on something like my old Samsung Captivate (prob not a just comparison, but that's what I had)

The call quality is very clear. Downloading and streaming is very fast. I have AT&T. I also watched some HD video, I was pleasantly surprised.

It seems to be pretty durable. I have had this for a few weeks already (since 4/19), and dropped it a few times, not even a scratch yet. It is sleek and very elegant looking. Very thin. I am reluctant to buy a case to cover its beauty.

I really enjoy the phone so far (since 4/19), and love it. The cons I have above are not really that bad, that's why I gave this phone a 5-star rating.

Pros good design of outlook and HTC ZOE amazing

Cons blinkfeed could be better

Summary I have one and love IT!

Pros -Build Quality
-Screen Clarity
-Device Speed
-Camera - I like it over my old S3
-Speaker Sound
-Less Feature (Not Over Whelming)
-Battery Life is good enough

Cons BlinkFeed
Front 2 button layout (sometimes not responsive)
Hard Button Layout
Calls can be tinny
No HTC Email Widget
App killer needs a select all
Some phones have gaps in physical design
No expandable Memory,64B Edition doesn't work on T-Mobile

Summary -BlinkFeed is Awful!
-Two button design is counter intuitive. I keep thinking the HTC logo is a home button (sometimes not responsive)
-Hard Button Layout;Power button
-When volume is turned all the way up, phone calls can be tinny
-No HTC Email Widget (except gmail)
-Lock Screen;swipe up instead of just anywhere
-App killer needs a select all
-Some phones have gaps in physical design
-No expandable Memory (64B Edition doesn't work on T-Mobile)

A phone that's built to last forever doesn't have the guts to last forever. HTC needs to revamp their sense and abandon blink feed. They definitely have a great phone, one I chose over the S4 due to a simpler feature set, but the need to make those features much easier to use.