HTC One 2014 (M8)

[s44]

The Sprint commercial for the HK edition is better than any HTC ad ever.

 

[KentState]

Hmm, I'm thinking of switching to to Edge (or just outright buying off-contract) so I can upgrade early from my S4 which I loath. Eying the One since I actually liked my thunderbolt (once I put extended battery in it). Worth it?

I really like the M8. It is my favorite between it and the S5. It's fast, Sense is decent, front speakers are awesome and top notch construction. Unfortunately, for work I have to switch to the S5 and give the phone to my wife. At least Samsung did a good job at closing the gap this time around.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I went ahead and bought it off contract. Pretty damn happy so far, which is a pretty big difference from when I got my S4 (was ambivalent but I liked that it was a bit smoother than my thunderbolt).

I feel like I have a flagship phone again whereas the S4 felt like a chintzy piece of shit. Back to having practical good sound sound on my phone. I haven't put them through the ringer but the camera and battery seem way better. Interface is WAY better. People shit on sense, but even the old TB sense beat the shit out of samung's UI... Phone runs much smoother, but that's probably a little unfair considering it's just a plain newer phone. Little crap here and there that was bugging me with the S4 that isn't there with the M8, but for all I know I'll find a new set of little things to bug me with this so that might be unfair too.

I imagine if I got a Note 2 back in the day or a Note 3 now (that even ignoring size difference just seems much nicer built) I'd have a much better opinion of Samsung, but I bought the S4 on an impulse since it's marketed as their flagship a while back and ended up feeling like I got bait and switched on it...

 

[sze5003]

I've always liked sense. Even stock sense is nice and smooth with the latest 6.0 version. Add some custom Rom to the mix with additional features and my m7 runs grest. If you want better performance you could put in a custom kernel.

I've read somewhere there is a Google api issues that forces the phone to use two cores when you are in hangouts or maps and you hit the home button.

I noticed this when the phone started getting hot when charging. The simple fix work around was to just use back button when exiting hangouts or maps.

I've loaded a new kernel earlier this week which took care of it so far.

 

[shabby]

Are there any talented pcb designers in here? Because it seems htc needs them desperately, no wonder there's some much bezel on every htc phone.

Here is the m8 pcb, and below the lg g3 pcb.

 

[MrSquished]

nexus 5 stopped charging after just barely getting wet. picked up an HTC One M8 32GB on the AT&T Next plan because i did not have an upgrade available.

worked out because while it's $33 a month, got 15 bucks off the 2gb data plan plus since my line is on Next, the phone charge per month is $25 instead of $40. so saved 30 bucks a month, and paying 33 a month. so pretty even steven.

really liking the phone so far. feels so premium. i thought the volume was supposed to be quite high on the earpiece but on a couple calls it sounds low.

 

[Fritzo]

nexus 5 stopped charging after just barely getting wet. picked up an HTC One M8 32GB on the AT&T Next plan because i did not have an upgrade available.

worked out because while it's $33 a month, got 15 bucks off the 2gb data plan plus since my line is on Next, the phone charge per month is $25 instead of $40. so saved 30 bucks a month, and paying 33 a month. so pretty even steven.

really liking the phone so far. feels so premium. i thought the volume was supposed to be quite high on the earpiece but on a couple calls it sounds low.

This is a silly question, but it is a tall phone: is your ear actually over the speaker or below it? The phone volume is crazy loud. You can almost use it as a speaker phone at full volume.

 

[MrSquished]

This is a silly question, but it is a tall phone: is your ear actually over the speaker or below it? The phone volume is crazy loud. You can almost use it as a speaker phone at full volume.

musta been that or the connection. had a few phone calls today, all were very clear and loud.

this phone is faster than my nexus 5 when it comes to launching apps and installing them. it's blazing.

i gotta say i am not happy they took out OIS from the camera or really did much to improve it but as a pro photographer who uses shallow depth of field often as a creative tool, i really dig that feature with the 2nd lens that just captures depth info. it's no gimmick and it's one thing i always missed with phone cameras, no shallow DOF. so i think it's fricking awesome because i know how to utilize it.

also i don't find the phone slippery at all. and people missing out because of a few mm of 'wasted' front space are just silly. this is a phenomenal phone. i've had the GS4, the N5 and now this. the M8 is impressing me the most the fastest of all those devices.

 

[Geekbabe]

My son loves his M8! Sound quality is quite good and so is the camera

 

[zerogear]

I don't know why people complain so much about the camera. I personally find it as good as the one on the S4 (Don't have the S5, no idea).

 

[Fritzo]

I don't know why people complain so much about the camera. I personally find it as good as the one on the S4 (Don't have the S5, no idea).

It's because it says "4MP" on it. Then people that have never used the camera automatically say it sucks because of the number. These same people apparently do a lot of photo cropping and think the pictures will come out fuzzy.

 

[WelshBloke]

These same people apparently do a lot of photo cropping and think the pictures will come out fuzzy.

Not to bag on the M8 camera but I crop a lot of my phone photos.
With a point and shoot you can zoom in to frame a subject, the only alternative to cropping on a smartphone is to run towards the subject.

Which doesn't always work.

 

[zerogear]

Thing is, if you know you do something like cropping @ 100% or print poster sized photos. You know HTC One camera isn't for you, but it doesn't make it a bad camera.

 

[WelshBloke]

Thing is, if you know you do something like cropping @ 100% or print poster sized photos. You know HTC One camera isn't for you, but it doesn't make it a bad camera.

I'm not talking about some esoteric situation, just snapping pics of the kids playing in the garden.

Without a zoom you pretty much have to crop unposed outdoor shots of people.

 

[MrSquished]

Thing is, if you know you do something like cropping @ 100% or print poster sized photos. You know HTC One camera isn't for you, but it doesn't make it a bad camera.

believe me, as a photographer i always hated the megapixel marketing race. cramming more pixels into the same sized sensor often brings more noise with it.

that being said i do think 4mp is a little low. i'd be perfectly content with a few more though on this phone, while maintaining a larger pixel size to make low light shots good like this does. sometimes you have to crop, you can't get close enough to the subject or not in time. it's nice to have a little leeway to crop. but i am fine with the quality of this camera when you frame the shot right. and like i said, love the DOF control. killer feature for me.

 

[zerogear]

believe me, as a photographer i always hated the megapixel marketing race. cramming more pixels into the same sized sensor often brings more noise with it.

that being said i do think 4mp is a little low. i'd be perfectly content with a few more though on this phone, while maintaining a larger pixel size to make low light shots good like this does. sometimes you have to crop, you can't get close enough to the subject or not in time. it's nice to have a little leeway to crop. but i am fine with the quality of this camera when you frame the shot right. and like i said, love the DOF control. killer feature for me.

I do agree with that, ideally 8mpx with Ultrapixel would've been perfect.

 

[MrSquished]

I do agree with that, ideally 8mpx with Ultrapixel would've been perfect.

that's the right number. i thought 8mp on the N5 was perfect.double the res of 4mp, still low enough to use larger pixels for better low light performance than the rather unnecessary double digit megapixels samsung does.

 

[Fritzo]

Just rooted mine last night to be able to use the Hotspot for free with my unlimited plan. Pretty easy to root this thing I remember my H7 was a bit tricky.

 

[MrSquished]

Just rooted mine last night to be able to use the Hotspot for free with my unlimited plan. Pretty easy to root this thing I remember my H7 was a bit tricky.

can you link the root method used please

 

[sze5003]

Do a search for temproot firewater. I'd link it but can't right now.

 

[Fritzo]

can you link the root method used please

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2708628

If you've never rooted a phone before, you'll want to take some time to get familiar using ADB.

Tip: when installing Weaksauce, allow at least 30 seconds after restarting your phone to allow it to work before proceeding further. A lot of difficulty in the root process comes from not allowing Weaksauce time to establish temporary root while you're working with it.

 

[MrSquished]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2708628

If you've never rooted a phone before, you'll want to take some time to get familiar using ADB.

Tip: when installing Weaksauce, allow at least 30 seconds after restarting your phone to allow it to work before proceeding further. A lot of difficulty in the root process comes from not allowing Weaksauce time to establish temporary root while you're working with it.

Don't need S-Off. Can one just do the rooting portion?

 

[Fritzo]

Don't need S-Off. Can one just do the rooting portion?

You can use Weaksauce to hold a temporary root. It gets restored about 30 seconds after you reboot.

 

[Qbah]

So some Google services updated and now the phone is loosing 2% every hour idle on WiFi only :/ And I can't use any battery stats to see what is draining it (thanks Google!). The default viewer (Settings -> Power) shows Android OS and Google Services as the biggest drainers (Android OS for over 4 hours keep awake in the last 8 hours!).

I tried rebooting the phone, but that didn't help... any idea what can be draining it? The phone is not doing anything, just sitting on the table most of the day

 

[JustMe21]

Try going through the Apps and disabling everything you don't use. I disabled stuff like Google Music, Google Books, Google text to Speech, etc, but left Google Play enabled. I even disabled the HTC Sense. I was comparing it's memory usage to a another phone with KitKat and my M8 has about 1 GB memory free after disabling a lot of stuff while the other KitKat phone had 1.2 GB free. Before disabling everything, I had about 630 MB free.