Htc One Mini Full Review

A little slice of the world's best mobile phone.
The HTC One Mini follows in the footsteps of its
outlandishly successful bigger brother, slicing off
some components but managing to maintain a
real sense of class.
When it comes to the HTC One , there was a big
call from fans to follow it up with something a
little more affordable, in the same manner as
Samsung has done with the Galaxy S4 Mini .
However, while coming in at a similar price (well,
unconfirmed but likely) and a slightly lower set of
specs than its Samsung competitor, there's no
doubt that the HTC One Mini is a more
impressive device (and it has a higher-resolution
screen to boot).
For a start, it takes on that unibody design from
the larger One, only adding in a plastic band
around the edge but maintaining the aluminium
back and front speakers. It still feels very
premium in the hand, and at 122g feels very well
balanced.
Those that love specs will baulk at this device, so
we'll get the downgrades out of the way early
doors: there's no NFC chip, the CPU is a
Snapdragon 400 dual core option clocked at
1.4GHz, and the screen has been shrunk to 4.3-
inches and a 720p resolution.
However, HTC has managed to keep in the main
things we're fans of with the One: namely
BoomSound and the UltraPixel sensor. BlinkFeed
is there as well (and enhanced thanks to the One
Mini running Android 4.2.2 right out of the box)
but that's something that many users are finding
they only use sporadically.
We've said before: spend some time setting
Blinkfeed up and it will reward you, but we
understand how this is a hassle for some people.
However, it's impressive that it's made it in a
full-fledged format for the One Mini, making it
really feel like this is just a shrunken version of
the larger option.
There are other compromises too: the battery is
down to 1800mAh, and that could play havoc
with some users if the battery life isn't up to
snuff, which has been a problem for HTC over the
years. However, the One managed to tame its
power demons after a refresh, so we're hopeful
HTC Has managed the same thing here.
In the hand, as we mentioned, the HTC One Mini
is a really premium-feeling device. It almost
annoys us how little the plastic band,
manufactured in the same way as the HTC One X
+, doesn't interfere with your general use, as this
just shows that Nokia got it totally the wrong
way round with the Lumia 925 .
The plastic band also makes the phone a little
easier to grip, which we're big fans of, as the
One did have a slight kamikaze habit in normal
use, so overall the tweaks in design don't seem
to have hurt the little tyke.
With the lower-speed processor, you'd be
forgiven for worrying that the One Mini would
have real problems keeping up with all the things
that life might throw it at - in reality, we noticed
not one issue when flipping through the apps and
screens.
Firing up the HTC One Mini camera app was no
problem, and it's great to see the HTC Zoe
functionality (and the exact same camera
interface) staring straight back at us when we
did so.
The burst mode and 3-second Zoe clips all
performed precisely as we'd hoped they would,
and even uploading was speedy too (which is
also possible over 4G as the One Mini supports
that too). The 1GB of RAM might be a concern
for those that recognise the weight of certain
parts of the Sense UI, which HTC runs over the
top of native Android, but we encountered no
issues in our fairly lengthy hands on time with
the phone.
In fact we can only see one glaring issue with the
HTC One Mini: only 16GB of storage on board.
The company told us that it didn't anticipate that
the target demographic would want to fill it up
with more than that, but that seems to preclude
anyone that wants to pop a movie or two, a large
game and a year's worth of HTC Zoe video
highlights in there.
Sure, there will be those that only use 1GB of
photo over the course of the device, and they'd
be the same people that take pictures of their
kids, animals and food, but there are many other
tech-savvy users out there that don't think twice
about downloading a couple of movies and Grand
Theft Auto, yet don't want to pay top whack for a
smartphone.
However, beyond that we can see that this is a
really quality phone, and one that packs all the
treats that HTC is quickly becoming famous for:
a great camera in low light, a swift shot latency,
great audio (with the same internal amplifier and
Beats Audio on board) and Sense 5.0 with the
latest version of Android on board.
Early verdict
Would we recommend the HTC One Mini to a
friend? Of course not - it's not out yet. But we
would urge anyone looking to spend around £25-
£30 ($40) a month on a phone contract (that's a
rough estimate, as we don't have final pricing for
the HTC One Mini) to wait and check out this
phone, when it's launched in August.
If you're not a fan of the HTC One for price alone,
then the One Mini is definitely going to fill your
needs. It seems a little expensive given the
compromises on offer - we'd have preferred to
see this phone coming in at £20-£25 ($30) a
month to be truly attractive - but there's no
doubt that it's got all the bits it needs to be a
winner, and if users can get on board with the
lack of external storage (why, HTC, WHY?) then
we can see a real winner on the shelves of your
local phone emporium in the weeks to come.
In fact, it makes us wonder whether Samsung
will think about refreshing the Galaxy S4 Mini in
the meantime, as it's now very likely to be
second best to this little nugget - and even
Apple's cheaper iPhone, which is likely coming
later this year, will have more of a fight on its
hands than it would have previously been
expected to encounter.