Initial test:
After unpacking we discover a beautiful object. The chassis is machined from an aluminum block and it shows, the finish is worthy of a great iPhone 5 with a larger screen mat. We can also find a video on the internet showing the strength of this phone scratch of a key, a knife and a mallet to shock, I admit to not having achieved the ultimate test, but credible enough .
At start, it is a bit surprised by the HTC Sense overlay that gives the home page Windows Phone presentation. Traditional buttons with Android smartphones were reduced to 2 instead of 3 and that is quite disturbing especially in the navigation to access the settings of an application. The missing button is then replaced with 3 small screen on high points, but not all apps, far from it. I never found out how removed the sound of some very noisy games like Angry Birds, for example.
The Full HD screen on such a small screen size has some drawbacks, some games are unusable by a senior (even having set the display to large fonts) and phone heats up tremendously. This is also the case when viewing a video on YouTube. Spending a few minutes, the aluminum back office and makes radiator burns hands! This does not bode well on the lifetime of components and adjusted case must arrange anything.
In terms of features, it is one of the musts of the moment with support for 4G and NFC (contactless payment) I have not been to. There is also an infrared transmitter associated with HTC application of a TV remote control or internet box from a personalized TV guide. It is very successful.
The audio level, it is certainly in the presence of top smartphones with a chamber on each side of the screen but the Beats Audio in-ear headphones are not worthy of such an object.
The photo quality is also very good (for a smartphone), although HTC has taken the risk of a sensor only 4 Mpix but stabilized optics, pixel size, and image processing gives beautiful images. Many settings and effects are available including an animated image (Zoe) very nice. The video also benefits from the stabilization.
The HTC Sync Manager software is very disappointing. It allows synchronization of music, images and documents to a PC or Mac computer but requires connecting the USB cable phone unlike apps like AirDroid that does the same thing in WiFi or even 3G (after a message warning). All other timings (contacts, emails, Google Drive documents) are supported natively by Google. This is also very fast during the commissioning of a new phone.
After several weeks of use, I am now delighted a few details:
- The phone gets very hot when using multimedia features,
- The screen is very beautiful but the colorimetry turns to red (blue-violet appear on the screen), this problem is curiously corrected by updating Jelly Bean except for the slideshow.
