Engadget - Quite simply, the HTC One is the best, most well-rounded smartphone on the market today.

The Gadget Show - 'Arguably the best Smartphone in the world.

TechRadar - it's the best phone on the market full stop.

Whathifi.com - Beating all other Android phones and inciting sly glances from even hardcore Apple fans.

Stuff.tv - despite a mighty onslaught from the Galaxy S4, the One is still the phone we'd buy.

Gizmodo - It's simply one of the most exciting pieces of hardware we've seen in a long time, including the Galaxy S 4. As of this moment, the HTC One is looking like the best Android phone you'll be able to buy for the foreseeable future.

I have an iphone 4 and was about to upgrade to a 5....after seeing The Gadget Show I'm seriously considering the HTC One.

You could probably find similar quotes for many phones and make the same claims.

From those you've listed, ignore ...
- what HiFi - they don't even offer unbiased reviews of their primary products
- Gadget Show - its an entertainment show, and does for tech reviews what Top Gear does for car reviews.
- Stuff - they don't do reviews. They just recycle promotional blurb.

What counts as "the best" is always based on your criteria.

Want a decent camera? 808 or the forthcoming EOS (nothing has yet come close to the 808 in gig recording ability)
Want addons, go for an iPhone (I'm thinking of things like blood analysers, connectivity kits for rowing machines, in car connectivity, etc.)
Want a flexible device that you can readily customise, go for something running Android, be that a One, S4, Xperia, etc.

At the end of the day, there are barely any "bad" phones - just devices that don't meet your requirements. And not meeting your requirements is not the same as a product being bad.

HTC is a bit like Susan Boyle. They were producing ugly generic looking phones for ages so when they came with something nice looking and well specced everybody went crazy. It may be Samsung's turn to get their Susan Boyle moment next. They phones look very samey lately.

Samsung phones have been very samey, and built as cheap as possible for quite a long time; kudos to HTC for having the One built quite well.

Out of interest, what are HTC doing with the microphones on the One? They aren't allowed to continue using the mics they did originally, wonder if they're going back to the normal spec lousy microphones?

Theoretically speaking they will be able to use the Nokia microphones again 6 months after they started to use them. Nokia has 12 months exclusivity, the firm manufacturing them "thought" it was just 6 months and delivered them to HTC.

is the htc one better than the s4

Depends on your requirements.

It isn't a simple "yes, the One is better than the S4".

These microphones have been used by Nokia since the 808 was released, so thats now well over a year ....

What surprised me is that so far its only the 808 thats used them in a well configured stereo pair. All other implementations have just been regular mono.

That's what I read. My source was wrong then.

I've had an HTC One for a couple of months. I'm an unashamed phone snob and have had all sorts of things over the years from an early nokia on Symbian via iPhone, Nexus, S3 etc. It's the best one I've ever owned.

I've read similar as well, but it doesn't quite tally with what Nokia have been shipping.

Unless the mics used in the Lumias and the One are slightly different to what was used in the 808?

I would be very tempted with the HTC One if my contract was up for renewal.

The only thing that I'd be worried about is not having the memory card option (the 80gb on my S3 is nearly full and don't want to rely on Cloud storage as sometimes I'm not even getting 3G) and also the option to swap the battery (don't do it all the time, but maybe once a month if I've been out all day, rush in to get changed before going out for the night and do not have enough time to charge it or do not want to carry a battery pack round with me).

Still a very nice phone.

The S4 being Samsung will always get less praise despite quite a long list of advantages.

Will metal HTC phones get the same praise when Apple adopts a chassis better suited for the technology?
Saying that, with sales having hit saturation before the start of 2013 will it matter much in 2014?

I'd be tempted with the One if it was significantly different to the One X which I'm currently using . I'm not really convinced that I'd gain a great deal from upgrading particularly as the One X will eventually get Sense 5 and Zoe etc and actually seems less fragile .

what do you have on it?

That accolade probably falls to the Galaxy S2 - it won something like 250 awards, more than any other handset to date apparently.



The mics in question were developed for the Lumia 720.

I have an iPhone 5 and an HTC One. IMO it all comes down to whether you want a big screen. I am fortunate to be able to have both and use whichever one is better for a particular scenario. However, if had to choose one, I would go for the iPhone (for a number of reasons which I won't elaborate here).

whats the music quality like on the htc one?

The biggest reason i feel it gets so much praise is that it's fresh, good real world usable features and a very good surprise from HTC. The other guys customers have such a high expectations thst even if they did something great again there just wouldn't be the same praise.

To tell you the truth I never listen to music, but do you mean the quality through headphones or the speakers. The speakers on the phone itself are very good and I sometimes listen to podcasts via them.

In my humble opinion, great. Everything about the phone just seems to work effortlessly. I watched the Gadget Show review on the 3 top Android phones out and have to agree with all that was said about the HTC One.

I've had mine fore over 4 months now and still can't put it down. Even answering your query was done using my HTC One.

Hero, Desire, Nexus One, Desire S, One X, One S, 8X, 8S, Evo 4G LTE, Butterfly.

Thats a list just sraight off the top of my head. I am sure others could add plenty more. Yes some HTC phones have been boring and generic but they have produced some of the best designed and best built phones ever. The Susan Boyle moment would be if Samsung were to produce a premium design to justify a premium price tag (and it is something that they are capable of, look at their Series 9 laptops).

I've got nearly 40gb of music, my photos are prob about 15gb, quite a few games and apps a lot of Pod casts, a few films for myself and also more importantly a few films for the kids to keep them quite.

Thats mildly insane, how much did Samsung give to the various bodies to receive those awards .....


Oh, thats not so bad then. The 720 mics weren't anything like as good as those in the 808 ....

But I thought the basic principles - each channel having two mics, one damped so it could handle the higher volumes, with software switching between the two input sources was basically unchanged. I wonder who has the various patents, Nokia or STm?