Hi everyone. So it's time for a problems and failures video for the HTC
One M8.
Now, if you haven't checked out my other coverage of the HTC One M8
do please go and take a look. This video does focus on everything that has
gone wrong with this device
so don't think that I am deliberately just bashing away at the HTC One to
slam the product. Do have a look at my other output. You will find that I've been
generally very favourable about the HTC One.
But we would be remiss if we didn't point out some of the really strange
things HTC
did on this device. For starters an additional 12 grams of weight.
Now for all intents and purposes smartphones have been getting lighter
in some respects, to, you know, their detriment
but generally we like devices to have a good solid
weight in hand but not make your hand feel cramped after
20 minutes of use. The HTC One originally from last year, the 2013 model,
was borderline here. It was a heavy device
compared to Galaxy S4 and other devices on the market.
Even the Sonys. And whilst it had a great in the hand feel
those razor edges, mmm, didn't quite sit so well.
Now things are improved on the
HTC One 2014, the M8. However
it's picked up an additional 12 grams of weight. In part that's because of the duo
camera system.
In part that's because of the 5-inch display but
ultimately it's because of the aluminium body. So
as the screen has had to increase in size so we had to use more
metal. That ultimately adds a lot of weight to the device.
There's also the addition of a much bigger battery. Mmmm. There's always going to
be a trade-off there, bigger screen.
You're going to need a bigger battery to drive it. Ultimately you're not going to get particularly
longer battery life in normal conditions and normal scenarios.
But that extra weight, it really does weigh heavy on my hand as it were
and ultimately it does make this device less comfortable.
HTC probably needed to look at either a different metal
here, if there was anything they could use other than the
I think liquid form aluminium that they use here, block of aluminium
that is then milled out. Very similar to how
Apple are doing it, or were doing it. Now one of the main issues I have with
the HTC One
other than its weight is the duo camera system which ultimately feels
like
a series of compromises. Now when we look
at the kind of supply chain and we consider where HTC is
in, you know, the mmm top rankings of
suppliers, well and purchasers, I suppose.
Here's the issue. HTC simply do not sell
enough units for the manufacturers who provide parts
for mobile phone makers to even bother with.
So when HTC picks up the phone and it says right we want some camera modules
generally speaking, it's got a couple of choices. It can go directly to a manufacturer
and have something built bespoke, or it can go to
a general pool of manufacturers who are producing sensors,
lenses, optical image stabilisation systems and so on.
I can buy them from the open market. That's to say oh you've got a hundred thousand of
those you've manufactured,
we'd like to buy those. Now the situation HTC is in
is it needs or needed optical image stabilisation modules
and ultimately doesn't have the buying power to
secure those. Not against competitors in this case
Apple who apparently has basically booked all of the world stock
of optical image stabilisation technology for its iPhone 6.
Now when Apple picks up the phone and says we want ... All of these manufacturers who
produce parts
go OK, and how much can we knock off the bill for you because
Apple has so much buying power that it will drop a hundred-million
on, you know, a manufacturing run of some camera modules and it wouldn't bat an
eyelid about it.
For HTC those four million modules
just aren't worth it, you know, certainly not to a supplier and certainly not to
potentially annoy a much bigger partner.
Now this is where it kind of brings us on to why we have this duo camera system.
If you remember a few years ago there was talk from a lot of the manufacturers of having
3d cameras.
You know, and 3d displays, parallax barrier displays,
like the Nintendo 3ds. Now,
a couple of things happened. 3d was a turkey
and the industry sold everyone a lemon. Now the problem there was
mobile phone manufacturers looked at the TV manufacturers who in turn were looking
at the content producers and realised
3d was a gimmick and if you put it on a mobile phone
it wasn't going to sell the mobile phone. In most cases
people were probably just going to go. I'll pass thanks. 3d doesn't work for me on a TV
why should I bother with it in a mobile phone? But that's a problem, you see, for
HTC in some respects because they'd already put a lot of R and D in and that's had
a lot of companies into
3d camera systems small enough using sensors, dual linked etcetera
so that you can actually get a 3D picture. Now what I think happened
is when HTC going back maybe 18-months- ago was looking
at what camera system they were going to be able to put into this system
they realised they weren't going to be able to get a sufficient quantity of the
old optical image stabilisation lenses
for the M8. So they had a choice. Either
you just put on the 4 ultrapixels with a slightly substandard lens
without the optic image stabilisation there and you do some software work
but you potentially just kind of raise the flag
of, you know, discontent.
But your camera is weaker than last year's so what do you do? Well you have to kind of
a little bit of smoke and mirrors here and
effectively what you have to do is you have to come up with a new camera system,
something that will make people go ooh, oooh, distracted from the OIS
missing and that's where we have this dual camera system and
if you look at it, it draws directly on 3d camera technology.
For all intents and purposes it is a 3d camera system but without the parallax bit
going on in software. So instead of taking two images and then
combining them in a parallax effect to give us our depth of field,
Effectively what we're doing instead is we're using the depth of field data and
attaching it to just a single image.
It's quite interesting. But to all intents and purposes this is the 3d camera
system that we were
hearing about a few years ago. It's been repurposed
ultimately to make sure that HTC doesn't appear to have
suddenly fallen behind the market. Now the likes of the Galaxy S5,
Sony's cameras, those also don't have optical image stabilisation this year so
shouldn't we be asking the question why is that? It's not from a lack of demand.
If you're serious about photography everybody accepts that OIS
is absolutely key, especially on mobile phones
and even on things like DSLR cameras.
People want the OIS. You pay more for it
obviously, it's a high-tech piece of equipment but ultimately it is
the thing that we should be demanding on our smartphones
on our cameras and so on. So the question is why have all the world's manufacturers
suddenly not using this technology?
Simple fact is Apple's taken it all. So, you know,
come the iPhone 6 announcement, do watch out for it. There will be optical image stabilisation
on board on the iPhone 6
and it's to the detriment of every other manufacturer on the planet.
But ultimately HTC here have, you know, used a little bit of smoke and mirrors
a good bit of PR speak and what they've managed to do is convince people that,
you know, two cameras, even though it's actually only one image being
taken, is better than having optical image stabilisation.
I'm afraid it's just not true guys. You know? The dual camera system
offers nothing over optical image stabilisation and so,
you know, this will go down in history really as the year
when everybody but Apple lost the leading technology.
Certainly if you're serious about cameras anyway.
Now let's come onto another topic within the HTC One
which is its software suite, because whilst in some respects
we kind of look at the software that comes on mobile phones. We think to ourselves oh, it's so bloated why
did they have to install that? Why did they have to install that?
HTC's problem is it's kind of gone the other way and actually it could do with some
software features,
you know? To hopefully differentiate itself a little bit.
Because a lot of the time when you look at its software suite it kind of just appears
like a Chinese manufacturer.
You know, one of the third party guys who's just assembling parts, you know
other than the premium feel of the actual hardware, software wise,
this could just be Sense by a third-party Chinese manufacturer
like Oppo or someone like that. There's nothing here that screams
premium frankly, even BlinkFeed feels just a little bit
mmm wet behind the ears I think is the word to use.
It just doesn't quite have that premium feel.
Now next coming on to the call quality.
Because this is an area which actually I thought suffered on the HTC One
2013 as well, and again it seems to be a bit of an issue here.
There's a lack of kind of depth which is kind of strange and I think part of it is because of
the arrangement
of the actual speakers on there and when you've got the device next to your head, it almost
feels like
rather than the person speaking being close to your ear,
they may be two or three inches away, if that makes sense.
It sounds slightly dimmed. Now, in part
that's just the design of the device but potentially the
speaker could just have had a little bit more bass there, a little bit more
low-end and actually I think it would have helped the call quality feel just a little
bit more
vibrant and, you know, in the room next to you. In my opinion the Galaxy S4 provides
slightly better audio quality here than the
HTC One M8, but you know, overall
HTC haven't done a bad job with this device. The things that we're kind of
grumbling about,
many of them were out of their control. But, that said,
for the next HTC One, if there is another One,
the things that they need to really focus on is optical image stabilisation in that
camera,
lose some weight definitely, lose some weight because this device is
borderline now,
unusable for a large majority of people for a long period of time.
Fine for just picking up a quick phone call, quick bit of browsing and so on but if you want
to play games on it for
you know, half an hour, to an hour at a time, the weight does get to you after a while.
And ultimately Sense 6, or Sense ui
in general, they need to scrap it basically. Hire some designers who
know how to actually design for modern smartphones
and let them go for it. Because at the moment it's just weak.
A really wet software implementation and it doesn't really do the device any
favours necessarily.
But at least it's not as bad as the Samsung approach which is throw
everything in the kitchen sink at it.
But there we go. That's HTC One's problems and failures with the HTC One M8.