the Jazz mini is a beautiful and compact aluminum stand for your smartphone that
even holds tablets up to 8 in Click now to learn more finally the update to the
phone that's been my daily driver whenever I'm not working on reviewing
something else for the last year it is time to replace my HTC1 with this other
more different HTC1 and if that seems
confusing you're not the only one HTC's
own website actually even resorts to using the code name M8 to clarify what
product it is you're looking at now as far as specs go there's not much for me
to say in a video it's got a Snapdragon 801 chip clocked at 2.3 gz in most
markets it's got 2 gigs of RAM and realistically if you want to know more
there's an amazing site called gsmarena.com where you can enjoy a wall
of text just like this one for any phone you can imagine so without further Ado
let's get on with the stuff that watching a a video legitimately helps
with kicking off our physical tour I've got the gunmetal version which features
what feels like a perfectly smooth back but it actually has a brushed looking
finish to it but the phone is also available in silver and pirate the
gorgeous backing wraps up to the screen which it nearly perfectly joins with a
tasteful bevel Edge and the overall fit and finish of the phone is immaculate
with almost no discernible imperfections even Where Metal meets glass at the top
and the bottom of the screen a somewhat common issue on the last generation
product the increase in metal content for the chassis from 70% to 90% features
prominently in HTC's marketing and while some reviewers preferred the flat
composite edges of the M7 for grip I
actually like the seamless rounded edges it reminds me of Samsung's whole made
for humans thing that they did with the S3 except that HTC does it with a level
of build quality that Samsung for whatever reason just refuses to
acknowledge is important bottom line this phone feels great and even more
solid in my hands than the M7 a phone that survived quite a few significant
drops without uh damage for me the one gripe that I had initially was the extra
weight but given the larger 5-in screen size and even more premium feel it has I
can forgive this and in fact I'm beginning to appreciate the sheer this
is a serious piece of Hardware mass of the M8 it reminds me of the feeling I
get when holding an iPhone 4 which it remarkably only weighs about 8% more
than in spite of the larger screen it really does set this phone apart the
5-in display is covered in Gorilla Glass 3 and features some of the most subtle
sexy haptic feedback I've ever felt and while objective testing on the interwebs
would indicate that in fact the black levels are not as deep as the M7 and the
color accuracy is perhaps not as good as the Moto X or even the One Max I
subjectively found both of those aforementioned phones very warm looking
to the eye and the M8 much more pleasing so your mileage may vary one thing that
really blew me away though was the lack of color shift or image quality
degradation when viewing off AIS Kudos HTC and I also really like the small
tweak to their auto brightness since I last used it 40% is enough for me even
outside and now I can set a maximum for auto brightness so I use it all the time
and it works great above the screen is a 5 megapixel camera that records 1080p
video and here's an audio sample from it more than enough for video chatting
under the screen the dedicated multitasking button built into s six
instead of requiring a double tap of home is very welcome but using that
extra3 in of screen real estate that we gained from the M7 on onscreen buttons
in general is a bit of a mixed bag for me Google is putting pressure on handset
makers to move towards them but between the HTC logo chin bar that HTC says they
needed for internal components and the onscreen buttons in landscape mode the
keyboard is shifted so much to the left that I find myself mistyping a lot more
than usual that combined with the way that the onscreen buttons disappear
sometimes and you need two button presses to do stuff but I mean I like that they're
contextual and stuff so I don't know on
the top of the phone we find an IR emitter a feature that I actually didn't
use once with the M7 but one that's nice to have if you watch TV I guess and the
power button or lock button which is actually as shallow as this might sound
my second biggest gripe with this phone you don't need to use it to turn the
phone on thanks to HTC's gesture based motion launch controls that let you
double tap to wake and swipe for home screen voice styling blink feed or
whatever was the last thing you were doing but I still use it to turn the
screen off and I just can't find a comfortable way to do that without
mashing the volume buttons on the side on the left side we've got an
unnecessarily large large nano SIM slot and then on the other that somewhat too
easy to press volume rocker that I mentioned before and great Scott what's
this HTC yields to Google's onscreen buttons and powered by Android startup
screen branding but not to the elimination of the micro SD slot great
inclusion here if I had a dollar for every time someone bought a Galaxy S4
instead of a 1 M7 because of the no micro SD slot I would have more money
than HTC does right now the headphone jack is now on the bottom next to micro
USB a position I used to prefer since it tugs less while holding the device but I
use my phone with my right hand and store it in my left pocket so I actually
find this a little bit more ergonomic than this when I'm putting it away so
now I prefer the top headphone jack but it's a very very minor complaint since
we're on the subject of the headphone jack I complained about the amp on the
M7 early on but later discovered that the problems were caused by the subpar
HTC music player app included with the m
7 Since switching to Apollo on the M7 I
no longer have any complaints about it and the M8 is also just dandy in terms
of headphone audio output quality speaking of Dandy the speakers sure
they're not Standalone Bluetooth speakers but they're loud enough and
sound good enough for me to legitimately
enjoy YouTube videos in a noisy environment like a moving car and listen
to music at my desk while I work a freaking plus as a Content consumer I
will trade the extra phone height that is consumed by resonance Chambers for
this sound experience every day and HTC is just making the other guys look
stupid at this point I mean these days whenever I get my hands on a device with
bottom or rearm mounted speakers I can't even bring myself to make the joke about
the cupping your hand trick anymore it's just not funny anymore it's a miracle
the other guys have led HTC stay more than a year ahead of them now with an
Innovative feature like pointing a sound Source at the listener's ears but since
I'm an HTC user I guess it doesn't really matter to me what the others do
and all I can really say is enjoy the cup trick everyone
else turns out it's still funny when it's someone else moving around to the
back of the phone we find the UltraPixel 4 megapixel camera is back with some
capabilities added and others taken away it lacks Optical image stabilization
this time but is now accompanied by a two-tone flash for better flesh tones
and it has more processing horsepower behind find it a major contributing
factor to the wicked fast shutter speed of this bad boy seriously whip your
phone out horizontally press the volume button the camera app is ready to
capture the moment you can rapid fire it when your kid has your finger up his
nose or whatever it is that you're trying to get on camera you can use
Zoe's HTC's video/ photo at the same
time thing that works really well with highlight reels a little software
feature that cuts together photos and videos with music and effects and now
allows more granular clip selection and your own music to be added but I found
machine gunning the shutter or capturing Stills during regular video recording
was just as effective but all of that is still pretty normal stuff what about
HTC's other camera on the back that one
is used to gather depth information and in theory it allows images to be
refocused in post or effects to be added to the background and also this funky
Parallax effect um but in practice I use
this about as often is the feature that lets me cover a photo with cherry
blossoms or put Scumbag Steve hats on everyone all in all as someone who never
prints my phone pictures I was already satisfied with the m7's camera for my
Instagram needs and recording videos of my cats and I'm satisfied with this one
too it's good enough for me and even though the M8 does not support 4K
recording like some other phones are starting to I actually got quite a few
compliments on a video I uploaded of my cat that looked pretty darn fantastic so
there you go moving on to software I'm not going to say too much about Sense 6
because I already liked sense 5.5 and Sense 6 is pretty much more of the same
the keyboard prediction sucks the big one and I find the information density
and blink feed just a little bit too low
to be useful for me but swift key for the win and blink feed can be completely
ignored quite easily so those are really minor complaints and there's so many
other good things I mean even though I'm not detail oriented enough to notice
exact changes like the notification bar changing color depending on the screen
you're looking at I do generally appreciate the improvements HTC
continues to make to their overall aesthetic and The Classy new stock sound
scheme and I love their organization friendly app tray their multitasking the
easy way that quick settings can be reconfigured and so much more sense is
the Android skin that I started on and I actually like it better than stock
Android Sumi it's super easy to use and low overhead enough that it feels just
as Snappy as stock Android I mean obviously the wicked Hardware on this
phone isn't hurting that either this phone is a blast to use so conclusion
time there was a time when being the
most beautifully crafted Android phone on the market was about like winning the
chimp Olympics but with the M7 HTC took
Android phone design and build quality to the next level and the M8 picks up
where it left off there are some issues that persist the battery is still not
replaceable and iFix it gave the phone a whopping two out of 10 for repairability
in their tear down video but the good news about the battery at least is that
even though they only increased capacity to an unexceptional 2600 milliamp hours
the real world battery life is a lot better at the end of a weekday that
means conference calls with the speaker phone and constant emails and texting I
regularly have 40% left at night and on weekends I Can Go the whole 2 days
before recharging and I'm not not I'm not cheating I've got Bluetooth on
impared to my Pebble Wi-Fi mobile data accurate GPS location and the onboard
popcorn maker are all enabled at all times and I am still getting these
results the last phones that I tested that were like this for me were the
Xperia Z with a bunch of power management stuff on and the One Max
which just had a massive battery speaking of massive battery another
Improvement is the noticeably faster battery charging on the M8 with my old
iPhone I could pop it on the charger for 30 minutes while I you know get ready to
leave the house and have that actually last me long enough to get back home and
charge it for real not the case with the M7 but the M8 is much closer to that
experience and it's a it's a really tangible Improvement no phone is perfect
though and I'm going to wrap up this video with a couple of complaints number
one is that a non-tech discovered HTC is still enabling higher power States when
the phone detects a benchmark is being run and number two is actually my
biggest complaint about the phone and that is that for some reason we're in
the 21st century yeah I mean this guy figured out this crap a long time ago
and this phone still doesn't have wireless charging words cannot express
how much I wish that it did but oh sorry
hold on I've got to take this call see that gesture-based phone call answering
oh it's Luke hey he arrived safely at PAX East where he and Brandon will be
bringing you guys the very best of the show with a particular EMP empis on the
Indie Mega Booth stay tuned over the next couple of days for all that awesome
content and wait sorry what's that Luke
you also want me to give a huge shout out to our sponsors Intel and Corsair
without whom you wouldn't have been able to go and remind everyone to tune in to
our PX content ha what a guy he also forgot a couple things though Intel and
ASUS are also giving away a taiichi dual
screen ultra book just tweet what inspires you about PAX East with # Intel
Inspire before the 18th of April 2014
for a chance to win full Contest rules are linked in the video description
speaking of giveaways huge reward for those of you who were hardcore enough to
stick around through this very long video I have something exciting to share
HTC gave me two giraffing m8s to give
away hey why did you bleep that I didn't even say a bad word I said giraffing
anyway all you have to do is post your
favorite thing about the m in the Forum thread in the video description and no
matter who you are or where you live you
are entered you don't even have to sign up for the Forum you can use your steam
Facebook or Twitter account to quickly log in and post your favorite thing and
you're in the draw but there is a catch
I only get two phones if 10,000 or more
of you click the bitly link to HTC's m8
page on their site also linked in the video description
oh I've been talking for a long time otherwise I just get one so let's all
work together to unlock the extra phone full giveaway details in the video
description as well anyway guys thank you for watching my team and I worked
really hard on this video and we hope you enjoyed it if you did please like
and share it and if you didn't please dislike it and leave a comment with your
thoughts we do take constructive criticism very seriously also linked in
the video description in addition to all that other stuff is a support us linked
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