HTC One M8

Think of the HTC One M8 as the big-budget sequel to an Oscar-winning indie film. Last year's HTC One won rave reviews and obsessed fans, but not enough customers to keep HTC growing. This year, HTC needs a rip-roaring box-office hit with its flagship phone.

It could happen. The One M8 is undeniably the most impressive handset the company has ever minted. Like its predecessor, the M8 brings a refined and beautiful software and speedy performance, all wrapped in a lithe and eye-catching aluminum skin.

The upper crest of smartphones seems to be hotting up. Weeks after Samsung launched the Galaxy S5 in India, HTC has brought in its new HTC One M8 at a price lower than the former. To its advantage, the HTC One M8 at the moment seems like a far more innovative phone than the latest Samsung flagship.

In a couple of weeks, the HTC One M8 will start selling for Rs 49,900. Compare that to the Rs 51,500 price tag of the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Rs 47,000 you would have to pay for the Apple iPhone 5s, which is already starting to seem like an old phone. The HTC One M8 has some new features that none of the others rival can offer like the dual camera and the DotView flip cover.

HTC needs to sort out its efforts in the mid-to-low smartphone arena, but that's a topic for a different day. The HTC One (M8) is a phone that's supposed to offer the best of the smartphone market, one that will survive the onslaught of the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S5, while preserving HTC's heritage and bringing the bottom line closer to something more healthy.

Through a clever combination of technology and design, it appears the company has managed to just do that - and in today's impossibly congested smartphone market (especially at the high end) that's something to be applauded.

Display

With a full HD resolution (1,920x1,080 pixels), photos, video, and text were also crisp on the phone's screen even if it has a marginally lower pixel density than the original One (which had the same number of pixels on a smaller 4.7-inch screen). All this adds up to a display that does justice to any visual content you choose to enjoy on the M8.

Some words of warning though; if you choose to view the One M8's screen in the great outdoors, I suggest you do so without polarized sunglasses. The phone's screen in portrait orientation was dim to the point of being unreadable. Flipping the One M8 into landscape position wasn't a problem and the display was just as bright as usual under these conditions.

BlinkFeed

A surprising feature HTC unveiled with the previous One last year was BlinkFeed, a magazine-like news aggregator in the vein of Flipboard. It's designed to pull in articles from a vetted pool of media outlets and websites, and then serve everything up fresh via one vertically scrolling panel.

The biggest change to BlinkFeed though is that you now have the option to search for and add custom topics to the service. For example if you want to keep apprised of the latest developments in nuclear fusion or perhaps news around aviation, BlinkFeed will do its best to return related results. Frankly its a welcome enhancement which helps BlinkFeed approach Flipboard's level of customization. It's also worth mentioning that Samsung's similar My Magazine feature lacks this ability.HTC has also brought support for notifications from third party apps Foursquare and Fitbit into the BlinkFeed fold. This complements existing alerts and content from social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ that were already within BlinkFeed's reach.

Core Components

If you expect the HTC One M8 to boast cutting-edge mobile components you won't be disappointed. Tucked away inside this metallic beauty are high-octane parts to match its lovely looks. Powering the phone is a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor which frankly just rolled off of the assembly line. In fact the One M8 is the first of a new crop of flagship phones for 2014 to feature the Snapdragon 801 which includes the Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2. The Galaxy S5 will bring a 2.5GHz processor, but the change will users will hardly notice the difference.

Built by dominant mobile chip maker Qualcomm, the company says the 801 offers 25 percent faster graphics than the Snapdragon 800 that powers devices like the Note 3 and LG G2. This means speedier gameplay and swifter Web surfing. The 801 was also designed to not break a sweat when heavily editing photos after you've taken them.

Buttressing this is a healthy 2GB supply of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage (it's up to carriers and individual markets which version you'll be able to buy). As I mentioned before, however, this new One also has an SD Card slot for additional storage space. It's a critical improvement over last year's One handset and a big bonus to those (including me) who tend to load their gadgets up with music and movies. Be advised that the One M8 requires a nano-sized SIM card where as the first One used larger micro SIMs, so a new card (or adapter) might be in order.

Camera

Undoubtedly the wildest change to the One M8 concerns its camera and imaging system. As it turns out all the rumors regarding dual-lenses on HTC's fresh flagship are true. The One M8 does in fact have two camera lenses on its back, as well as a dual-LED flash array. While the larger of the M8's eyes supports its main camera and handles traditional photo duties, the smaller lens (which sits next to it) is meant for an altogether different purpose.

In essence HTC is shooting to replicate shallow depth of field which skilled owners of DSLR cameras often use to great aesthetic effect. It's also a technique the Nokia Lumia 1020 as well as the Lytro camera have strived to create through clever software processing. HTC calls the feature "UFOCUS" which lives in the phone's photo editing menus. Also placed here is a feature named Foregrounder which applies special filters to the background, like simulated pencil sketch-marks, motion blurring, even animated objects to indicate the changing seasons. Think snowflakes or blowing cherry blossoms and you get the idea. Something HTC terms "3D Dimmension Plus" warps pictures to lend them a cartoon-like depth too which you can alter by tilting the phone back and forth.

The old HTC One Zoe engine is here too. That means the phone's gallery app groups images and video by events and date plus mashes them up into highlight reels with canned themes and music automatically. it's an ability I like to have but sometimes it makes it tricky to sort through my photos and video. This is especially true if I can't recall when exactly I shot them.

Aside the M8's unconventional camera abilities, you also get a bucket-load of shooting modes such as night, HDR, sweep panorama, plus manual camera settings for just about everything -- except image resolution. Perhaps the reason HTC limits control over photo size is because the phones 4 "Ultrapixel" sensor (really 4MP) is low-res compared with competing handsets such as the GS4, Note 3, and G2 (all of which pack sharper 13MP systems)

Conclusion

Last spring HTC had high hopes for its then best effort yet, the original HTC One. Sadly the Samsung Galaxy S4 which offered a killer screen, impressive camera, plus all the software features the company could squeeze into one handset, stole its thunder. And even more to the point, Samsung was better at getting the GS4 to more carriers faster and it had a bigger marketing budget to spend.

Deciding on which smartphone to actually buy isn't so cut and dry. We'll have to take our final call for when we actually review the Galaxy S5, but I recommend the One M8 if a clean and engaging software experience is what you value. The same is true for the fashionable set who crave a gorgeous phone to showcase their premium taste. But if snapping sharp pictures (and water-resistance) is your ultimate goal, then you'll want to wait the Galaxy S5 or opt for the Sony Xperia Z2 instead.