Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Revisiting the HTC One (M7) in 2021”.
So if you’re anything like me, then back in 2013, you were probably really excited by a new phone from htc the original htc one, whereas it was more commonly known as the htc one m7, that phone paved the way for high quality in premium design, android handsets And so, given this, i wanted to just revisit the one m7 to see what made it so great. I’M luke pock with android authority, and this is the htc one m7 in 2021. In 2012, a year before the htc one m7 was released, htc rebranded its flagship lines and announced three new phones, the htc one x, the 1v and the 1s. Each phone featured different specs and, as you can probably tell this, caused some issues while the flagship product the htc one x, wasn’t particularly bad.
In fact, it was pretty highly reviewed. The branding issues over the other devices were confusing, to say the least. As a result, in 2013 htc rebranded their flagship product once more, and thus the htc 1m7 was born now back in 2013, the htc one m7 was all the rage. In fact, it was one of the first android phones that i really wanted to get my hands on just because of the design. Even today, in 2021 the phone still looks beautiful.
The chamfered aluminum edges, smooth back and impressive 4.7 inch display, didn’t leave much to be desired. The htc one m7 was truly one of the coolest looking android handsets you could get at the time. In addition to this, the form factor was great, and most people considered it to be perfect, with maybe the only drawback being the location of power button in the top left corner of the phone. Still, the design isn’t the only thing that stood the test of time.
Both the speakers and the display are still fantastic in 2021. Let’S talk about the speakers a bit so htc at the time was known for partnering with beats audio for its speakers and while the preceding handsets had some good audio, the htc one m7 was a totally different story. The audio produced from this phone is quite simply impressive.
I didn’t expect it to hold up really at all, but the sound stage in stereo nature still put some modern, smartphone speakers to shame. This was one of the first times, htc featured stereo front-facing speakers in their phones and they called it boom sound. To be honest, it doesn’t disappoint the highs and mids are very well balanced and there’s a considerable amount of low end present too.
The speakers also get pretty loud and the stereo nature of these speakers really shine when watching videos. The mics in this film, weren’t, half bad, either and recording live audio was pretty solid. In fact, here’s what the audio sounds recorded from this phone. Lastly, the display on this phone really was amazing for the time. In 2013, this device, shipped with an impressive 1920×10 4.7 inch display it had a pixel density of about 469 pixels per inch, which meant this device was very sharp even for today’s standards. Although competitors at the time, such as the galaxy s4 featured a super amoled display, the panel on the 1m7 was still impressive today, it holds up very well.
The screen is fairly bright and even though it’s a 1080p panel, i can’t make out individual pixels honestly. I’M surprised at how well this display looks, there’s no strange, color, shifting or artifacting, even when viewing the display at all angles. Now, probably one of my favorite aspects of the one m7 was the software i owned previous htc phones that shipped with different versions of htc sense, but htc sense 5 was one of my favorites everything from the iconic weather flip clock to the blinkfeed to even the Messages app looked great but unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and today it’s pretty hard to get the phone running the original version, so i was stuck using htc, send six and, as a result, using the phone was pretty slow. Keep in mind that the htc one m7 ship, with the snapdragon 600 clocked in at 1.7 gigahertz with two gigabytes of ram back in the day.
These were no slow specs, but today they’re, hardly quick because of the compatibility issues and general sluggishness that outdated software brings. The 1m7 just couldn’t keep up. I tried using this phone as my main device, and it was pretty difficult. Menus are slow, updates, take forever and moving in and around the os just feels sluggish.
It definitely isn’t the quick and snappy phone that it used to be in 2013., moving to a third-party launcher and disabling the verizon bloatware did help a little, but it was still painfully tedious if apps did eventually load using the device. Wasn’T that bad? Nor is it much different from using other modern smartphones, but it just goes to show you the importance of having optimized up-to-date software. Now, if you remember, the htc 1m7 was htc’s first smartphone to feature its ultra pixel technology. The idea was fairly simple, rather than having a lot of smaller megapixels.
Why not have less and larger more photo sensitive ultra pixels? As a result, the htc one m7 shipped with a four megapixel camera that had a larger sensor than most smartphone cameras at the time. In 2013, this panned out all right, but not as well as htc had hoped, and competitors like apple and samsung still managed to produce better out of the box images than the 1m7 likely due to their higher megapixel count. Today, the ultra pixels show their obvious shortcomings, while in theory the larger sensor allows more light making for better low-light photography. Most images are still pretty noisy, even in direct sunlight images tend to have a fair amount of noise in the shadows. Focus is also pretty hit or miss, and i found it very difficult to get images in focus consistently. Also, a big issue of the htc one m7 was its tendency to render some flares as purple in my particular unit.
Had a rough time with white balance and most images have an unnatural green cast. Obviously, it’s hard to expect a lot from an eight-year-old phone, but i was honestly surprised at how bad this phone camera is today even the front-facing camera. While it was one of the first phones to feature an ultra wide camera still struggles to produce sharp images.
Unfortunately, the camera system on the htc one m7 doesn’t really hold up back in 2013. The htc one m7 was one of my favorite android handsets and today it still is. I still can’t get over the beautiful aluminum design, form factor, amazing, display and outstanding speakers. Yes, the cameras and the os experience don’t hold up today, but who could expect it to also on a side note, the htc one m7 in red, in my opinion, was one of the best looking android phones of that era, with maybe the htc one m8 coming In at close, second, if you guys want to see a similar video on that device, let me know i’m saddened that htc hasn’t really produced any devices since 2018, because the htc one m7 truly was, in my opinion, one of the best android phones ever made and I’D love to see htc re-enter the market once again. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for this video. Let me know down below what you remember about the htc one m7. Also, do you guys want to see more of these revisited style videos? Just let me know: okay, that’s going to wrap it up, i’m luke pock with android authority and i’ll catch you in the next article pradik asks what’s happening with the pixel 5a. Is it still going to launch this year um, that’s kind of a tough question, i’m not entirely sure we have seen leaks of the pixel 6, but it’s been kind of radio silence from google regarding the pixel 5a, i’m assuming that they would probably release it sometime. Considering the success of the pixel 4a, but we really don’t know so we’ll just have to wait right now.
Varun banker asks are custom, roms, safe, that’s a bit of a difficult question to answer. Yes, there are trustworthy developers who make trusted roms and you can find those roms on sites like xda developers and make sure that people bounce for them. There are definitely untrustworthy custom.
Roms, so it really just depends on which one you’re using, and you want to make sure you do your due diligence in your research before getting into one rahul, says: lovely content. Like always, you guys deserve a lot more subscribers. Thank you for the upload stay safe and take care guys.
Well, we appreciate it and we hope all of you guys are also staying safe. Thank you for watching our videos and i’ll catch you guys later. Peace. .