The “One” smartphone that HTC bowed Tuesday will help...
The “One” smartphone that HTC bowed Tuesday will help the company “differentiate its brand” from the many rival Android offerings on the market, but HTC needs to “get the pricing right” for it to succeed, said Informa analyst Julian Jest.…
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The One will be available via more than 185 mobile operators and major retailers in more than 80 regions and countries starting next month, HTC said. But it didn’t give the device’s price. The One is “undoubtedly a striking device, with an industrial design rivaling any handset previously released by the Taiwanese company” and the current bunch of “high-end smartphones on the market,” Jest said. The phone’s new “Blink Feed” home screen “bears some resemblance to the live tiles layout” on the Windows Phone OS, but is “unique” otherwise, he said. “The only caveat” of the device is “power consumption” because using the device’s added functionality “could shorten the battery life quite significantly,” he said. The phone’s introduction has “come at an ideal time” because iPhone sales are “slowing down and advanced users are now desperately looking for more innovative devices to satisfy their appetite to explore the new technology horizons,” he said. But it’s “unlikely that network operators will give their support to a device that they will need to subsidize heavily -- and from a vendor which has struggled to compete with Samsung, the market leader on the Android OS,” he said. A “speedy delivery” of the One to a wide variety of mobile operators “will be vital, and may just give it the head start it needs to grow its market share ahead of the latest” Samsung Galaxy device, he said. The One features a camera that HTC said includes a “best-in-class f/2.0 aperture lens and a breakthrough sensor with UltraPixels that gather 300 percent more light than traditional smartphone camera sensors.” The device’s front-facing camera supports 1080p video capture, while multi-axis optical image stabilization on the rear camera “helps ensure video footage smoother whether stationary or on the move,” it said. Other camera features include enhanced 360-degree panorama. The device’s BoomSound introduces, “for the first time on a phone,” front-facing stereo speakers, it said. The Sense TV feature “transforms” the One into an interactive program guide and remote control for “most TVs, set-top boxes and receivers,” HTC said.