HTC One M7 Review

In early 2013 Android flagships were plastic, and the HTC One was a single block of machined aluminium with the antennas laid into the seams and two speakers on the front, above and below a 4.7-inch 1080p Super LCD 3 that was, at 468 pixels per inch, the best screen on any phone. BoomSound was not a gimmick: front stereo speakers with a real amplifier, and a decade of phones with speakers pointed at the user follows from it.

The Snapdragon 600 with 2GB of RAM was as fast as anything that spring, and Sense 5 introduced BlinkFeed, a home screen news feed you could turn off. The camera was the bet that did not pay. HTC used a 4 megapixel sensor with 2 micron pixels, calling it UltraPixel, on the correct theory that bigger pixels beat more of them in low light; in practice it took warm, soft photographs in daylight, and on a known share of units the sensor developed a purple tint in dim scenes as it aged, which HTC replaced under warranty.

The 2300 mAh battery got through a day only just. Support was good for the era: Android 4.1.2 at launch, then 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 KitKat and 5.0 Lollipop in 2015. It sold for $199 on a two-year contract; the unlocked 64GB developer edition was $649, the figure used here. The Galaxy S4 outsold it many times over, and the HTC One is the one people still bring up.