Hands-on with the new 2014 HTC One (M8)

Last year, HTC decided to rethink and completely redo its flagship Android phone. The result was the classy HTC One (M7). Taking the best of HTC One X, a noble but flawed product, HTC made a whole new chassis and surprised everyone. The One went on to win many awards all over the world but didn't sell quite as much to get HTC out of its deepening crisis and plunging market share. Enter the all new HTC One (M8) for 2014. I got my hands on the Google Play version of the new HTC One a couple of weeks ago and have spent some time with it. Here is my brief review.[gallery ids="1579,1578,1577,1576,1575,1574"]DesignThe 2014 HTC One takes all things nice and beautiful with the 2013 version and makes it a little better. It all starts with the metal body. The M7 had about 70% of its body excluding the display made of metal. This years is close to 90%. My review unit was a Google Play glacial silver version. I checked out the gunmetal gray version at the AT&T store and it was definitely the best of the lot.The edges are much more curved this time around making for a rounded device. The device is better to feel and touch overall. And that is saying something because I love the feel of my HTC One M7 from last year.There are two other noticeable differences. The headphone jack is now located at the bottom of the device next to the microUSB slot. I am not yet sure if this is a good or a bad thing. It might just be that I am used to having it on the top and will take time to get used to having it in the bottom. There is also a microSD slot. My 32GB device from last year still has 10GB left and I take a lot of photos and videos. So I am pretty sure the microSD is not of use to me. But I can see folks opting for a lower flash memory unit and then picking up cheap microSD cards for extra storage.One other noticeable difference is the choice of soft buttons in the display rather than on the device. While this is a good move in ideally making the display bigger and bezel smaller, HTC bizarrely chooses to have the bezel and the HTC logo take up valuable space at the bottom of the display. If this could have been removed, it would have made the device shorter but with the same 5 inch display.[gallery ids="1566,1567,1568,1569,1570,1571,1572,1573"]DisplayHTC has kept the same display resolution for the M8 but increased the size of the screen. Gone is the optimal 4.7 inch screen and replaced by a slightly larger 5 inch screen. The display is 440ppi which makes for a rich experience that continues to be one of the best in the market.The larger display makes the device a tad bigger than its last year model and in my opinion, this is as far as one can go before they find the device a tad clunky. I still prefer the 4.7 inch smaller frame to the 5 inch version but it is not significantly larger and I will not complain much.[gallery ids="1585,1584,1583,1587,1588,1586"]PerformanceAll things nice and fancy will be worth something only if the innards of the device is top notch. In that category, the M8 mostly delivers. Let us get the "mostly part" out of the way first.[gallery ids="1580,1581,1582,1615"]CameraThe primary rear-facing camera is still the same UltraPixel from last year but with better sensors to capture more light. The result is a camera that does great in poor lighting conditions but below par when the lighting is good. In a year of taking over a thousand pictures, here is what I know about the Ultrapixel camera on my M7. In dark light, the Ultrapixel camera shines. It takes pictures that are as good if not better than any of the competition. But in bright light, its performance is not as good. The S4, iPhone 5S and pretty much most of the competition take better daylight pictures than the HTC One.This year, the M8 adds a better sensor and a second camera to complement the main rear camera. They call this arrangement "Duo camera". The duo camera supports a feature where you can capture multiple photos of a subject with varying depths of focus with the two cameras and then choose the best one. This is not much different than the software driven defocus option in the newly launched "Google camera" app. Unfortunately, my Google Play edition does not yet support the duo focus camera feature. For now, it is only supported on the carrier specific HTC One units. HTC says it will come soon to the Google Play version.The front facing camera on the other hand is one of the best ones shipping right now. It is 5MP camera that takes pretty good selfies if you are into that kinda thing. It takes good videos also. For well lit rooms, the front camera is arguably a better camera than the rear facing one. See some sample images from the HTC One camera below. Note that all of them were shot in poor and artificial light.[gallery ids="1614,1613,1612,1611,1610,1609,1608,1607,1604,1601,1599,1598"]  Battery and MuscleLast year's M7 when it launched was arguably the best Android device at the time (and continues to be one of the better ones out there). In terms of performance, the new HTC One M8 blazes a new trail. It is powered by Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon 800 platform MSM8974 chipset with Adreno 330 GPU. Everything I threw at it came trumps. 1080p Video performance was smooth with no lag as was quick task switching and rapid swipes on the menu.A special note on the battery life. On my M7, I am left with 30% or so of battery at the end of the day after a long day of moderate to heavy use. I was able to eke out close to 45% on the M8 even with its larger display. Very impressed.One small side note. Last year, HTC went against the grain and had only two Android buttons - Home and Back. Multitasking and invoking of Google Now were relegated to long tap and hold and double clicking the Home button. This time around, there are three choices with the multitasking button making a come back. SummaryHTC took its best design and product in years, the HTC One (M7) and made it better in every way possible. A better body, a bigger display, a faster processor give the M8 user an overall richer experience. It is not a revolutionary upgrade in any way but the evolutionary changes are all for the better. With the exception of the camera which is still pretty good, everything about the new HTC One is best in class.If you did not take my recommendation last year and pick up the M7, it is not too late now. Grab a M8 and you will thoroughly enjoy it.