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."

Comments

A lesson for HTC

[Maow]

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.

Re:A lesson for HTC

[AmiMoJo]

I'll give you HTC's responses. Note I'm not endorsing them, just telling what they will say. My personal comments are included.

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.

Sense is what differentiates our phones, all our apps are designed for it and would need modifications to fit in with the vanilla Android theme, our phones have industry leading performance etc.

Comment: Apparently future versions of Android (Key Lime Pie?) will allow manufacturers to more easily skin the OS and optionally allow users to turn the skin off.

2) Make your phones (more) hacker friendly.

Lots of work for 0.00001% of our users, and lots of headaches from the people who think they know what they are doing but don't and brick their phones instead. Seriously, Samsung went to the trouble of introducing a counter that tracks how many times you installed an unofficial ROM because people kept bricking their phones and returning them.

Comment: We are a niche market, but well served by Google and some really rather good Chinese phones.

3) Stop it with the non-removable batteries and lack of external SD card slots.

We make lots of money on battery replacement and charging £50 for an extra 8GB of storage.

Comment: Okay, they wouldn't use those words, but that's what it boils down to. The only option is to boycott I'm afraid. Speak through your wallet.

4) UPDATES for Android!

It does what it does when you buy it. If you want new stuff buy a new phone.

Comment: Again future versions of Android are supposed to improve this situation, and again the only solution is unfortunately to vote with your wallet.

You need the dev community to support your phones.

Those guys are a support nightmare for us. We really want them to leave us alone.

Re:Camera?

[jonnythan]

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.

Physics

[AliasMarlowe]

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...