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HTC Unveils Revamped HTC One
adeelarshad82 writes "Earlier today, HTC unveiled a revamped version of its One smartphone. The new HTC One has a 4.7-inch full HD 1080p display which is powered by a 1.7-GHz, quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor and a customized version of Android. The new phone includes support for NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and DLNA for wireless streaming to a TV or computer. Measuring 5.4 by 2.7 by 0.36 inches, the phone weighs around 5 ounces. According to the specs, the phone will come with either 32 or 64GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, and it's backed by a non-removable 2300mAh battery. Unfortunately the phone doesn't include a memory card slot and has just two ports: a headphone jack and a MicroUSB that doubles as an MHL output for HDMI TVs. HTC One's 'UltraPixel' camera is nothing to sniff at either. HTC is trying to replace megapixels with 'ultrapixels,' cutting down the size of photos but using much larger individual pixels to sharply reduce noise and improve low-light performance. In a quick comparison with iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3, One's images were far clearer and brighter. The HTC One runs Android 4.1.2 with HTC's new Sense 5."
Getting one phone out on a lot of carriers is a good move, but lets see if they can keep up with updates. So far HTC phones have been some of the worst at getting updated.
Is the bootloader unlocked? Is S-off easy to obtain?
SD cards are going away on phones. They are slow and lead to customer complaints. Besides USB on the Go basically obsoletes them. Removable batteries mean a battery door. This makes the phone thicker.
Personally neither is a deal killer.
Getting one phone out on a lot of carriers is a good move, but lets see if they can keep up with updates. So far HTC phones have been some of the worst at getting updated.
Is the bootloader unlocked? Is S-off easy to obtain?
http://ondeviceresearch.com/blog/iphone-5-ranked-fifth-in-user-satisfaction%2C-behind-four-android-powered-devices#sthash.uPvDqYTk.O4PYwW2L.dpbs in the UK the HTC X is rated No 1 in smartphone satisfaction, so clearly they are doing something right. If you have concerns [ignoring you should provide the answers] perhaps your asking the wrong questions.
My last experience with HTC was that they rarely update their phones, they stay at least a full generation behind stock Android, and they stop offering *any* updates after about a year. From now on, I'm sticking with companies with better support (and preferably stock Android).
Removable batteries mean a battery door. This makes the phone thicker.
Personally neither is a deal killer.
I've replaced the battery on every phone I have owned for the passed 6 years because they typically do not last longer than a year before they are degraded beyond usefulness. Yeah -- it's a deal killer.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
The revamped one includes a Infrared remote control...and its not mentioned in the summary. I know those who had the n900 had this functionality, but Nokia hardware seems to have taken any advantages they have, and sacrificed it for Microsoft. So its nice to see this feature come back. Hopefully we are going to see some nice software to back this up.
What are you doing to them?
Replacing the battery once like that should still not be that hard to do. I have done that to several ipods over the years.
Dear HTC,
I love the hardware on my HTC Amaze 4G but I'm sorry to say that I cannot buy another HTC phone.
I'm telling you why so you can reverse the decline you've been suffering.
1) Allow users to remove / not load HTC Sense and opt for the pure Android experience. Sense is lovely, but sometimes I don't want to use up resources on it.
2) Make your phones (more) hacker friendly. There is no CyanogenMod available for this phone because the drivers weren't released in a timely manner (if I understand the issue correctly), therefore the development community moved on to other phones and it isn't supported.
3) Stop it with the non-removable batteries and lack of external SD card slots.
4) UPDATES for Android! My phone updated from 2.3.4 to 4.0.3, but I'm still waiting for 4.1 (and doubt I'll see 4.2). Unacceptable. If you make it easier for CyanogenMod, etc. to run on your older phones, IMHO it will raise your presence in the dev community and increase your exposure / perceived value. You need the dev community to support your phones. With the ability to run CM, you then won't need to issue support for older phones if you don't desire to, as we can update our phones ourselves.
I'd love to see a hardware-updated version of the "evo shift", which had a MicroSD slot, removable battery, and a PHYSICAL KEYBOARD (minus the issue with the screen contacts).
Yeah, thin phones are nice, but HTC needs to do something to make themselves different from the Galaxy S series (that doesn't involve loading crappy "partner" software on the phone).
They made the sensor bigger for a given resolution.
That is a big image quality improvement.
I don't carry my camera everywhere with me. My smartphone is always with me.
I don't mind the phones being a bit thicker. I want my replaceable batter (since it's one of the more likely to go wrong components), I want a keyboard (I always have found even "the best" touch screens a hassle), and a SD card slot would be really nice, though not a dealbreaker like the first two.
Then again, the phone manufacturers are go so far for thin and light, they ignore forget about battery life and reception, which are more important than any of the above IMO.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
2 Deal killers in 1 deal? Impressive!
I have a Nexus 7 tablet which has no removable storage. This is a pain. I keep all my music in Google play but that is not all I want storage for..
I have a Galaxy GS2 and put a high capacity battery in it after a few months. Yes, it made it thicker. No, that did not make it any less excellent in any way. In fact, it made it easier to hold!
I will now call on the power of the free market and buy something else instead.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
SD cards are going away on phones. They are slow and lead to customer complaints. Besides USB on the Go basically obsoletes them. Removable batteries mean a battery door. This makes the phone thicker.
Personally neither is a deal killer.
I don't think I'd want a phone without an easily replaceable battery - I replaced my one year old Galaxy Nexus battery last month and immediately got about 50% better battery life - back to when the phone was new.
I thought I'd regret not having an SD card slot, but I've only used just over half of the 32GB of storage space and that includes a half dozen movies that I loaded up before a long plane trip and a couple hundred CD's worth of MP3's. It still might be nice to have an SD slot so I could load up more media, but it's not nearly as limiting as I thought it would be and it sounds like USB OTG might make it a complete non-issue.
But I still want a replaceable battery - It doesn't even need to be convenient enough to do it on the go, I don't need a slide off battery cover, go ahead and screw it in place and make it a 15 minute process, just don't make it so hard that I'd need to send the phone away to the manufacturer and pay them $80 for a $20 battery.
No spare batteries? no no-downtime replacement if the battery dies? No easy extraction of data if the phone breaks? I'm willing to sacrifice A LOT of thickness/weight to get these features.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I wish I could find a phone with a keyboard that did not suck. It seem they only put them on low end devices though or bootloader locked which is even worse.
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels? That sounds more like "we've put in a lower resolution camera, and that's better".
No its about being able to see detail in a photo, by being able to record those differences. So pictures don't look washed out or black without being able to make out detail.
Wait, you don't buy a new phone every year like a good American? What are you, a communist?
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/436822/20130219/htc-onex-android422-jellybean-cyanogenmod101-nightly-rom.htm The original HTC One X seems to be updated just right :) perhaps your experience is from fantasy...interestingly their allegedly is less Sense and more Stock in this Android too :)
Given that a cell phone has a certain range of thicknesses, you only get a small choice of focal depths -- roughly the camrea thickness - (imager thickness + front case thickness). That limits the useful physical size of your imager. Given the race for megapixels, each cell on the imager has gotten smaller, which translates directly to higher noise and, in particular, reducing max possible low light performance. In other words, cell phone pictures are shitty in poor light. By increasing the size of the pixels in the imager, you greatly improve the SNR of the system, which improves low light performance. Given that most of these pictures aren't going any further than facebook or texting to a friend, the pixels that don't show up don't matter, but the noise figure does. This is a win for everyone except instagram.
It isn't a corner to cut. They are taking a different tact. Rather than having a so so camera with 8mp they opted for a good one with 4mp. The camera captures more light so it is better at low light and gets less noise in the photos. For those being viewed on the phone it will still more than suffice.
I'll consider this phone once CyanogenMod is available for it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
0. Going away? Really? Barring HTC and the Nexus 4, basically every current Android phone I see has a microSD slot, as does the new Blackberries and all the non-HTC windows phones.
1. They should ship a real SD card rather than the class 4 junk. A class 10 or UHS card will keep pace with the onboard flash easily.
2. So having a (quite possibly even slower) usb drive dangling off the phone is replacement for an SD card in the device? And then you're complaining about thickness in the same breath?
3. Not to any relevant degree. In stock condition, my Galaxy S3 is even thinner (0.34" to 0.36") than this unit and has a replaceable battery.
4. WTF is the big deal with thinness? Out of the box, my GS3 was rather too thin to hold comfortably and my hands aren't that big. An extended battery and case (specifically Seidio's extended active case) allow it to fill my hand nicely.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
The biggest problem with cell phone cameras is that the pixels are small and not sensitive. HTC decided to go with fewer, bigger pixels that collect more light and are more sensitive. I'd much rather have a 4 MP picture with less grain and noise than an 8 MP picture with more grain and noise. After all, you only look at the pictures at around 2 MP max.
the phone manufacturers are go so far for thin and light, they ignore forget about battery life and reception
Perhaps you should take a look at the Razr Maxx HD. It's thin, light, has fabulous reception, fabulous sound quality, and a battery life measured in days.
No, it doesn't have a keyboard, so I
bought a folding bluetooth keyboard.
Now, when I need a keyboard, I have something that rivals a desktop, and when I want portability, I use Swype. And I'm honestly surprised at how well Swype actually does.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Other than the "ultrapixel" marketing bullshit - a lower resolution camera IS better at the sensor sizes of mobile devices.
There's a reason Canon dropped from 14 to 10 going from the G10 to G11 (or was it G9 to G10?) - yes, they DROPPED resolution in their flagship P&S.
It's well known to experienced photographers that more pixels = less area per pixel = lower dynamic range (more noise) per pixel, especially in low light.
Especially since there's a fixed amount of "overhead" per pixel taking up sensor area - as the pixels are packed more densely, that overhead becomes a higher percentage of the sensor area that is wasted.
10+ megapixels, even 8, is simply way too much for the sensor size of mobile devices. A mobile device with 75% of the pixel count of a DSLR but only 25% or less of the physical sensor area = guaranteed to be shit in anything but sunlight.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I don't mind thicker phones. In fact I'd prefer a higher quality non-smart phone if it had great voice and long battery life and replaceable batteries. Function over style. I wouldn't have even gotten the smart phone if I had a choice of useful basic phones instead (really, they were utter crap given that the good phone makers have just given up on the basic market).
I don't care how great its screen is
The screen doesn't sound so great either. 4.7" diagonal on a 5.4*2.7 form factor? That's almost 3/4 of an inch of Bezel all the way around.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The S3 with removable battery and door is .7mm thinner than the HTC. I don't have any numbers, but I would wager the USH1 card is faster than internal memory, which is nice when copying large files or a large quantity of files.
This doesn't sound like it's a good thing.
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels? That sounds more like "we've put in a lower resolution camera, and that's better".
Of course, the problem with low light performance on a phone is the sensor is so small as to be useless at the published megapixel rates. Which is why my cell phone will never replace my actual cameras.
My iPhone 5 has a great camera compared to most other phones. The 8 megapixel images it captures are about equivalent to those created by my 1.3 megapixel $400 digital camera manufactured in 2001. The lower resolution, larger sensor size approach taken by HTC in this new phone looks like a massive step change improvement over the iPhone.
Unfortunately, the other problem in iPhotos is that they get way, way oversharpened and autoleveled to blow out bright pixels and crush all the dark pixels into a uniform black. This makes objectively poorer photos with less information, but since phone users don't usually postedit their photos by applying color correction or unsharp masks, it leaves us with the impression that the iPhone has _more_ detail and color fidelity. Even major review sites makes this mistake (Ars, for instance). I think the solution is analogous to what a lot of dedicated cameras have done for about 15 years - capture something similar to a RAW image, but when you display it on your phone screen or post a shrunken version to FB or whatever, process it to look punchy and exciting without eliminating the original, high quality image.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
This phone is not acceptable for those two reasons, I don't care how great its screen is or how fast its processor.
Just as any mainstream phone manufacturer wouldn't care about the features you want.
If lack of either of those were an impediment to sales, they'd include them. They're not, so they don't. But I'm sure there's people at HTC who are broken up over an AC on Slashdot declaring its not acceptable to them.
If I were HTC, I would *let* Samsung take the flat-slab, single-button, iPhone clone handset market...and then concentrate on the niches. For example:
--HTC Universal: Every possible cellular frequency is supported, and shipped SIM unlocked. One handset that can roam freely between Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, plus European and Asian cellular systems, at full data speed.
--HTC Marathon: Twice as thick as an iPhone...with a 5,000mAh battery that can last two full days on a charge.
--HTC Pure: From Google's Github to your phone in 72 hours. Those pining for a Sense-free, timely update situation can have it in the Pure.
--HTC Click: My HTC Touch Pro2 had, hands down, the best keyboard on a mobile phone I've ever used. The Click is that handset with a new processor, more RAM and storage, and capacitive screen.
--HTC Tower: If you live or work too far away from a tower for a normal handset to get a signal, the Tower will ensure your call gets there.
--HTC Vault: For users with far too much data, this handset has 256GB of internal storage, and uses the same technology as a desktop SSD to ensure that data gets in and out as fast as possible.
--HTC Flick: Glass lenses and optical zoom increase the thickness of this handset that has a camera that outperforms even most dedicated point-and-shoot cameras from Canon and Nikon.
--HTC Simplicity: There's still a small dumbphone market, and the Jitterbug caters to users who want a phone that reliably makes phone calls and is easy to read. The Jitterbug can withstand a little competition.
--HTC Tinker: This handset is born to be hacked. No locked bootloader, no rooting required, and images for Android, Windows Phone 8, and Ubuntu are all available direct from the manufacturer.
There are plenty of niches where HTC can compete. They just have to stop trying to play the "lowest common denominator" card and trying to convince users to choose them over the Galaxy S3.
I have a Samsung Galaxy S3. The damn thing only last a day and that means NOT using turn by turn navigation or 3D gaming. It would not make it through the day otherwise. For my holiday I purchased a dirt cheap battery with replacement back that more then doubles the battery capacity although it makes the phone twice as thick. I thought I'd use it only for the holiday but the fact I no longer need to turn the screen light to minimum and I can use whatever app I want made me continue to use this big battery. The thicker phone is easier to hold as well.
As for SD cards. As people that dropped their phone in the water how they recovered their data. It if is an SD card it can be dried and it will work. Build in memory required the rest of the phone circuitry to work in order to get the data off.
To me a closed phone (Fixed battery, fixed memory and customized (raped) android) is a lesser phone. My next phone will be from the Google Nexus line.
Samsung put out the Relay on T-Mobile in the fall, which is quite competitive with the S3. While I don't care too much for Samsung phones, it has an unlocked bootloader, a decent keyboard, and reasonably active development.
Verizon and Sprint respectively have the similarly speced Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere II and Motorola Photon Q, both of which released around the same time. I can't speak to their lockedness.
While it is sad that they're few and far between, they aren't low end devices... They come out a few months or two after their tech is cutting edge and stay on the market much longer, since a carrier will only get 1-2/year. The delayed launch also gives that not high end appearance because, well, they're technically similar to last month's latest, which also means no fanfare for their release. (It also doesn't help that they'll usually cheap out a little on something like storage to pay for the keyboard.)
Anyways, in short, yeah, enthusiast phones don't generally have keyboards, but as far as high end just daily use devices, they're there.
1080p would be a complete waste on something less than five inches, so far as I can see.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels? That sounds more like "we've put in a lower resolution camera, and that's better".
No, it's better - provided they have made the pixels bigger. I'm sick of phones with so-called multi-megapixel cameras, which give noisy photos in the best of circumstances. A typical 8 Mpix sensor would be much better as a 2 Mpix sensor of the same total detector size and sensitivity, and sometimes, they should have even fewer pixels with the the same total detector area and sensitivity.
Here's the essential info: shot noise is unavoidable - it's intrinsic in the physics of photon arrival at the detector. The sigma of the output noise is the square root of the number of photoelectrons.
So if you have a crappy electron well that can hold 10^4 photoelectrons when full (a "decent" cellphone camera), the signal to noise ratio is barely 100 (10^4 divided by square root of 10^4). Similarly, the photon flux per pixel in good lighting will rarely exceed 10^5 photons per second per pixel, due to the tiny lens aperture and small pixel size. It's unsurprising that the images are utter crap, as the output gain must be cranked up (amplifying noise as well as signal) to get any shot in less than 1/100 second. People downsize their images in almost all circumstances, unless they're happy with blurry and/or noisy images. FWIW, this is borne out by my experience with my own Samsung Galaxy S3 and Nokia E70, my daughter's HTC Desire Z, a colleague's Nokia 920, a friend's Samsung Galaxy S2, another colleague's iPhone 4, and various other Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens phones belonging to family and friends They are all crappy in nearly all circumstances[*], unless downsized 2:1 or more (i.e. at most one quarter of the pixels).
In a DSLR, the much larger electron well means that a pixel can hold up to 10^6 photoelectrons, so the signal to noise ratio is closer to 10^3. Similarly, the larger aperture (there's a reason for those big lenses) and larger detector pixels mean that it gets a flux of more than 10^8 photoelectrons per second per pixel in typical lighting. That's why even action shots in 1/1000sec exposure can be sharp and have relatively low noise.
[*] Exception: a relatively long exposure shot of a still life scene, or a deliberately extended exposure shot of running water or similar (with hand support to improve steadiness), say 1/15 sec or thereabouts. Not what cameras in phones are commonly used for...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
They are not 'going away'. They are purposefully being phased out to force people through cloud services. EVERY phone/pocket computer should have removable memory.
Good-bye
1) As mentioned, the photosites are larger so in theory it may have better low light performance (though some 8MP cameras have technology to help that as well).
2) The new camera has something called "Zoe" mode, where you can record a video at full resolution, and use any point in the video later, at any time, to pull a full-size still image from.
They are just trying a slightly different take on a cell camera, which I think is a great idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am not interested in being tied to one carrier, nor in a midrange phone. None of those are high end devices.
The display on the Relay is pathetic, it compares with my old Droid1 not a GS3.
I don't mind the phones being a bit thicker. I want my replaceable batter (since it's one of the more likely to go wrong components)
My replacable battery is a lifesaver when the phone crashes. Sometimes it won't turn off, and then pulling the battery out is the best way to reset it.
I don't know if it's BS. They need some way to explain that more doesn't mean better. It needs to be short, because a four sentence paragraph will get a TL;DR. The vast majority of people assume more pixels means a better picture.
Example: http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3475983&cid=42947325
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
It's 4MP. Many phones have 8MP these days. Seems like an odd corner to cut.
The funniest thing about your reply is the Insightful moderations. Clearly neither you, nor the mods, read the article.
Hint: megapixels effectively never matter when it comes to consumer digital photography...
II want a keyboard (I always have found even "the best" touch screens a hassle)
You're not alone. The now ancient Epic 4G is still clinging in the top ten Android phones: https://plus.google.com/114278817778674561147/posts/C6Ei9EWZ9Yg
Kind of shocking, but my wife and I both keep ours and are hoping somebody comes out with a keyboard case for the Note 2.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I like your ideas, but the final question in the marketing meeting is: How many people will buy this? And while your ideas are great and all...there is not so much market for those. Because the consumer (or their employer) selects the one which is the latest fad or most cost-efficient. An example: Nokia has tried for years to be "the manufacturer" in quality (I know personally how they test they their stuff and compare it to competitors, and it is quite thorough) and in cameras. So far the results...not so great. So the things consumers really care are elsewhere. Geeks would love a "Click", but if you only have 2000 customers (who would still bitch and moan about the price) what's the point? The same with "Universal" - both consumers and corporate buyers prefer contracts. End of story. Marathon...umm...Motorola made this already? Pure, Google has this. Tower, Nokia has tried this, call quality is not a dealmaker. Vault, interesting concept, not doable right now without a hefty pricetag. Flick - Done by Nokia, did not fly that far. Simplicity: Many have tried, some have succeeded, most have not. Market is there, but it is a difficult one. Your todays grandma doesn't wan't to have "simplified" phone, just "easy". Tinker: Good luck with licensing. This is actually the one I would have, but I realize that I'm a geek, and the market isn't there. And I would probably choose the one which I know can be hacked and is cheaper.
Nice, but you forgot one:
--HTC Pony: Designed exclusively for a hypothetical user base (probably doesn't exist) that will cost millions in development and, if lucky, will sell 10s if not 100s to easily disoriented consumers. At least two Reddit subforums will absolutely love it. The subsequent bankruptcy filing by HTC will ensure the highly collectible status of the phone.
Interesting ideas, but to play devils advocate, there are many problems with what you propose.
Primarily, this many SKU's is completely uneconomical for a company that's already seeing declining sales and profit margin. It's not just the number of models, it's the fact that they'll have to make multiple versions of each one for each country and carrier, and storage capacity.
-- HTC Universal: In addition to all the flavours of 3G/H+, you want support for all LTE frequencies? Good luck with that. Even assuming that it's technologically and financially feesible to cram that many different radios into one handset, it's still not useful. Many CDMA providers will not let you bring a phone to their network that has not been purchased through their stores. Even some GSM providers that can't block it will make it as difficult as they can. Even then, how many people really need access to more than 2 networks at most? The market would be incredibly small, and the cost of the phone would be enormous.
-- HTC Marathon: Interesting. But it's probably more reasonable to just sell one phone of any type with an option of multiple officially supported battery sizes.
-- HTC Pure: It's possible, and I'd buy it, but chances are it won't happen. Officially selling a non-Nexus pure-Android phone implies that your Sense brand is not as great as you'd like. So it's unlikely.
-- HTC Tinker: There is no way you'll ever get a phone that officially supports both Android and WP8. Microsoft would never allow that. And there is no convincing non-carrier reason you need to lock your bootloader on any device. Having a specific version just for the unlocked bootloader seems wasteful. Just unlock them all.
Overall, it makes more sense to just make one or two phones and include whatever of these options are feasible.
So instead of everything you proposed, they could just release the HTC One with an unlocked bootloader, varying internal storage, provide downloads for officially supported AOSP images, and multiple battery sizes. That's actually feasible and economical. That doesn't satisfy every possible niche, but it gets to the big ones, and the increase in production/engineering cost is much less significant.
But it still won't happen. Fact is that the cost of catering to these niches is probably far more than then the associated increase in revenue. Best you can hope for is an unlocked bootloader.
SD cards are going away on phones
Sounds like wishful thinking from someone who doesn't have one. SD cards are plenty fast enough for me. I would far rather have an SD card than be forced to futz around with USB cables, dongles, adapters etc. I have some Android devices with SD card and some without. I have a strong preference for the devices with SD cards. That's one of the big annoyances of the Nexus 4, no SD card. Plus, needing a special tool or a pin (problematic on an airplane) to get the SIM card out is just plain idiotic. But I digress. I note that Samsung has begun to see the error of their ways in that regard.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I have never had any issues with any Li-ion batteries as long as they are properly maintained. That means do not let it run below 20% (yes, it means stop yakking on the phone and stop playing games on the phone if it is that low).
In which universe does that qualify as acceptable usability for a consumer device? Especially considering that typical high end smart phones don't even last a day, just running maps or other moderate loads.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Lower res pictures with bigger pixels?
Yes. My 20D with 8 megapixels takes much higher quality pictures that any known cell phone, or any point and shoot with 50% more nominal pixels. It's not just the vastly better optics, it's also the quality of the sensor.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
>Removable batteries mean a battery door. This makes the phone thicker.
Bollox. The Sanyo Zio had a batter door that was at best the width of three sheets of paper; and the battery lastest much less than the lifetime of the phone (my wife still uses her somewhat-less-than 3yr old Zio)
And one that includes a plug for the stillborn NFC technology too! WHERE'S THE FUCKING IRDA PORT BITCHES?
You've echoed many of the sentiments responded elsewhere, and I'll hope that the other posters are eagle-eyed enough to see this response instead of me cutting-and-pasting everywhere.
I pulled a few ideas off the top of my head, clearly without the market research or engineering teams required to actually bring one to fruition. I'm also not saying that every model is a good idea, just that if HTC keeps trying to compete with both the iPhone and Galaxy series phones, they're going to have to be very content with third place. The Marathon, for example, has a much better chance when its only competition is the Droid Razr Maxx HD. The Click has a great chance of being the best phone with a slide-out keyboard, especially when no competitors seem to want to address that at all. The Simplicity clearly isn't going to sell by the trillions, but doing so helps win a MUCH easier race with a relative minimum of R&D behind it. The Tinker already exists: it's called the HTC HD2, and it already runs WinMo 6.5 officially, with unofficial ports of Android, WP7, Ubuntu, and an incredibly-buggy-but-technically-bootable WP8 port. HTC might not be able to "officially" make it happen, but a wink and a nudge and a set of drivers that just so happen to cross compile incredibly easily, they can simply follow the trail that already exists.
What I'm ultimately getting at is that HTC is trying to do what everyone else is doing - making phones more anorexic, shinier, and shedding user replaceable parts. Their last flagship phone was the Evo 4G, and then Samsung completely stole their thunder, and they've got an incredibly challenging uphill battle ahead of them if they're going to return to the glory days of the Sensation and the Evo.Instead, I'm suggesting that by sacrificing their lust for the best selling Android handset ever, they can make handsets that won't sell in GS3 numbers but will have a particular "killer feature" that some users were sad to give up by getting their shiny Samsung. They won't all flock back, but they'll at least have a differentiating feature besides the flip clock.
SD cards are going away on phones. They are slow and lead to customer complaints. Besides USB on the Go basically obsoletes them. Removable batteries mean a battery door. This makes the phone thicker.
Personally neither is a deal killer.
"slow and lead to customer complaints" smells like phone company bullshit.
1. Removable batteries mean larger capacity battery options and less Apple themed 'planned obsolescence' after the factory battery starts wearing out.
2. Class 4 SD cards are slow, Class 10 SD cards are not. SD cards are going away because it allows you to mark up the 'extra ram' version of your phone and/or tablet...again, something that's been standard on all fruit themed hardware since the very beginning.
Yes. My 20D with 8 megapixels takes much higher quality pictures that any known cell phone, or any point and shoot with 50% more nominal pixels. It's not just the vastly better optics, it's also the quality of the sensor.
You did mention the optics though, there's just no point to 10MP with a quarter-inch lens. All it does is blow up your file sizes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> I am not interested in being tied to one carrier, nor in a midrange phone.
Good luck with that on nearly any phone. Besides, the Relay can be unlocked for free from a service menu, DMCA not withstanding (T-Mobile is good with unlock codes besides).
> None of those are high end devices.
Yeah, sorry, they are, even months later. Really, aside from not having massive internal storage (a non-issue since they support SD cards), the only thing they are behind on is having 1GB RAM instead of 2GB, something that wasn't present on any devices available when they were released, IIRC. Their processors are still top of the line: the dual core Snapdragon S4s (based on Cortex-A15) have similar, if not better, performance than Samsung's quad core Cortex-A9s (as seen in international version of S3).
The cell radio has the same performance as the S3/Note II, it supports NFC, Bluetooth 4, MHL, 802.11n, etc.
What are you using to define "high end" exactly? Unreleased phones based on unreleased processors?
> The display on the Relay is pathetic, it compares with my old Droid1 not a GS3.
And this is where you reveal you are simply talking out of your ass. Of course the screen is "pathetic": you want a damn keyboard. The Relay's display tech is on par with the Note II: ~250dpi Super AMOLED. The problem is that it's currently impossible achieve the DPI required to make a 720p screen in that form factor (>350, vs 306 for the S3 and 326 for the iPhone 5's retina display). The only way to make the display better would be to make it larger. Specifically, the side of the Galaxy S3 and I would find a physical keyboard on that whale to be hard to use. Could they have maybe have split the difference and made it 270+dpi and ~960×540 like some other devices? Yeah, I suppose, but really that's splitting hairs.
In conclusion, the problem isn't with the phones, the problem is that you have a poor understanding of what the state of the art is and what is possible and you'd rather nitpick little things and necessary design tradeoffs than be happy with a solid high end device.
Not only are SD cards plenty fast, but manufacturers are free to use flash so slow that it's not any faster than an SD card, and they may, to cut costs. Having internal storage is no guarantee of anything except lack of expandability.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I want HTC to build a Nexus phone again. The Nexus One was (relatively speaking) the best Nexus phone made, in my opinion. The Samsung Nexus phones were/are OK (I have a Galaxy Nexus now) but they were never the absolute top of the line phones. The Nexus 4 is a nice piece of hardware but has some serious flaws (low, non-expandable memory being the show-stopper for me).
I might have to just give up on Nexus phones and hope for good Cyanogenmod support for this guy. But I'll see what Google brings out in May.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
I /almost/ agree with you. I severely regret getting my current phone (Galaxy Nexus) because it has no SD slot and only 16gb of space. And I filled that up real fast.
However, it looks like SD slots are pretty much going away, and these phones Do come with 32 or 64gb of space which should be plenty for the next couple of years.
That's my main complaint against the Nexus 4, and the reason I won't get one. The max space on that thing is 16GB which is just ridiculous.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
What helps mitigate that is having an app like Titanium Backup which not just encrypts backup data, but saves the encrypted backups onto Dropbox or another provider. Done right, it provides a decent level of protection, especially if one takes a periodic nandroid backup and uploads that.
I own an iPhone 5 that I use off and on all day for different things. It easily lasts two days before needing to be plugged in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Removable batteries mean a battery door. This makes the phone thicker.
This is a red herring for. Manufacturers and apologists will say it to explain away bad engineering. It is used because while it it technically true if no other factors are considered, once proper engineering is applied, it becomes an insignificant factor. If there was a hard line between the thickness of phones with replaceable batteries and those without, MAYBE the excuse would carry some weight. Looking at the available phones, and we see that plenty of phones with replaceable batteries that are noticeably thinner than their non-replaceable battery counterparts.
In theory removable batteries mean thicker phones. In practice they do not.
Nexus devices are not tied to one carrier. Nor are good GSM devices.
Any device with a screen that would be considered pathetic a year ago is not high end. 1GB of RAM is midrange. The screen is low DPI as well, my GF's Rezound is at 342dpi. That is a 4.3" device, I doubt adding .3 inches to the Relay would be a big deal.
Making it larger would be fine. I would love a normal GS3 with a slide out keyboard. Not sure why you keep mentioning what is barely a highend device anyway. The GS3 is getting pretty dated at this point.
Thanks for posting that. I've been looking for a replacement to my HTC G2 but have yet to find a T-Mobile phone with an acceptable keyboard. I don't know why phone manufactures mess with the standard keyboard layout so much. Trying to code on the G2 (even just HTML) is a nightmare (it doesn't even have ..yet they include a www. key???).
The Relay's keyboard looks great. I think it's the only T-Mobile phone to have 5 rows since the long dead HTC G1.
My only concern with the Relay is that it's made by Samsung. It seems like all I ever see in Play Store reviews is how various apps crash on Samsung devices. I can't say I'm too confident in the brand.
I frequently replace my batteries as well. Since I am not wearing skin tight clothes and I am an adult, so my pockets are adult sized, I am not pressed for a paper thin phone. When available, I will usually replace the existing battery with one that is double or triple the capacity. I have a T-Mobile G2. The replacement battery adds 1/4 inch to the thickness of the phone and triples the battery capacity. This allows me to leave tethering on all the time, have my phone kick on the GPS every 3 minutes to log it's location, and still run all day under heavy load without worrying about running out of power.
I would like to see it done the way that the iPhone does it. Put the keyboard in a case that has a slide out keyboard. This way we get the economies of scale with the phone and can even decide to add the keyboard 6 months after we bought the phone.
I would buy an HTC Pure Marathon.
The thing that gets me is that most phones have removable batteries. Why are the manufacturers not selling overpriced back plates with double, triple and quadruple sized batteries? It just cant be that expensive to make a replacement back plate.
10 Megapixels is enough for my DSLR
And one that includes a plug for the stillborn NFC technology too! WHERE'S THE FUCKING IRDA PORT BITCHES?
I'm sorry right now Apple are not innovating
Lets Compare Phones your flagship phone with HTC's
iPhone 5
=======
1.3 GHz dual core Apple A6
1GB LPDDR2-1066 RAM
4-inch (100 mm) diagonal
640 × 1,136 pixels at 326 ppi
HTC One
=======
1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600
2GB of RAM
4.7-inch display
1080p(1920×1080) Super LCD 3 display at 468ppi 1080p
Wow, finally a phone with a readable screen. Those 300ppi screens were just killing my eyes. That 1080p screen totally makes my 1280x768 screen obsolete. /s
re-read your post it tries to justify a cheap, slow, memory shy, low resolution, second rate software iPhone...and justify against the flagship HTC phone. That is not going to happen, not here. The only response is that Apple is going to step up, and in four months is going to have a response of killer updated software...and hardware, and it is more than capable [at least foxconn is]. Want to see how to respond watch Samsung and its Galaxy launch...although personally I want to see the Xphone from Motorola....on topic we are going to see another 10 companies produce flagship phones. Although under the circumstances perhaps I need the sony xperia z as that is waterproof.
Seriously? That POS physical button is the one of the few things I hate about my wife's S3. That and some of the Samsung customizations that clunk up the interface make me marginally prefer my Nexus despite the vastly superior screen and speed of the S3.