HTC have launched their brand new flagship smartphone today at parallel events in both New York and London.
The Taiwanese company are keen to create a tide-change this year, after a rather disappointing 2012 which saw the firm fall far behind rivals Apple and Samsung. In the third quarter HTC only had 4% of the global smartphone market (in contrast to Samsung’s 31%), while it’s shipments were down 42.5% from the same period in 2011. The new HTC One is the baby on which they’re placing all their hopes and as yet unfulfilled aspirations like pushy, regret-filled and slightly desperate parents. Harsh, yes. But true ;)
But to be honest things are already looking good for HTC. They have taken a completely different tack, focusing almost entirely on the user experience, features and software as opposed to specs and speeds. And this is much more likely to go down well with the masses. They’ve excepted that it's going to be hard to create a better Android smartphone than Samsung, so they’ve made a smartphone that’s really not far behind at all (the innards are really very good and do the job), and that also offers that little something different.
The phone is really rather lovely from the outside; resembling the iPhone 5 more than the Galaxy or any of HTC’s previous models. The sleek aluminium chassis comes in either black or white and is fronted by a 4.7”, 1080p display with 468ppi. The handset features Google’s Roboto typeface and Sense’s icons and widgets are flatter and of a more digital aesthetic than the previous handsets.
They have focused on an improved sound quality with a pair of front facing speakers complete with amplifiers. The camera is also rather impressive – in fact they are removing themselves from the megapixel race altogether – with their ultrapixel sensor which they say collects 300% more light than the cameras of their rivals. Perhaps the biggest point of difference between the One and the company’s older handsets is the BlinkFeed service, which collections content into a single activity feed that is located on the homescreen. Although there are four other homescreens that you can flick to from BlinkFeed, it is impossible to remove; so it is safe to say it’s certainly a phone for the content generation as Mike Woodward, President of HTC America told ABC News:
"We think it's time to shake things up in the smartphone space. We have decided to come out and reinvent the smartphone. We have re-architected the phone around how Generation Feed behaves”. ‘Generation Feed’ are those of you who can’t keep your hungry little eyes and paws of your phone; addicted to staying up to date on news and keeping up with friends. Most of us then, eh!?
Peter Chou founder and CEO of HTC said: “HTC has always been about innovation. I’m talking about reinvigorating the entire smartphone experience based on how people are using them.”
I’d say that’s a pretty good approach to take overall. Specs and speeds are simply so good now – on the whole - that the pretty standard quad-core Snapdragon 600 chipsets, the 2GB or RAM and the 32 or 64GB of internal memory that the HTC One comes with, do the job well enough. Perhaps focusing on the stuff that users will enjoy and benefit from directly and obviously, rather than trying to keep up with Samsung technology and remaining a perennial one step behind, is the best way to go.
OnRecycle applaud your bravery, innovation and class HTC. We’re looking forward to seeing how the phone goes down.
Will you be investing in this lovely new handset? If you do then don’t forget to recycle your old phone with us. Not only will it help fund this new puppy (she won’t be cheap, I can assure you!) but it’s also a good deed, helping the environment. If you don’t, chances are your old handset will end up on a landfill site somewhere and lots of nasty toxins will leak out and pollute mother earth. Bad, bad, bad!
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