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REVIEWED: HTC One Mini

HTC is synonymous with the Android operating system. The company was the first to release a commercially available Android smartphone – the HTC Dream – and has since churned out some fantastic devices. Most notably, in February this year, it unveiled the HTC One: an aluminium-clad industrial design masterpiece that won over almost everyone who had the chance to use one.

However, the HTC One is a flagship device and only addresses the top end of the smartphone market. To fix that, HTC now has a One Mini, a scaled down version of the HTC One in physical size, specifications and, most importantly, price.

Design

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As the name states, the One Mini looks just like a smaller HTC One – fine praise for any smartphone, since the big One is one of the best looking smartphones available. The Mini shares the same use of polycarbonate plastic and aluminium, giving it a premium feel that is matched by few other smartphones.

The One Mini has a 4.3-inch 720p display, down from the 4.7-inch 1080p display used on the One. The result is that its entire display is accessible when held in one hand – at least that’ll be the case for most folks. Like the HTC One, the Mini also has a pair of front-facing stereo speakers flanking its display, hidden behind two sets of precision-drilled speaker holes.

Around the back, the One Mini is almost entirely made of aluminium, again, reinforcing its premium build quality. The 4MP Ultrapixel camera module from the bigger phone also finds its way here.

Hardware

Inside the One Mini sits a dual-core, 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with 1GB of RAM. There is 16GB of on board storage which will have to satisfy your needs for the lifetime of the phone as there is no microSD card slot for expansion – something that also blights the iPhone, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped its rise to success. Let’s hope the same holds true for HTC.

Wireless connectivity options include LTE, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 ,which have all become de facto standards in the smartphone industry. There’s no NFC built in, though, and that’s seein increased use in the flagship phones – but we’re not sure it matters a lot, just yet. And power for all thise hardware comes from an 1 800mAh non-removable battery.

That 720p display is a Super LCD2 unit, protected by Corning’s durable Gorilla Glass 3. The HTC One was only able to use Gorilla Glass 2 when it was manufactured giving the One Mini a slight advantage over its big brother in the durability stakes.

Software

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HTC’s custom Android modification known as Sense is now in its fifth iteration and will be a familiar sight to those who have used the HTC One. Sense also includes BlinkFeed, the company’s content and social media aggregation home screen. BlinkFeed is always the left most home screen of the five on the Mini, and can never be removed which will be an irritation for some users who’re used to customising their Android experience.

For those who use a custom home screen launcher like Nova or Apex, we found a problem with the One Mini. While using the Home button would always return you to the launcher of your choice, sometimes hitting the back key to exit an application would take you back to the default Sense home screen instead which can be confusing in general use. Hopefully those apps get updated to support this properly.

Display

The Super LCD2 display is clear and sharp with great colour reproduction. While it doesn’t offer the insane brightness of the Super AMOLED displays in Samsung devices, it fared well enough in direct sunlight, being easily readable in most conditions.

A pixel density of 342 pixels per inch (ppi) is miles ahead of the paltry 256ppi offered in Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini. In fact it puts the display in the league of the much vaunted iPhone 5, which is high – and deserved – praise for the One Mini.

Camera

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HTC’s Ultrapixel camera does a great job of capturing low-light images because of the larger 2µm pixels of the sensor. The larger pixels do mean that the camera is only a 4MP unit, and that means you’ll be sacrificing some sharpness and size in photo, for the sake of the better low-light performance.

Apple increased the size of the pixels in the iPhone 5s camera 1.5µm from the 1.4µm pixels in the iPhone 5, giving credence to HTC’s decision. Camera maker Canon has also long been making compact cameras with smaller pixel counts and larger image sensors – so HTC isn’t alone there, either. However Apple maintained an 8MP sensor, which gives better overall photos thanks to extra the detail it is able to capture.

Performance

Generally speaking, today’s mid-range phones should be on par with the flagship phones of two years ago. The only problem is that we’re not still two years ago. At times the One Mini seems to lag behind in tasks, forcing us to wait while there was no response on the display. This happened mostly with the power saving feature turned on, which, in part, limits the processor speed (more about that in the battery life section lower down).

We can only hope that the update to Android 4.4, which HTC is rolling out for the One, will find its way to the One Mini. Android 4.4 is optimised to bring serious performance benefits to slower phones, with memory optimisations that will help speed things up.

Smartphone speakers are useful for things like watching videos or getting navigational prompts in your car, but not much more. HTC attempts to change that with digital enhancements from its collaboration with Beats Audio. When enabled, voices sounded clearer, especially from further away. Music and soundtracks have more definition, too, but when it came to busier scenes in video there was audible distortion. It ruins an otherwise a brilliant experience, but listening at lower volumes solve that problem.

Battery Life

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The One Mini’s battery is good for between seven to nine hours of mixed use. This includes phone calls, GPS use, taking photos and sending messages. While it’s enough to get through a day at the office, it would require at least one charge to get it through the second half of the day, if we were going out after work.

HTC’s power saver feature does help prolong battery life and can be customised to use any combination of four measures to conserve power. Processing speed can be limited, the display’s brightness can be dimmed, haptic feedback (vibrations for key presses) are turned off, and the data connection can be suspended while the display is turned off. While the haptic feedback is an easy decision – a few of us here at htxt.africa despise the technology – the rest of the power saving options require slightly more thought.

If you dial down the display and end up going outside you just land up disabling the power saver in an effort to make the screen more readable. As mentioned, the phone tends to be a bit sluggish with the processor power saver feature on, too – so best let it have all the juice if you want lag-free response. And switching off the data connection will mean that instant messages and push notifications will become less instant and pushy; you’ll just end up with a dumbphone.

Conclusion

The One Mini is a beautifully crafted smartphone. It feels amazing in the hand and is the perfect solution to those who complain about the large screens on today’s Android phones. The problem is that its specifications just don’t line up with the premium fit and finish, making the One Mini a frustrating dichotomy of perfect form meeting imperfect function.

Not only is the Mini’s design shrunk down, so is its performance – likely to meet its budgetary confines. In an ideal world we would have preferred a phone that had the same internals of an HTC One in the frame of the Mini.

For those looking for a phone in the R4 000 – R6 000 bracket the Huawei Ascend P6 is likely a better bet. It offers more power for your money, but you’d long for something like the gorgeous One Mini nestling in your pocket.

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