HTC One Mini - My Review.
For a second time I have been fortunate enough to be asked to review a mobile phone handset for O2, and this time round its the HTC One Mini Phone.
My sincere thanks again to @Toby and @Anonymous and O2 for giving me this opportunity to be again involved.
The specs for this handset can be found here :
http://www.htc.com/uk/smartphones/htc-one-mini/#/
This mobile phone is very comfortable to hold and it is also light at 122g.
I had no issue using this phone one handed which is a part of how I gauge my first impressions of a new mobile phone.
It is however very slippery to hold so some form of case is in my opinion recommended.
I looked at one case called the Flexi Shield Case for HTC One Mini - Smoke Black as it added grip, and I came across similar ones that are also available under £10 from several online shops.
I didn't’t purchase one but I did check out some of the similar ones in the high street shops, and the grip added was essential.
As in MI5’s review I totally agree that the power button should really have been placed on the right hand side of the phone, instead of it being placed on the top, which does make the phone a little more user unfriendly.
The 4.3” screen is slightly larger than my iPhone 5s screen of 4” , so this phone immediately falls within my comfort zone.
The phone was running Android Version 4.3 and HTC Sense Version 5.5 upon checking ,and found the UI and OS very easy to navigate.
The HTC One Mini has an aluminium body which looks beautiful with white plastic inlaid lines that break up the back's grey metal at the top and bottom. It has a white plastic band wrapping around the edge that should help give a little extra protection from those everyday bumps.
The phones offers 16GB of internal storage with 1GB of RAM, but does not offer an expandable memory slot.
It’s capacitive touch screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection is bright and bold, even though it is not Full HD and is down to 720p, I had no issue viewing the display both indoors and outdoors.
Although it's Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 400 chipset, Dual-core 1.4 GHz Krait 200 CPU does not impress as much as some of the faster quad core powered phones that are available, it still does its job very well ,and found it not to be sluggish in any way.
The camera on this phone offers up a really good experience with its 4 megapixel camera offering up good photographs.
On the front of the handset are the same two BoomSound speakers situated above and below the screen. They are very loud and gave a full sound from the phone and came into full effect in game play and video playback.The speakers face forwards and thus help direct the sound at you.
The volume and power buttons are responsive.
To the left of the home screens is what HTC calls “BlinkFeed.” It is a News and social network aggregator, that shows headlines ,and your friends' status updates in a feed on large tiles.. I did like the way it displayed my Facebook pages, but I decided not to use this as my Homepage and was Ok for flicking to for checking the tiles.
I carried out several outbound and fielded several inbound calls and both were crisp and clear. The loudspeaker yielded the same clarity. The incoming call and message alerts were both loud, and the phone App was easy to navigate around.
The phone achieved strong network and 3G signal. Wi-Fi strength was strong and stable too.
The screen keyboard was nicely spaced out and sending text messages and writing on forums was a breeze.
I also found the status bar at the top of the screen was not cluttered with the icons nicely spread out and useful.
The Internet experience on the phone is a joy to use and it was nice to be able to use the ‘Rich Editor’ on the O2 Community Forum again ! The scrolling on the Internet pages is fluid, which is something I look for too.
The games I played on the HTC phone were Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2, and the gaming experience was acceptable, but not great. I’m not convinced this phones specs could handle more intensive games.
Music Playback with Beats Audio sound enhancement I could’t fault and gives all the usual options one comes to expect from these phones. The port on the phone is a 3.5mm Stereo Audio Jack.
Bearing in mind throughout my trial period I was running the phone as heavy as I could I achieved 1.5 to 2 days before having to recharge the battery.
Pro’s.
Metal Construction.
Hand and Pocket friendly size.
Good Battery Life.
Vibrant Screen.
4G Compatible.
Seems to not suffer from the usual fingerprint magnet issue.
Con’s.
Unremovable Battery.
No Expandable Storage.
Power Button on the top of the handset.
Very slippery to hold.
In Conclusion.
Even though this model does not have all the bells and whistles of its big brother {HTC One}, it still packs a decent punch.
Would I purchase a HTC One Mini - Yes, and I would gladly use it as a secondary phone.
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