IN PICS: Hands on with HTC One

HTC's new flagship model, the HTC One, is packed with powerful features.

With HTC One, the company claims to have revolutionised the way users will conceive the idea of a smartphone. Loaded with 100 new features this flagship product is likely to hugely improve user experience.

These new features have been categorised mainly under user interface, music and camera.

Let's take a look at these features...

Courtesy: TechFreakStuff.com

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User interface: (BlinkfeedTM)

Blinkfeed is the latest innovation from HTC that brings all your news and social media feeds to your home screen itself! No need to install various apps that will not only slow your device but also make it inconvenient for you to manage them for all your news and social media needs.

The major advantage of Blinkfeed is that you get all your latest updates arranged into beautiful tiles right on your home screen. And unlike apps like Flipboard, Blinkfeed loads the entire story and not just a small excerpt of the entire story.

HTC also introduces the latest Sense 5.0 UI. The entire focus of Sense 5.0 is around Blinkfeed.

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Sound:(Boom sound)

HTC introduced Beats Audio to the smartphone industry and is leads the audio quality output in smartphones. The latest HTC One seems promising with the Dual Stereo speakers mounted at the top and bottom of the phone. They produce really rich quality sound!

There is an amplifier chip integrated to produce a wider range of frequencies of sound via the 3.5mm jack for the best music delivery on your headset. They have also introduced cool visualisations on their music app so that you don't just listen to music, you experience it.

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Camera:(ZoeTM)

HTC has taken a leap with the camera in HTC One and possibly made the best performing camera in top of the line smartphones. It has amazing performance in low light areas (even without flash!).

The latest innovation from HTC is Zoe. Zoe is a new way to perceive pictures. Pictures are captured to relive memories. But memories cannot be captured in still photographs. So they have introduced Zoe (meaning life) which makes your pictures alive (like the ones you've seen in Harry Potter movies).

When I say that pictures come to life, what Zoe actually does is it captures a 3 second full HD clip. Each frame of this clip can be saved as a still photograph. They have introduced a wide set of photo editing tools which include: object removal, always smile, sequence shot, eye brightening, eye widening, etc.

The front camera also is quite powerful and has a wide focus to click group pictures. Though the camera is only 4 MP, truth be told the megapixel doesn't define the quality of the image. The quality of the sensor and other hardware define it. The camera hardware on this device is the best you can get in smartphones. Even comparable to some budget digicams.

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Let's have a look at the technical specifications:

• Quad-core 1.7 GHz Krait 300 CPU mounted on Qualcomm APQ8064T Snapdragon 600 chipset
• Adreno 320 GPU
• 2 GB RAM, the device comes with two options 32 GB and 64 GB of internal storage
• 4.7" Super LCD3 with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. Protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 2.
• GSM / HSDPA /LTE Network connectivity support.
• 4 MP camera with 1/3" sensor size, 2µm pixel size, simultaneous HD video and image recording, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, Optical Image Stabilisation.
• HDR video recording at 30fps with stereo sound recording.
• Android OS, v4.1.2 (Jelly Bean), upgradable to v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
• Available in two cool colors: black and silver

Final verdict

This is a phone to look out for and possibly the fore runner in top of the line smartphones of 2013. With a mind blowing 468 ppi this phone has possibly the sharpest display and one of the selling points will be the camera on this device. The full single piece metal body gives it the cutting edge. The aesthetics of the device are simply great, and from the moment I picked up the phone I didn't want to give it back. If given a chance I would personally buy this phone without any hesitation. The only factor that can make or break this phone is the pricing in this competitive smartphone market. The price of the device isn't yet revealed. It is expected to hit the Indian market in late- March.

I would rate it a good 4.5/5!

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