htc one m8

 

What is the HTC One M8?

The HTC One M8 has now been superseded by the HTC One M9, but is still available to buy.
The HTC One M8 was released in March 2014 as HTC’s flagship model, replacing the HTC One. The One M8 has a lot to live up to, taking on the mantle from HTC’s best-selling phone ever, and the 2013 winner of TrustedReviews’ Phone of the Year.
It is now available for £330 SIM-free, significantly reduced from its £530 price at launch, since the launch of the HTC One M9. Although it hasn’t quite had the impact HTC would have liked, the HTC One M8 was undoubtedly one of the best handsets of 2014.
There are some great flagship phones competing for your hard-earned money, with stiff competition coming from the iPhone 6, LG G3, Samsung Galaxy S5 and the cheaper Google Nexus 5. There’s very little to choose between any of these phones, though the HTC One M8 is superior in a number of departments compared with its main Android rival, the Galaxy S5.
The best bits of the HTC One M8 are its design and battery life – it looks and feels good and can last two days on a single charge if you’re careful. The downside is a gimmicky camera that doesn’t come close to its competitors. Still for £330 it’s a great handset and is well worth considering over its more expensive successor

It is a bit bigger than last year's phone, though. The HTC One M8 is a fair amount taller which means it feels like a larger phone in-hand. However, it's just a couple of millimeters wider and width is the only serious practical concern with a phone of this class. HTC has slimmed down the screen bezel to minimise the increase in width.
If you're not used to a 4.7-inch to 5-inch screen phone, try to check out the phone first-hand. But if you're looking at this phone in contention with the Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2, size is not an issue. And neither is weight, despite the phone being a little heavier than its rival.
In larger phones like this you often see the power button shifted to the side, from the usual spot up top. Here it sticks on the top edge, but the new Motion Launch feature lets you switch the phone on from standby with just two quick taps on the screen. This means that stretching for the power button is less of an issue.
Alternatively, you can go straight to the main home screen or the BlinkFeed window by flicking from the left or right of the screen (when it's off). This uses a special motion sensor chip in the phone, which lets it constantly moni
tor these sensors without eating up much battery.

In exact measurements the HTC One M8 is 9.4mm thick, 160g, 71mm wide and 146mm tall. None of these are notable in a positive sense, but HTC's non spec-centric design approach is healthy. It has tried to make a phone that looks and feels good, not one out to become the "thinnest" or "lightest". It can easily be argued that it is the prettiest, though.
One technical issue with making any 'all-metal' mobile device is that wireless antennas struggle to transmit through it. That's why the backplate is 'only' 90 per cent metal. There are two little plastic strips that sit across the top and bottom, and this is where the antennas live. These strips were used in the HTC One too, and have become part of the series's design language. Clever design like this makes functional choices look like pure style ones.

Is this a better looking, better designed phone than the HTC One, though? Not really. You can't beat the borderless front of the original, which helped to emphasise that mobile's two-tone style. However, it's not any worse – the HTC One M8 is a lot nicer to look at than the HTC One Max, for example, and the vast majority of phones made. Ever.
It comes in three colours. The lead one, "gunmetal grey" is seen here. HTC also makes one that looks more like the first silvery HTC One, with a shade called "arctic silver", and a light gold one dubbed "amber gold". The latter is nowhere near as bright and vivid as the gold version of the Galaxy S5.
They have slightly different metal treatments. The grey model uses a brushed 'hairline technique' look, while the others stick with anodised style of the former HTC One model.

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HTC One M8 – Screen

Until recently we believed that phones like the HTC One M8 and Samsung Galaxy S5 would have 2K resolution screens. It seemed a natural evolution, and the internet rumours were sounding off on the matter as they usually do.
However, all the new 2014 flagships use 1080p screens, just like last year's top models. The HTC One M8 has a 5-inch SLCD display, up from 4.7 inches in the last model.
As a result, the pixel density of the new phone is actually lower than last year's one – 441ppi, down from 469ppi. Would you notice? Absolutely not, and the RGB subpixel arrays of these phones makes them appear categorically sharper than the PenTile AMOLED screens of phones like the Galaxy S4.