HTC One (codenamed and retroactively called M7) is a touchscreen-based Android smartphone designed, developed, and manufactured by HTC. The smartphone was unveiled on 19 February 2013 at press events in New York City and London and is HTC's seventh flagship smartphone. It has been hailed by many as a revolutionary Android handset with its premium design and build quality and its emphasis on high end audio. It is the successor to the company's 2012 flagship model, the One X—which was critically acclaimed, but commercially unsuccessful due in part to insufficient marketing efforts. To make the device stand out among its competition, HTC One was developed with a major emphasis on unique hardware and software features; which included a unibody aluminum frame, a 1080p full-HD display, dual front-facing stereo speakers, a camera with a custom image sensor and the ability to automatically generate montages of media, an updated version of HTC's Sense user experience, BlinkFeed—an aggregator of news and social network content, and an electronic program guide app with the ability to serve as a universal remote via an IR blaster located in the device's power button.
Beginning in March 2013, HTC One was made available to mobile operators and major retailers in at least 181 countries. Manufacturing delays led to a staggered release beginning in late March, with its release date in certain markets (such as Asia and North America) pushed to late-April. Nevertheless, with around 5 million units being sold during its first two months of worldwide availability, HTC stated that the One was the most successful launch in the company's history.
HTC One was praised for the quality of its industrial design, high-density 468 ppi display, and high-power 2.6W RMS stereo sound system, and was well-received for its overall performance and improved user experience in comparison to earlier HTC devices. However, some aspects of the device, such as its photo quality, battery life, and certain elements of the device's operating system, were subject to scrutiny by critics. The device has received numerous awards and accolades, including being named "Best New Mobile Device" by the GSM Association at Mobile World Congress 2013, and was named the best smartphone of 2013 at the same conference one year later. It was succeeded by HTC One (M8) on 25 March 2014.
History
Development
Although HTC has developed several notable Android devices, such as Dream — the first publicly released Android device, it failed to capitalize on first-mover advantage, and has struggled financially in recent years due to the increasing market share captured by other vendors, such as Samsung and Apple. In some markets, HTC released numerous carrier-specific phones and relied heavily on wireless providers to promote its products, a strategy that was unsuccessful in the face of Samsung and Apple's strong marketing efforts. The company's flagship phone in 2012, the One X, received critical acclaim from reviewers, but was commercially unsuccessful in the wake of Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 5. In response, the company planned to take bigger risks with their next flagship device to make it stand out among its competitors, and also planned to take a more direct role in promoting its products—doubling its marketing budget for 2013.
Details of the new device, codenamed "M7", were leaked from various sources in the weeks prior to its official unveiling. HTC's CEO Peter Chou officially confirmed and briefly revealed a prototype for the new device during a company event on 1 February 2013. Leaked information speculated that the M7 would include a 1080p display, a quad-core processor, a redesigned version of HTC's Sense software, and carry design traits from HTC Butterfly. The M7 was officially unveiled under the HTC One product line at a special launch event on 19 February 2013, in New York City and London. HTC originally announced that HTC One would be released worldwide in March 2013 through 185 carriers and retailers in 80 countries, making it the largest global launch in the company's history.
Release
HTC initially announced that the One would be released in the United Kingdom on 15 March. However, due to high demand and supply issues (especially surrounding the components used by its camera), HTC announced on 22 March that the device would "roll out in the U.K., Germany and Taiwan next week and across Europe, North America and most of Asia-Pacific before the end of April." In the United Kingdom, online pre-orders were shipped by some carriers around the time of HTC's announcement. In late-April 2013, HTC One was released across major carriers in the United States and Australia, and a network-unlocked 32 GB version also became available on the HTC web store. In the United States, the 64 GB HTC One is exclusively sold by AT&T. Following the delays, HTC North Asia's president Jack Tong announced that the company would double its production capacity for the device by mid-May to meet growing demand and competition for the device, and to make up for sales lost by the release delays. On 22 August 2013, four months after it was released by its competitors, Verizon Wireless became the final major carrier to release HTC One in the United States.
Alongside its stock silver model, HTC One has been offered in three additional color finishes; black, red, and blue. Color variants are exclusive to certain carriers and retailers; in Australia, the black variant is exclusive to Telstra, while the red variant (released in July 2013) has been exclusive to Phones 4u in the UK and Sprint in the United States. The blue variant (released in September 2013) is exclusive to Carphone Warehouse in the UK and Best Buy in the U.S. A champagne-colored HTC One was released on select European carriers in late-November 2013.
A special variant electroplated in 18 carat gold was unveiled by HTC in October 2013 as part of a collaboration with Goldgenie and the Music of Black Origin Awards. Five models were produced in a limited production run; out of the five, one model was given to the winner of the "Best Newcomer" category at the ceremony in Glasgow on 19 October, and others were given away in a promotional contest. Discussing the partnership, HTC's EMEA president Phil Blair explained that "the best artists have always been given gold discs to celebrate their success, but today most people listen to music on their phone. We wanted to celebrate that fact." Valued at US$4,442 (£2,750), the gold HTC One is the most expensive product produced in company history.
Litigation
In April 2013, Nokia was granted a preliminary injunction in the Netherlands against STMicroelectronics, which had supplied HTC with microphone components for the device that contained Nokia's proprietary technology. Despite the injunction being against STM, Nokia still used the injunction to publicly accuse HTC of copying technology from its products. HTC would still be able to use the remaining microphones it acquired in good faith; the offending component was replaced with an alternative version in future production runs.
In December 2013, HTC One Mini was banned from sale in the United Kingdom as the result of another patent infringement lawsuit by Nokia. While HTC One was also affected by the ruling, its sales ban was stayed by the court pending an appeal; the judge indicated that banning HTC One sales would have a negative effect on the company. The case also inadvertently revealed, that HTC was planning to launch a successor to HTC One in early 2014.
Features
Design
HTC One uses a unibody aluminum frame sourced from custom-grade aluminum; the choice of material was intended to give the device a solid, premium feel in comparison to smartphones made with a plastic shell. The frame is etched with channels in which the polycarbonate is inset using zero-gap injection molding. The polycarbonate forms a band around the edge of the device, covers the top and bottom ends, and bisects the back with two lines, one of which flows around the camera below. The two polycarbonate bands across the back are used to insulate its antennas, while the ring around the camera is used as a loop antenna for the One's near field communication (NFC) functionality. Alongside its display are two aluminum endpieces with a tight grid of laser-cut holes forming the speaker grilles behind which sit two stereo sound speakers; the metal volume keys are smoothly inlaid on the left side of the frame. The unibody frame itself takes at least 200 minutes of precision CNC cutting to machine, and the final result is a solid slate of anodized aluminum, white polycarbonate, and tempered glass with chamfered, polished edges.
Two capacitive navigation keys, "Back" and "Home", are located below the display, flanked by HTC's logo in the center. While other recent HTC devices (such as the One X) used a three-key layout with "Back", "Home", and "Recent apps" keys, HTC designers believed that using only two navigation keys as opposed to three would reduce user confusion. As with other HTC devices lacking a hardware "Menu" key (as per revised Android human interface guidelines introduced in 2012, which deprecate their use), apps that have not been updated to reflect the newer guidelines display a "Menu" button on a black bar on the bottom of the screen.
Hardware HTC One uses a 4.7 inch, 1080p Super LCD 3 touchscreen display with a pixel density of 468 ppi. The backside of the device houses the camera, the LED flash, and the secondary microphone. At the top of the device is a 0.14-inch (3.6 mm) headphone jack and the power/lock key, which also functions as an infrared blaster. At the bottom is the primary microphone and a microUSB port for both data connections and charging; the device can stream HDMI via the microUSB port using MHL.
The device incorporates a 1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600, an ARMv7 SoC, with 2 GB of RAM. The chip provides support for LTE networks where they are available. Most HTC One models come with either 32 or 64 GB of internal, non-expandable storage—unlike the international model, the Chinese and Japanese models include a microSD slot and a removable back cover. Its internal components are arranged in a pyramid-like layout similar to HTC Butterfly and HTC Windows Phone 8X with larger components (such as the screen and battery) positioned towards the front and smaller components (such as the motherboard) positioned towards the back. This internal layout also allows the device to have a curved backing.
The One's audio system incorporates two front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers, Beats Audio software equalizer, and HDR audio recording. The BoomSound stereo system is controlled by two five-volt NXP TFA9887 integrated circuits combining NXP's CoolFlux audio DSP, a class-D amplifier with current sensing, and a DC-to-DC converter to boost the output level of micro-speakers up to five times (up to 2.6 W RMS) without damaging the driver.
Camera