HTC One (M8) Review

PROS

• Excellent build and design quality
• High-end performance hardware
• Loudspeaker offers a great output
• Duo-lens camera with refocusing and other camera features
• Unlock gestures and active display

CONS

• Brushed metal finish doesn't offer a good grip
• Nano SIM card slot
• Camera supports only 4MP resolution

MRP: 49990

Summary 

The HTC One (M8) offers a great blend of premium design and performance hardware and is definitely the best looking Android smartphone today. It does however lack in features when compared to other flagship devices. If you are planning to invest in a flagship smartphone, then the M8 is not a bad recommendation. But if you are looking for a beast, then you should probably look at other options.

Review

The Taiwan-based handset maker HTC, is known for producing the first Android devices. But in the last couple of years, the company has been facing major financial losses. Some rumours even pointed that the company might just end up bankrupted. Thankfully, the brand is strong and with bunch of new smartphones including new flagship models, we are seeing HTC bounce back into the game. Their flagship, the HTC One, was probably the best looking smartphone for the year 2013 and won many awards as well. Now we have an upgrade and boy does it look good. The all new HTC One (M8) is bolder and looks as elegant as the last year’s model.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Display: 5 inches Super LCD3, 1920x1080 resolution with Gorilla Glass 3 (441ppi)
• Battery: 2600mAh
• Storage: 16GB
• Camera:  4MP dual-lens rear with dual-tone flash, 5MP front
• SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801
• CPU: Quad-core 2.5 GHz
• GPU: Adreno 330
• RAM: 2GB
• Operating system: Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6
• Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB with OTG

BODY AND DESIGN

Last year’s HTC One was without doubt THE best looking Android smartphone and for 2014, HTC had a huge challenge to make it even better. The HTC One (M8) is exceptionally striking and the metal body gives you a reason to hold it in your hand. The design is quite similar to the last year’s flagship with some welcoming changes including a larger display and a microSD card slot (finally).

The HTC One (M8) has more metal and a more curvaceous design that fits well in the hand. Yes, it is bigger in size than the original HTC One and now boasting a 5-inch display, the M8 isn’t so easy to operate with one hand although it is quite sleek with a thickness of 9.4mm. And thanks to the curved design, it isn’t all that bulky.

The capacitive touch-sensitive keys have been replaced by onscreen ones giving more real-estate for the display. Above the display, we now have a 5MP camera with a wide angle lens to get those perfect selfies. Of course we have the BoomSound equipped stereo speakers on either sides of the display which are now louder and crisper. There is also a notification LED placed inside the top speaker to notify you about miss calls, messages, and so on.

The right side has the volume control keys and the nanoSIM card slot (a pain as everyone doesn’t have a nanoSIM card). The left side has a slot for a microSD card which supports up to 128GB of capacity. The top has the power/lock key while the bottom has the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB port. The back has an elegant brushed metal look housing a new duo-lens camera with a dual-tone flash. The resolution on the camera has not been improved leaving you with 4MP pictures, but lesser pixels does not mean bad quality pictures (more on that later). There is also a distinct laser-cut HTC logo in the middle of the back panel.

The display is a Super LCD3 again and the viewing angles are pretty good for an LCD display. Colours don’t wash out when viewed from various angles and readability under bright sunlight is quite good.

For a 5-inch smartphone the HTC One (M8) is by far the best looking handsets that we have laid our hands on. The detail to finish and quality of materials is so good that one has to put an effort to point out any flaws. Probably the only minor thing we didn’t like is that it feels quite slippery and fragile in the hand. One would be extra cautious when placing the smartphone on their desk or even in their pockets. Also, since there is a lot of metal, there are chances of having scuffs on the edges if you are a rugged smartphone user.

UI AND PERFORMANCE
The HTC One (M8) comes with the new Sense 6 UI which is almost similar to 5.5 with a new theme option that changes the colour scheme of the UI, a new lockscreen with gestures, updated BlinkFeed and Camera apps. We have always loved HTC's minimalistic approach when it comes to the UI. The icons and widgets are same as seen on Sense 5.5 with a very flat look. The new Sense 6 is really smooth and doesn’t show any signs of lag or delay in response time.

The most useful update is the new gestures to unlock the smartphone. Double-tapping on the display wakes up the smartphone and double tapping again on the lockscreen deactivates the display. Once you are on the lockscreen you can then swipe right to unlock and jump to BlinkFeed or swipe left to jump to the first homescreen. Similarly, you can perform these gestures even when the display is not active. The lockscreen has a dock at the bottom that houses icons for 4 apps (dialer, messaging, browser and camera) that can be swiped up to open.

The news and social media aggregator, BlinkFeed, is now more colourful thanks to the added themes options. The app has been updated with new topics and feeds which means you can get more out of the app. Of course there is support for Facebook and Twitter, we only wish that more social networks could be added including Foursquare and Instagram. Apps like the browser, music player, gallery, etc. are all similar to the ones seen on previous HTC devices. HTC, just like Samsung, has added a TV control app which lets you control your TV and set-top box via the the infra-red port on the top. It is a pretty handy feature although getting used to the app takes a bit of your time.

On the synthetic benchmarks, the HTC One (M8) showed good results matching and even surpassing the capabilities of the Galaxy S5 and the Xperia Z2. Even day to day tasks including multitasking, gaming, video playback and internet browsing is a piece of cake for the smartphone. The Snapdragon 801 proves to be as powerful as the 800 providing immense power to play high-end games or uncompressed video.

Benchmark	Samsung Galaxy S5	Sony Xperia Z2	HTC One (M8)
Antutu X	37047	33429	34940
Quadrant	24470	17816	25773
Smartbench (productivity)	6145	7210	9873
3D Mark Unlimited	13032	18383	17925

The results show that the M8 does have a slight edge over the Galaxy S5 and the Xperia Z2. Although after testing all the three smartphones, we've noticed that all of them offer a similar bug-free experience.

In our standard battery test, we charged the smartphone to a full 100% and then pumped up the brightness to full and connected the smartphone to Wi-Fi. Next we played a full HD video for one hour to the see the amount of battery loss. The 2600mAH managed to have 88% of battery that was still left after the test, which means that you can play a full HD video for about 8 and a half hours continuously. For daily usage, we found that you get a battery backup of a full day on normal usage and slightly less than a day on heavy usage.

CAMERA
The snapper on the HTC One has been upgraded with the new dual-lens system which allows you to refocus your images and have a shallow depth-of-field giving a natural feel to the pictures. There is also a duo-tone flash which automatically throws a warm or cool beam of light according to the conditions.

The camera app has been redesigned with major modes accessible from the icon on the bottom right. It opens up a large window with big icons to select any shooting modes which include single camera shot, video, Zoe, Selfie (opens up the front camera), dual capture, and a panorama mode. You also get some tweaking options such as ISO, exposure compensation, white balance presets, some filters, and also a scene mode which includes HDR, night mode, portrait, handheld, macro mode, and so on.

There is also a manual mode which gives you total control of your focus, ISO, shutter speeds, exposure compensation and colour temperature. Very few smartphones out there offer such advanced controls.

A number of people have criticized the low resolution of the sensor on the HTC One. Yes, it only supports 4MP pictures but it doesn’t mean that the pictures produced are of low quality. If we go to the technical side, a sensor having 16 million pixels will obviously require more space than 4 million pixels. But since the 4 million pixels will take less space, each pixel will also be much bigger than the one on the 16 million pixel sensor. This means more information per pixel is stored. In short, yes you do get a lower resolution image, but there won’t be compromise on quality.

Coming back to the capabilities of the camera on the M8, pictures come out quite well and the camera app is super quick to take pictures. Thanks to the dual-lens system, when a picture is taken in optimum light (without flash) you can immediately select the picture and refocus on the area you want. There are other post-editing tools including a background shader, seasons effects, 3D dimension mode, stickers and also a neat feature that allows you to cut out parts or people from an image and paste it onto other pictures. You can add filters rotate, crop and even add frames.

Focusing is smooth and fast and the camera manages to focus well in dim lighting conditions. If you are using tap-to-focus in the auto-mode, apart from the focusing, the camera also adjusts the exposure of the area selected for focusing and this is something which is quite innovative. Pictures in low light are decent although we have seen better performance on other smartphones. The duo-toned flash works well but quite honestly we don’t think it is something that can bring in a huge difference in the pictures.

Capturing video is pretty standard on the M8 and you can capture a maximum resolution of 1920x1080. Audio quality in the videos is decent and sounds pretty clear but we wish there was a sound normalization as some high levels of audio sound terrible. Now we know that it can’t shoot 4K videos like its other competitors, but the question here is, do you really need 4K video recording? Full HD videos, in our opinion, are sufficient enough and anything beyond the resolution just seems overkill on a portable device.

CONCLUSION

We would suggest the M8 for the ones who want to upgrade from last year's HTC One, as you get a slightly upgraded and better looking design along with the new duo-lens camera, and of course a microSD card slot. The areas where the M8 lacks are probably some high-end features that are otherwise available on the Galaxy S5 and/or the Xperia Z2 at the same price point. If you can compromise on the looks but not on features, then we would recommend that you look elsewhere. For those who crave for a stylish looking smartphone, this is the Android smartphone to get. The curved metal body with a brushed metal finish and the detail is just top notch and in our opinion, the HTC One (M8) is definitely one of the best crafted handsets for this year.

DSLR (Digital single-lens reflex) camera

A digital single-lens reflex camera (also called a digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera combining the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor, as opposed to photographic film. 

The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between a DSLR and other digital cameras. In the reflex design, light travels through the lens, then to a mirror that alternates to send the image to either the viewfinder or the image sensor. 

The alternative would be to have a viewfinder with its own lens, hence the term "single lens" for this design. By using only one lens, the viewfinder presents an image that will not perceptibly differ from what is captured by the camera's sensor.

The photographer can see the motive before taking an image by the mirror. When taking an image the mirror will swing up and light will go to the sensor instead.

1.    Camera lens

2.   Reflex mirror

3.   Focal-plane shutter

4.   Image sensor

5.   Matte focusing screen

6.   Condenser lens

7.   Pentaprism/pentamirror

8.   Viewfinder eyepiece

The Design of DSLR Cameras

Like SLRs DSLRs typically use interchangeable lenses (1) with a proprietary lens mount. A movable mechanical mirror system (2) is switched down (exact 45-degree angle) to direct light from the lens over a matte focusing screen (5) via a condenser lens (6) and a pentaprism/pentamirror (7) to an optical viewfinder eyepiece (8). Most of the entry level DSLRs use a pentamirror instead of the traditional pentaprism.

Focusing can be manual or automatic, activated by pressing half-way on the shutter release or a dedicated AF button. To take an image, the mirror swings upwards in the direction of the arrow, the focal-plane shutter (3) opens, and the image is projected and captured on the image sensor (4), after which actions, the shutter closes, the mirror returns to the 45-degree angle, and the built in drive mechanism re-tensions the shutter for the next exposure.

Compared to the newer concept of mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras this mirror/prism system is the characteristic difference providing direct, accurate optical preview with separate autofocus and exposure metering sensors. Essential parts of all digital cameras are some electronics like amplifier, analog to digital converter, image processor and other microprocessors for processing the digital image, performing data storage and/or driving an electronic display.

Phase-detection autofocus

DSLRs typically use a phase-detection autofocus system. This method of focus is very fast, and results in less focus "searching", but requires the incorporation of a special sensor into the optical path, so it is usually only used in SLR designs. Digicams that use the main sensor to create a live preview on the LCD or electronic viewfinder must use contrast-detect autofocus instead, which is slower in some implementations.

Features commonly seen in DSLR Cameras

Mode dial

Digital SLR cameras, along with most other digital cameras, generally have a mode dial to access standard camera settings or automatic scene-mode settings. Sometimes called a "PASM" dial, they typically provide as minimum Program, Aperture-priority, Shutter-priority, and full Manual modes. Scene modes vary and are inherently less customizable. They often include full-auto, landscape, portrait, action, macro, and night modes, among others. Professional DSLRs seldom contain automatic scene modes because professionals understand their equipment and can quickly adjust the settings to take the image that they want.

Dust reduction systems

A method to prevent dust entering the chamber, by using a "dust cover" filter right behind the lens mount, was used by Sigma in its first DSLR, the Sigma SD9, in 2002.

Olympus used a built-in sensor cleaning mechanism in its first DSLR that had a sensor exposed to air, the Olympus E-1, in 2003.

 

Interchangeable lenses

Canon EF-S 18-135mm APS-CZoom lens 

The ability to exchange lenses, to select the best lens for the current photographic need, and to allow the attachment of specialized lenses, is one of the key factors in the popularity of DSLR cameras, although this feature is not unique to the DSLR design and mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras are becoming increasingly popular. Interchangeable lenses for SLRs and DSLRs (also known as "Glass") are built to operate correctly with a specific lens mount that is generally unique to each brand. A photographer will often use lenses made by the same manufacturer as the camera body (for example, Canon EF lenses on a Canon body) although there are also many independent lens manufacturers, such as Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, and Vivitar that make lenses for a variety of different lens mounts. There are also lens adapters that allow a lens for one lens mount to be used on a camera body with a different lens mount but with often reduced functionality.

Many lenses are mountable, "diaphragm-and-meter-compatible", on modern DSLRs and on older film SLRs that use the same lens mount. However, when lenses designed for 35 mm film or equivalently sized digital image sensors are used on DSLRs with smaller sized sensors, the image is effectively cropped and the lens appears to have a longer focal length than its stated focal length. Most DSLR manufacturers have introduced lines of lenses with image circles optimized for the smaller sensors and focal lengths equivalent to those generally offered for existing 35 mm mount DSLRs, mostly in the wide angle range. These lenses tend not to be completely compatible with full frame sensors or 35 mm film because of the smaller imaging circle and, with some Canon EF-S lenses, interfere with the reflex mirrors on full-frame bodies.

 

HD video capture

Since 2008, manufacturers have offered DSLRs which offer a movie mode capable of recording high definition motion video. A DSLR with this feature is often known as an HDSLR or DSLR video shooter. The first DSLR introduced with an HD movie mode, the Nikon D90, captures video at 720p24 (1280x720 resolution at 24 frame/s). Other early HDSLRs capture video using a nonstandard video resolution or frame rate. For example, the Pentax K-7 uses a nonstandard resolution of 1536×1024, which matches the imager's 3:2 aspect ratio. The Canon EOS 500D (Rebel T1i) uses a nonstandard frame rate of 20 frame/s at 1080p, along with a more conventional 720p30 format.

In general, HDSLRs use the full imager area to capture HD video, though not all pixels (causing video artifacts to some degree). Compared to the much smaller image sensors found in the typical camcorder, the HDSLR's much larger sensor yields distinctly different image characteristics. HDSLRs can achieve much shallower depth of field and superior low-light performance. However, the low ratio of active pixels (to total pixels) is more susceptible to aliasing artifacts (such as moire patterns) in scenes with particular textures, and CMOS rolling shutter tends to be more severe. Furthermore, due to the DSLR's optical construction, HDSLRs typically lack one or more video functions found on standard dedicated camcorders, such as autofocus while shooting, powered zoom, and an electronic viewfinder/preview. These and other handling limitations prevent the HDSLR from being operated as a simple point-and-shoot camcorder, instead demanding some level of planning and skill for location shooting.

Video functionality has continued to improve since the introduction of the HDSLR, including higher video resolution (such as 1080p24) and video bitrate, improved automatic control (autofocus) and manual exposure control, and support for formats compatible with high-definition television broadcast, Blu-ray disc mastering or Digital Cinema Initiatives(DCI). The Canon EOS 5D Mark II (with the release of firmware version 2.0.3/2.0.4) and Panasonic Lumix GH1 were the first HDSLRs to offer broadcast compliant 1080p24 video, and since then the list of models with comparable functionality has grown considerably.

The rapid maturation of HDSLR cameras has sparked a revolution in digital filmmaking, and the "Shot On DSLR" badge is a quickly growing phrase among independent filmmakers. Canon's North American TV advertisements featuring the Rebel T1i have been shot using the T1i itself. An increased number of films, documentaries, television shows, and other productions are utilizing the quickly improving features. One such project was Canon's "Story Beyond the Still" contest that asked filmmakers to collectively shoot a short film in 8 chapters, with each chapter being shot in only a couple of weeks and a winner was determined for each chapter, afterward the winners collaborated to shoot the final chapter of the story. Due to the affordability and convenient size of HDSLRs compared to professional movie cameras, The Avengers used five Canon EOS 5D Mark II and two Canon 7D to shoot the scenes from various vantage angles throughout the set and reduced the number of reshoots of complex action scenes.

Sony ECM-CG50 shotgun-type microphone for DSLR video capture

Manufacturers have sold optional accessories to optimize a DSLR camera as a video camera, such as a shotgun-type microphone, and an External EVF with 1.2 million pixels.

 

Live preview

Nikon D90 in Liveview mode also usable for 720p HD video

Early DSLRs lacked the ability to show the optical viewfinder's image on the LCD display – a feature known as live preview. Live preview is useful in situations where the camera's eye-level viewfinder cannot be used, such as underwater photography where the camera is enclosed in a plastic waterproof case.

In 2000, Olympus introduced the Olympus E-10, the first DSLR with live preview – albeit with an atypical fixed lens design. In late 2008, some DSLRs from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Leica, Pentax, Samsung and Sony all provided continuous live preview as an option. Additionally, the Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro offers 30 seconds of live preview.

On all DSLRs that offer live preview via the primary sensor, the phase detection autofocus system does not work in the live preview mode, and the DSLR switches to a slower contrast system commonly found in point & shoot cameras. While even phase detection autofocus requires contrast in the scene, strict contrast detection autofocus is limited in its ability to find focus quickly, though it is somewhat more accurate.

A new feature via a separate software package introduced from Breeze Systems in October 2007, features live view from a distance. The software package is named "DSLR Remote Pro v1.5" and enables support for the Canon EOS 40D and 1D Mark III.

 

Larger sensor sizes and better image quality

Drawing showing the relative sizes of sensors used in current digital cameras.

Image sensors used in DSLRs come in a range of sizes. The very largest are the ones used in "medium format" cameras, typically via a "digital back" which can be used as an alternative to a film back. Because of the manufacturing costs of these large sensors the price of these cameras is typically over $20,000 as of December 2007

"Full-frame" is the same size as 35 mm film (135 film, image format 24×36 mm); these sensors are used in DSLRs such as theCanon EOS-1D X and 5D Mark III, and the Nikon D800, D4, D610, and Df. Most modern DSLRs use a smaller sensor that is APS-C sized, which is approximately 22×15 mm, slightly smaller than the size of an APS-C film frame, or about 40% of the area of a full-frame sensor. Other sensor sizes found in DSLRs include the Four Thirds System sensor at 26% of full frame, APS-H sensors (used, for example, in the Canon EOS-1D Mark III) at around 61% of full frame, and the original Foveon X3 sensor at 33% of full frame (although as of 2013, current Foveon sensors are APS-C sized).

Leica offers an "S-System" DSLR with a 30×45 mm array containing 37 million pixels. This sensor is 56% larger than a full-frame sensor.