Handset Review of HTC One - Eye M8

17th November, HTC a global name in handsets, launched the all new HTC One [M8 Eye].  I attended the launch of this latest addition to the HTC One family at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai amid the star/media studded event. HTC had invited Actor John Abraham to grace this launch along with Chialin Chang, Global President of Sales and Chief Financial Officer, HTC Corporation

The handset is positioned as a top of the range, advanced handset with intuitive and lightning fast network data, blazing speed and a brand new 13 megapixels Duo Camera. Now, doesn't that sound interesting and definitely- “Eye-catching”?

HTC One [M8 Eye] Beautiful Design, Precision Crafted

HTC M8 Eye is a beautifully designed GSM smartphone with 5 inches, 1020 X 1980 display, powered by the 2.3Ghz processor. The handset is precision crafted design with a single block of metal, with smooth zero edge finish that wraps right around to the screen. The form factor is high with very slim, sleek and attractive to hold metal finish. 

HTC One [M8 Eye]

Phone Specs-

Haute Kutir Reviews

Needless to say, with the listed features, form factors and superior camera technology, HTC M8 was one of the most awaited phones of the year. It was my first HTC phone and given the high touchscreen performance reviews about HTC handsets, I could not wait but to try this handset, even though that made me run around to get my sim swapped from Smart sim to Nano sim and installing all my Apps and contact list in the sleek, Greek god version of handset.

Apart the technical specs and brilliant features that everyone is raving including me] about this handset, following are my two pence basis my 2 weeks of usage-

1.  Form Factor:- I simply loved the metallic body, finesse, and the lovely touchscreen. The phone was not very heavy while holding and could easily fit into my trouser pockets. Brilliant job HTC. Rating 5/5

2.  Camera:- Camera is the highlight of the phone. The phone is high “selfie-friendly” and with the 13MP camera at both rear and front, it has become the best “Selfie” camera phone among all smartphones.  It offers interesting features like- Crop me, Split capture, Photo Booth etc. The camera autofocus operates at a speed of 300 seconds and the intelligent LED Dual Flash automatically selects the exact color tone and light intensity whenever flash is required. Results- Professionally shot pictures are captured. Rating 5/5

3.    Battery Life:- Battery life is good however, I found the “time taken for charging” the phone on a slightly higher side. It took me almost 2-3 hours to get the phone charged 100%

4.  Heated up device:- The device gets heated up too soon and sometimes to an alarming level even though not being in charging, in use or in confinements. Well considering the proximity of the handset to the user that did not help me much.

5.     Pricing:- The handset is priced at around Rs 39,000 is slightly on the higher side of premium pricing that may discourage the possible penetration in iPhone and Samsung Laden market. With the technology changing/updating every month, the pricing unless targeted at only niche “urban- high value” customer serves as a big constraint to probable buyers who may choose HTC over iPhone. Pricing could have been better and more inviting in the range of 20,000 to 30,000 INR max.

6.   Text Input:- How much we all still love our qwerty or 2G handsets with type-pads. Ask any “high text” user and they will vouch for it. The phone’s text input gets hanged [even for a smaller fraction of time] and the intuitive input method serves pain. However, one good thing is that phone text has an option of typing into various language including Hindi and that works seamlessly fine and may work well for people with lesser proficiency/comfort typing in English. I wish they should have the “swing” text input feature as available with Samsung handset and some of Lenovo too.

7.     Seamless navigation and ease of accessing apps including phone book: This one is a big Yes. And unlike the popular notion about HTC phones- that they hung up a tad too fast, HTC M8 Eye provided a good “User Interface” and “ease of operations”.

8.  Easy Settings: The phone comes with easy, one click, 12 at 1 setting panel accessibility feature that can help you activate mobile data, power saver, DND mode, Active Printscreen, GPS etc hassle free. I loved the “extreme power saving” feature too.

9.  The “Trim” Feature: Good news for all people who love to customize their ringtones. HTC One comes with the TRIM feature using which you can select the portion of any song as downloaded in your device as your ringtone.

10. Amazing Sound: HTC One gives an amazing song clarity while listening to songs or watching live videos on youTube.

Well my experience with HTC One M8 was not one written straight away from fairy tale but it has suffered a biggest failure that all “App Savvy” population rues. I named it- Restart Debacle.

Restart failure: One of the setback and the biggest setback that I found with my HTC One M8 handset [and that caused me high Internet usage/ loss of data/ time/ money] was that on restart, the entire phone was set back to factory setting, deleting all the launched apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Pictures [if not saved on SD] and other apps. When checked in settings, no such option was found. Even when you restart the phone, there was neither any prompt nor notification saying that restarting the phone will delete all the installed apps including your “contact list” [even though it was sync with google] and phone ringtone as well.

Now this happened not just once but both the times when I have to restart my handset. Kaboom and all that was saved, synced was gone! I checked at Playstore and it showed in my “App history” and not the “recently installed list”. Now if it happens once, you may discard as some seeding failure. Trust me without SD card, it would be total lost. But if the same thing happens all the time you restarted your device, then I have a concern to highlight here. I have communicated the same with team, let’s see if this was one of the rare case.

HK Verdict: The phone is highly accessible is majority of the cases however certain setting are rigid and in spite of option to remove pre-installed apps, it did not allow to remove certain apps like "Demo" that unceremoniously start playing on your screen without waiting for the hat to be dropped. Even while tying to restore factory settings, the phone did not allow to restore the same unless you "un-sync" each account individually and "restart". 

Do I recommend this phone sot others?

Yes provided the “restart debacle” is taken care of.

Overall rating: 3.5/5