HTC-One-M8_Gunmetal_Silver_Gold

About HTC One (M8)

The HTC One has done what few phones have done before. A year after its release, it still holds up. That’s not always the case with a smartphone, and HTC’s had its share of phones that disappointed in the long-term. The HTC One, however? Still a good buy.

But time is ticking for that original HTC One, also known by its codename, M7. Today, it’s been replaced by a new HTC One. A sleeker, more powerful, slightly larger HTC One. The M8.

And what’s more — it’s available for purchase today.

The original HTC One was the company’s first major push into an all- (OK, mostly) metal construction, milling out a single block of aluminum for what was a pretty striking phone. But the new HTC One? Downright futuristic. More metal. A more impressive design. A bigger display. And the best software HTC’s ever put together, with HTC Sense 6 and its wealth of features running atop Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

The new HTC One is, quite simply, the best smartphone HTC has ever made.

But it’s not without a few quirks. Join us as we walk you through the new HTC One, as only Android Central can do.

About this review

Some background on this review: As always, we’re trying to be as thorough as we can here. The new HTC One is a hell of a phone and deserves as such. But a little context is in order. We’ve used the phone for a week now. That’s plenty of time to get a really good feel for it, kick the tires, crawl around and see what’s hiding where. But there may still be some gremlins lurking about that might not be evident in the short-term.

We’ve got a UK model here in the United States. As is the case when that happens, we don’t get a full feel for real-world battery life (which is the kind we care about) because we don’t get LTE data. And while we do have HSPA+ connectivity on AT&T, the radios still act up a little. That’s not unexpected, but it’s also not quite ideal. We’ll revisit that once we’ve got U.S. carrier versions available. It also means we’ll see slightly different software in the United States, thanks to carrier additions. (OK, OK. Bloatware.)

There also will be some relatively minor tweaks to the internals depending on what region of the world you’re in, specifically the clock speed used by the processor. We’ll touch on that here but don’t expect it to affect things too much.