Russian HTC One owners are receiving the following update OTA.
The update contains important update for the smartphone, including:
* Increased system stability
* best geo positioning
* HTC Zoe: improved sound quality
* Camera: Adjust settings
* Bets Audio: improved sound
* Other minor improvements and bug fixes.
Lets hope it wont be too long for others now to receive this.
Yesterday, Apple opened a new store in Plymouth, Devon, UK. As it is located inside a shopping centre, 100s of people shuffle along. Therefore, trying to take a picture inside the shopping centre is challenging at the best of times, but became even more difficult as people wanted to check out the new Apple store.
Well it would be difficult for most cameras, but not the HTC One. Simple open the camera, tap the Zoe icon which turns blue, and press the shutter screen icon. The HTC One takes 3 seconds of video and 20 photos all within a few seconds. It even takes a photos 1 second before you actually press the shutter icon. Once taken, all you have to do is tap photo, edit, retouch, object removal, done and save. So simple. So below is the photo I published yesterday of the Apple store in Plymouth. What is amazing, is that all the people that were walking passed the store got removed.
This is why I love the HTC One camera. It totally removes the need for editing tools like photoshop.
I’ve written so much about the HTC One that I’ve created it’s own page. It covers everything from the specs, first impressions, 9 part review, daily blog and special mentions of certain features of the HTC One.
The HTC One has a standard micro USB connector, so one would assume that when charging you can use any micro USB connector lying around both at home and in the car. Well you can but be warned.
In the car and at home you need to make sure that when using a third party cable and plug that you are charging AC power mode and not USB. Nothing wrong with USB mode except it’s slow and in the car might not charge the phone quick enough as you use the GPS, Bluetooth and more. If you use HTC’s own car and supplied charger you will see the below screen shot. Go to settings, power and top left it says AC charging.
Now if for example you used an iPad wall part with a USB cable the top left wording would change to USB charging which takes a lot longer. In the car I originally tried a Kensington car charger block with a BlackBerry micro USB cable. This only gave USB power and consequently when I had GPS and Bluetooth running the phone battery died by 2% every hour. Swap over to the official HTC car charger, AC power mode is triggered and the phone chargers ahead despite using it heavily.
This photo was taken on the HTC One today. It was a quick stop and snap. No thinking or planning.
It’s Brentor Church on Dartmoor with the light striking the church.
I’ve had the HTC One for a few weeks now and I’ve just discovered article view.
Basically load a page and then in front on the Web address is a symbol. Press this and the page is displayed in article view, which is an easy to view formatted style. See screen shots below.
Over the last few weeks I have reviewed, blogged and written everything and anything on the HTC One. To recap what I have written, look above at the Review tab, and then click on HTC One.
So this will be my last post on the HTC One, as I have murdered it to death. Not literally.
So what are my final views.
Style – its stunning. It’s the first phone I just can’t bear to put a case or screen protector on. I have 4 cases, but none last more than 1 hour on the phone. Normally, I have a collection of 20 plus cases per phone. It’s so beautifully made, that it makes you want to pick it up, hold it and admire it. It also makes every other phone seem inferior.
Sound – the stereo front speakers do make a difference and provide an enjoyable experience with all media, games and even sat nav instructions are loud but also very clear. The output via the headphones sounds good using the beats audio option.
Sense 5 – if you get this phone , don’t delete Sense 5 or remove Blinkfeed. Leave everything in its default state for at least a week to experience the setup HTC have provided. The fonts and graphics are grown up and don’t look cartoonish. The phone is not overloaded with excessive software or bloatware. Blinkfeed grows on you, and is IMO quite useful.
Camera – with this camera you will capture wonderful shots of people and your pets. Scenic shots are average, due to the lack of detail from the 4mp camera. The Zoe feature, and all the camera software works brilliantly. Video highlights, and sharing is a breeze. Also as the camera is 4mp the file sizes are small and don’t take a lot of space up. The camera has a knack of taking a photo first time perfectly every time. Capturing motion is phenomenal. It should be as it can take 8 photos a second at full quality. I also like the menu setup on the One, and find it quick and easy to jump between the options as required.
Experience – HTC have tried really hard to make the hardware and software work in unity. Once you spend time with the phone, it becomes a joy to use. Nothing is over complicated. It just works. Even the setup out of the box is simple. It’s an iPhone experience but better. An an example to its simplicity, you can listen to your music with beats on or off. No graphic equaliser complicating matters. Just beats on or off. You will leave beats on though.
Screen – awesome. Reading text is fantastic. And is everything else.
Battery life – after a few weeks it varies from reasonable to average dependent on how hard I push it. But I always make it from 6am to midnight. Just.
Memory – the HTC One includes an a decent set of apps as standard. Therefore despite my best efforts I only have added 64 apps, and 20 of those are games. That means less space is needed to achieve your probable setup. I have installed music, videos, feature films, photos and more and have 14gb still left. That has really surprised me. And as the camera photos are small file sizes, you can snap away happily.
Software – HTC have included some decent software, covering most aspects from business to pleasure. Even a flashlight app. But nothing bloatware. The phone includes a FM radio which many top devices now exclude. In fact the software, visuals and Sense 5 all work seamlessly together.
Conclusion – its a cracker of a phone. In a league of its own. And provides a very enjoyable user experience. At times, you forget its android! I could go on and on and on, but it truly just sells itself.
Today, I was going to write a review of the HTC A100 with the HTC One.
In summary, it doesn’t work. The end.
Ironically the A100 does work fine with other brands eg Nokia Lumia 620. So as a workaround I used a Samsung HS300 Bluetooth and plugged a 3.5mm to male 3.5mm cable from the headphone jack into the car aux jack. That worked just fine.
This is really not clever stuff by Samsung. And totally out of order. Samsung must really fear the stunning aluminium HTC One. And Samsung had to resort to this dreadful behaviour despite having one of the largest marketing budgets in history.
Taiwan authorities investigating Samsung over dirty tricks with the HTC One
HTC has responded as follows :-
Taipei, April 15 (CNA) Taiwan’s HTC Corp. said Monday that it is considering legal action against Samsung Electronics Co. after the government decided to investigate recent accusations that the South Korean company deceptively attacked its rivals’ products online.
“We regret our competitor’s malicious attacks and efforts to discredit us,” HTC said in a statement when asked for comment on the investigation.
“HTC values product innovation and design, and we do not rule out the possibility of taking appropriate actions to protect the interests of our company and customers if necessary,” the Taoyuan-based company said.
The HTC statement came after the Fair Trade Commission said Monday that it had formally set up a case last week to investigate whether Samsung was deceptively pitching its products online and attacking its rivals’ devices.
The commission will check whether Samsung was guilty of false advertising and damaging the reputation of another business, the agency said.
The South Korean company could be subject to a fine of up to NT$25 million (US$837,500) if it is found to have violated the Fair Trade Act.
The case stems from media reports on a post in an online forum on April 1 that said Samsung hired workers in Taiwan to open several sock-puppet accounts as part of a marketing campaign to promote its new flagship phone Galaxy S4 in the country.
The post, which has gone viral online, said OpenTide Taiwan, a marketing company hired by Samsung, asked part-time workers to use multiple propaganda accounts on the Internet to promote the company’s phones and attack products from its rivals.
A “sock-puppet account” is an account set up to by a user to assume a false identity, usually with the intention to deceive or mislead others in online communities.
Samsung Taiwan responded to the charge on its Facebook page on April 5 by saying that it had not interfered with any online product evaluation report and had stopped online marketing campaigns involving posting or responding to messages in online forums.
The company also said it would step up staff education.
The HTC One comes with an app called car mode. This is more than an app, it is a simple launcher to use whilst driving. Everything is big, big words and icons. Bluetooth is switched on automatically, in fact even music can if you desire. Screen brightness is at max too. You also get a number of voice options, but the choice is nowhere near as extensive as Siri or S Voice, but what you get does work really well. I have set up my car mode home screens as follows.
If you need access to another app you will have to either exit car mode or add it to the launcher. Navigation is one of the options. Tap on this icon and you are presented with a number of options. All work well using either Google Navigation or Maps. The only option that is rather odd is the Previous option.
This seems to find random places, or towns. I found it was really only useful for finding towns or cities, but in all honesty it was best to avoid altogether and go straight to Google Navigation for searching. The other navigation option icons use google maps and work correctly. So if you want a restaurant, it pulls up all restaurants nearby in google maps. From maps you can navigate accordingly.
The music player options are also enlarged. See screen shots below.
The enlarged icons and text make it easy to select the music you would like. And when you have selected an album etc the music player controls are super sized on the screen. Next up is the People icon. This reveals three larger icons , favourites , frequent, and all people as shown below.
Remember that whilst in car mode tapping the home button brings you back to the first car mode home screen. To exit car mode from here, you have to either press the back key twice, or use the exit icon. Car mode has a number of settings and options, selected from within the app from auto launch with car dock, auto play music, auto connect to Bluetooth devices, options for voice call accessories and Audio out, beats on/off, read out notification , notification preview on or off.
So if you have read out and preview notifications turned on if a text message arrives, it will display new message from your contact, and ask it you want it read out or call contact. If you say read out, the text message is displayed on the screen large and clear and the phone reads the message out. You can now call or dismiss but not use voice to type reply. The other voice options using the voice icons are call contact, play music, radio on or off or listen to. And that’s it. It is certainly no Siri match or even S Voice, but it does work very well.
A little point to remember that with car mode activated, GPS running, Bluetooth on and more, the phone charges extremely slowly.
Tomorrow I will describe how it works with the HTC Car stereo clip A100.
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 