It is March 2013, and HTC has just released a phone that is being hailed as the most beautiful Android device ever made. The HTC One (retroactively known as the M7) has ditched the plastic-and-glass norms for a ‘Zero-Gap’ unibody aluminium chassis that takes 200 minutes of CNC machining to produce. In the UK, it is the darling of the tech press, a 143g masterpiece that feels like a solid ingot of high-grade tech in your hand. It is a bold technical statement that challenges the dominance of the Samsung Galaxy S4 by prioritizing quality, audio, and ‘meaningful’ innovation over raw megapixel counts.
The technical headline is ‘BoomSound.’ Instead of a tiny, tinny speaker on the back, the One M7 features dual front-facing stereo speakers with dedicated amplifiers. It is, quite simply, the best-sounding phone in history; watching a movie or playing a game on this device is a transformational experience. The screen is a 4.7-inch Super LCD3 with a Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution, offering a staggering 468 PPI. It is arguably the best display on the market, bright, pin-sharp, and with viewing angles that are virtually perfect. Powering this beauty is a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor and 2GB of RAM, making the ‘HTC Sense 5’ interface feel incredibly snappy.
On the imaging front, HTC has gone against the grain with ‘UltraPixel’ technology. Instead of chasing 13 megapixels, they’ve used a 4-megapixel sensor with physically larger pixels that can capture 300% more light. Combined with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) and an f/2.0 aperture, it is a low-light monster, though it loses out on raw detail in bright daylight. It also features ‘Zoe,’ which captures a three-second video clip with every photo, bringing your gallery to life. Connectivity includes 4G LTE, Wi-Fi ac, and an IR blaster hidden in the power button that turns your phone into a universal remote.
The user interface introduces ‘BlinkFeed,’ a tiled home screen that aggregates your news and social feeds into a visual stream. The 2300 mAh battery is a solid ‘one-day’ performer, though that gorgeous screen and powerful speakers are thirsty for juice. The HTC One M7 is a technical and aesthetic triumph; it brought premium materials and high-end audio to the Android world in a way that had never been seen before. It is the definitive ‘connoisseur’s’ phone of 2013, a legendary bit of kit that proved HTC was at the absolute peak of its powers.