Tuesday 31 March 2015

Product Review - HTC One #M8 #HTCTheOne

Hi Guys,

HTC launched another device called HTC ONE M8 in April 2014 after the first HTC One M7 was launched a year earlier in 2013. I love HTC phones because of their great quality and awesome after sales support. I never expected that they will give me a brand new phone after there was some problem in my battery and phone. I got to review the HTC M8 some days back and I was totally amazed by the upgrades it offered on my earlier version of the device. This blogpost is written after the unit is back in the office of HTC's PR agency. I thank them for organizing a HTC ONE M8 for me and it came in a mint condition & it felt great to unbox the device myself. Check out the post on HTC ONE M7 which I did earlier and now I am comparing the phone with this latest version from HTC. 

HTC ONE M8 package contains the HTC One mobile, charger, usb cable, noise isolation HTC earphones and a HTC silicon cover for mobile and a pin to open SIM tray and micro-SD card tray. Also the M8 device takes nano-SIM as compared to M7 which uses micro-SIM card to connect to the telecom providers. The device is around 160 grams of sleek metallic design from it's predecessor with great effects on the aluminum back. 


HTC One M8 has 5inch Full HD 1080p display (441ppi) which can bring all the colors and graphics to life. The device has enough processing power to take care of everything you throw at the device. It is made possible by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core CPUs and 2GB RAM. The phone comes in various inbuilt memory capacity of 16GB and 32GB. You can increase the storage capacity of the phone by using an micro-SD card upto 128GBs. The battery capacity is 2600mAh which can easily last a day on moderate consumption of data and calls. It lasted me around 13-14 hours on continuous usage of 3G data and calls. 


HTC One M8 has some unique changes to the predecessor M7 in terms of camera, style, size and panel buttons. The polycarbonate sides on M7 are now covered with metal finish which makes it unibody design and the phone looks highly expensive and great in your hands. There are no buttons on the bottom of the phone as in M7 as all those three capacitive buttons are moved to the on-screen software buttons. So if you upgrading to M8 from M7, it will be annoying in the start as you will take some time to adapt to the same. But it also solves the bigger problem of touching the back button and going out of the apps or games you are using at that moment. In M7, that was one of the problems critics said a lot about. HTC improved the same in this new version of the smartphone.

The screen size has been increase marginally to 5 inches making it more attractive to customers wanting big screens but not going into the phablet range. The display is protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass 3 with scratch resistance coating. I have never used any protective film on my M7 and there is no line or scratch on the same till now. M8 has improved protection so I hope there will be no scratch on the same too in the longer run of the phone. Motion Launch also helped phone to be opened using double tap on screen as well as turning the phone horizontally & by pressing the volume key opens us camera app. 




BeatsAudio in M7 was replaced by BOOMSOUND stereo speakers in M8 with improved sound quality by more than a margin for audio enthusiasts. Literally, HTC One M8 has the highest volume levels while playing any audio or video among all it's competitors. Harmon Kardon edition of the phone was also launched in USA which offered HK earphones and HK software etc. The audio quality was superb when I used my BOSE inearphones with Boomsound switched on. It was much better than the M7 which I am using at the moment. The HTC earphones that comes packaged with M8 are very much similar to M7 so there is not much improvement in the same. 


Finally the dual camera on the phone was a welcome move and brought a lot of features to HTC One M8 for the photography enthusiasts. The device has dual tone flash now along with main camera as Ultrapixel camera with 2.0 µm in size. The second camera captures the depth details of the photograph clicked and then you can make changes to the same using UFOCUS to bring depth of field effects that DSLR can bring to the images. Also, it can take some 3D images which is really cool to capture some extra detail which gives some great effects on the M8 screen. There are many more modes and filters that can be applied to your photographs in the new HTC One M8. 

The phone can be upgraded to the latest Lollipop android OS making it a great performance smartphone in all departments be it calls, games, graphics, camera, sound or battery life. I would love to buy this phone as the new version M9 has also been launched by HTC on much cheaper prices but for those who wants to enjoy great android experience for the first time, it's a great phone to start with. Even someone who wants to learn more techniques of photography and wants to become country's number ONE instagrammer can use this phone to click and edit some great captures using this phone. HTC products are great in quality and pays the money you spent to buy them in the longer run. I would love to have this phone as a secondary camera for my trips to launch events/product reviews etc to take some amazingly great photographs. 


Cheers!!!


Follow me on twitter @araijain or @thelifesway 
Email - thelifesway@gmail.com for invites to launch events / sponsored posts and product reviews!

Checkout my Instagram (araijain) page 

Checkout my photo blog - www.photoyatra.blogspot.in 
Like The Life's Way Page on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TheLifesWay