Htc one m9 review 6 monts later android#

The only place there’s some fit and finish weakness is in the top and bottom front facing aluminum pieces, which aren’t part of the CNC machining that the rest of the chassis undergoes.

Htc one m9 review 6 monts later android#

It’s the kind of manufacturing story that previously only the likes of Apple could lay claim to, and the HTC One is really the first Android device which reaches the level of construction quality previously owned almost entirely by the iPhone. There’s no matching parts together from different cuts to achieve an optimal fit, everything in the main chassis is cut as one solid unit.

The result is HTC’s “zero-gap” construction which – as the name implies – really has no gaps between aluminum and polymer at all for those unibody parts. Plastic gets injected into the chassis between cuts during machining for the antenna bands and side of the case, which also gets machined. Two hundred minutes of CNC cuts later, a finished One chassis emerges. HTC begins construction of the One from a solid piece of aluminum.

It is the realization of HTC’s dream for an all-metal phone. The HTC One is that contender, and brings unibody metal construction to an entirely new level. So when I heard about M7 being on the horizon as the next flagship, I couldn’t help but worry that there would no longer be a primarily-metal contender at the high end from HTC. I asked Vivek Gowri (our resident Mechanical Engineering slash industrial design connoisseur slash mobile reviewer extraordinaire) if I was crazy, and he agreed that the One S was one of, if not the, best industrial designs of 2012. I’ve talked with a lot of people about HTC’s lineup last year, and even though the One X was a well constructed plastic phone, the One S really stuck out in my mind for being a level above and beyond in terms of construction and industrial design. Or instead of plastic, polymer, or polycarbonate, or whatever overly-specific word we use to avoid saying plastic. In my books, fit and finish goes, in descending order of quality, metal, glass, and finally plastic. You almost don’t even need to read the rest of this section. The HTC One’s fit and finish are phenomenal. I pick up my phone too many times a day to count for better or worse, thus the material quality and in-hand feel really do make a big difference. With a smartphone that’s even more important, since there’s so much that revolves around the in-hand feel. Let’s talk about the HTC One.įor whatever reason I always start with industrial design and aesthetics, probably because it’s the most obvious superficial thing that hits you when picking up almost anything for the first time. With the One it looks as though HTC is making that kind of statement by literally letting it define the entire One brand.Įnough about the position and the strategy for HTC, these are mostly things that are interesting to enthusiasts and industry, but not really relevant to consumers or the review of a singular product. HTC is different from other OEMs in that it only makes smartphones, and as a result the flagship clearly defines the rest of the product portfolio below it. It’s clear that the HTC One is the unadulterated representation of HTC’s vision for what the flagship of its smartphone lineup should be. It’s just the HTC One - no S or X or V or any other monikers at all. Rather than announce the entire lineup of phones, it’s beginning with the interestingly-named HTC One. HTC now needs a winner more than ever.įor 2013 HTC is starting out a bit differently. It’s easy to armchair the previous product cycle now that we have a year of perspective, but that’s the reality of things.

The reality of things is that for HTC with this last product cycle there were products with solid industrial design and specs for the most part, but not the right wins with mobile operators in the United States, and not the right marketing message abroad. If there’s one thing Anand has really driven home for me in my time writing for AnandTech, it’s that in the fast-paced mobile industry, a silicon vendor or OEM really only has to miss one product cycle in a very bad way to get into a very difficult position. It is nearly impossible to begin to review the HTC One without some context, and I’ll begin our review of the HTC One (formerly the device known as codename M7) much the same way I did my impressions piece simply by stating that HTC is in an interesting position as a result of last year’s product cycle.