When I first saw this flagship smartphone from HTC, I was not a big fan at all. The looks were well-rounded, and to me, it almost looked feminine by design. Looking at it from the front, the design looked just like last year, and I did not notice anything special here at all. The real killer was going to be not producing enough to get people excited, and it is rumored that they did not have any exceptional features on board this handset other than the fingerprint scanner that we already saw ages ago during 2013 from Apple Inc. Knowing that, I was looking to see how this phone appears and so far there was nothing spectacular there either that made it any different to what we already knew of the M7 in 2013.
Knowing how complex smartphones are, it would be foolish to wrap up a conclusion of my thoughts just yet. The next thing I looked for was the back cover. The Samsung Galaxy S5 impressed with the new 16 megapixel camera, but there was an added element of bulkiness coming out of the edges of the camera lens that looked ugly. With HTC looking to match Samsung with processing power, fingerprint scanners and camera quality, this element was going to be something I looked at next. I’m happy to say that there is no mounted area around the lens, and it looks flat the way I wanted it.
As for the rest of the back cover, I did not like it from the press render I saw. It lacked graphics, even though there’s a chance it gets a carrier branded logo here which would add some much-needed flair. It also looked to have an oval shape and not be flatter similar to what we see from the iPhone. That works well for being original, but for style points I was not digging it at all. With that being said, my mind started ticking about all the people I know who would enjoy a design like this, and there was a few so maybe this is not such a bad thing for HTC just yet.
Now, just one full day after the release of the HTC one M8, we have managed to get a proper hands-on look at what this beauty looks like in life, and let me just say there is a big difference. One image in particular that I absolutely loved was the Verizon variant, which is easy to pick up on by the branding on the back plate just above the 4G LTE sign.
Gone is the boring silver, and it is replaced with a very sharp and crisp colored silver that looks amazing. It does not look boring at all in real photos. There is great colour distinction between the lighter coloured back plate and the darker logos and around the camera. HTC have thrown in some added lines for what appears to be purely for extra looks. It is simple but yet elegant at the same time and it is shiny when put under the sun too, giving it a real quality metal that HTC are calling gun metal and it gives a brushed metal appearance and not a dull plastic gray. That is important because this is the flagship, and because it is expensive, people want the shell made of expensive materials too and not just cheap plastic.
It is important the Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphones did not overdo the back plate either because the front side looks very “busy” with the added holes for the speakers. The holes do not need to be this big or shown off in this way because we do not see anything like that in the iPhone or Galaxy S5, but it is for looks.
The M8 “All new One” is equipped with a 5-inch physical display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip, 16 GB of built-in storage that also comes with an extra 128 GB storage expansion option using a Micro SD card. The M8 has a 4 ultra pixel 1080p HD camera that is an entirely new name that we have not seen prior to today. It is important to keep that in mind when comparing it to the 16 megapixel 1080p HD camera of the S5 and the 8-megapixel 1080p HD camera of the iPhone 5S. It is selling in gray, silver or rose gold.