Smart phones

HTC One came out today. Very nice design.

  1. Nice proportions. The iPhone 5 is oddball. A little too long and skinny. It loses the kind of solidity that these iPhone 4-ish proportions drive home.

  2. It looks like the screen comes closer to the edge of the product than on any other phone I’ve seen. The nice detail of how the extend the cover over the screen (black shiny bit) out to the edge is well done. That emphasizes the kind of iPhone monolithic visual quality.

  3. I hate the hype about Beats, but I love the speaker details on this phone. They really kicked it up a notch. This just goes to prove what I’ve said repeatedly: smart phones can be differentiated, it just takes the balls to implement the details in a unique and differentiated way.

  4. The rounded alu back differentiates this phone too. I don’t know how much I dig the little shiny lines across it though. Seems a little R2-D2-ish.

HTC has done a really nice job phones lately, I am sure a lot has to do with the acquisition of One and Co (Not putting their in-house team down by any means). In my opinion they are creating a lot of fresh designs. Between that and the new Windows Phone 8 interface I am sold on their stuff, going to get a HTC Windows Phone 8X in a month or so for a much needed upgrade. I really like the soft touch coating on it, although I hope they used silicone (or something similar) as opposed to a rubber paint.

I agree with the hype about beats though, don’t care too much about that part.
HTC_Windows_Phone__2382378b.jpg

I like this a lot, but top view is a little rough.

those lines on the HTC One must be for the antenna… looked a little odd at first. I think I’ll reserve my opinion until I’ve have it in my hand.

I’ve seen the HTC Windows Phone and like that one.

Next week is the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and there’ll probably some other interesting phones coming out