HTC One M8 with Windows Phone 8.1
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,943 words · ~9 min read
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A year and a half ago, I switched to Windows Phone with the HTC8X for a month
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to see if the platform could woo me away from iOS. Four blog videos and a month
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later, the answer was a definite no. But Windows Phone has had a lot of time to
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mature. So, when HTC reached out about the 1 M8 for Windows running the latest
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8.1 version featuring Cortana voice control, I jumped at the opportunity to
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review it.
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Cooler Master V series semi-odular power supplies feature 80 plus gold efficiency
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and their gold guarantee 5-year warranty. Click now to learn more. We'll
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kick things off positively. Hardware-wise, HTC didn't change much,
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but I don't really feel like they had to. I love this phone. It's the 1M8,
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man. It's got a fast CPU, ample RAM, enough storage on board with micro SD
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expansion if you need more front-facing boom sound speakers. their ultra pixel
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camera with a two-tone flash that is designed to perform best in low light
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scenarios. And finally, that wonderful glass and aluminum 1M series build
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quality that is second to none. Anyway, if you want to know more about the
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hardware, you should check out our original 1 M8 review where I basically say it's awesome. This video is more
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about the software. Off the bat, Windows Phone has some advantages. It runs
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extraordinarily well on relatively low-end hardware. Mind you, so does
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Android these days. It's a tiled display
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and navigation animations are eye-catching and beautiful. Mind you,
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what isn't these days? And finally, it works really well with Windows services
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like Office Mobile, One Drive, and Skype. But what doesn't these days?
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Okay, so those weren't really advantages at all then, were they? This is going to
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be a rough video. Setup was easy. I imported my accounts and settings from
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my old 8X in just a couple minutes. Also, Google account two-step validation
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is super easy to deal with now and doesn't require app specific passwords,
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so that's good. But once I landed on the desktop with its live tiles, shoot, I
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don't really know where to begin. Um, just like last time around, I started by
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trying to find equivalents for the essential apps that I use every day, and
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it's a real chore. The first party Facebook and Twitter apps are pretty
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good. Instagram has a very functional beta. Speedtest.net, Flickster, and
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WhatsApp all worked fine. Plex is available, but I'm not paying $5 for it
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again, so I can't comment on how good that one is. And Dropbox and Sonos
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services are enabled through third party apps that have some, but not all of the
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functionality and ease of use of the official ones on other platforms. Which
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leads us to the stuff that's missing. Google stuff is a nightmare. So, kiss
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goodbye stuff like the YouTube Studio Creator app and Hangouts. And while
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Google Play Music has a thirdparty app, this very amusing review the developer
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left on his own app really highlights the issues with relying on these when
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the APIs can change overnight just like that. And then in no particular order,
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here's some other stuff that I use every day without suitable replacements. Harmony remote control, drop cam,
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replacement keyboard such as Swift Key. I mean, even Apple is going to start
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allowing third party keyboards in iOS 8. Come on, Microsoft. Speaking of which,
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scam apps. The only things labeled Swift
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Key in the Windows Phone Store are straight up scams. One of which has been
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there for over a month without being cleaned up. For shame, Microsoft, which
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I guess leads to a discussion about the stock keyboard. Its text prediction is
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accurate but slow. I felt like often times it was missing keystrokes. And the
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thing is so huge that a I simply can't
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type on it without accidentally mashing B every time I go for the space bar and
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B with autocorrect autofill predictions
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the navigation bar and some obnoxiously huge UI elements in some places. It's
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amazing how little of the screen you actually get to use sometimes. I guess
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it's got swipe style typing now but I don't care cuz I don't really use that.
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It needs other things to improve first. Which leads to yet another complaint.
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Who is this UI made for? At least TouchWiz knows it's for people whose
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eyesight is starting to go and who aren't that familiar with phones with
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nice, you know, loud sound effects when you mash on the gigantic buttons.
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Windows phone, on the other hand, doesn't really give you any indication
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whether a button press worked other than, you know, after a little bit of
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doing the thing. And on top of that, a single screen can have text as wide as
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your face in headings and then like super tiny micro text that you'd have to
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squint at unless you have perfect vision. And on top of that, I just plain
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don't find it very intuitive to use. Drag down to see your notifications.
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Okay, with you so far. Click an email. All right, brings up an email. With you
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so far. I'm looking at the email. Okay, now I'm done. Now what? Maybe if I press
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back, I'll land in the inbox. No, no, that just takes me away. Okay. Well, is
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there maybe another button in case I want to look at other emails when I'm done with this one email that was in my
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notifications? Or do I actually have to go all the way back to the desktop and
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open the email client from there? Wow,
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that's slow. And lots of things are slow like this. How about a quick draw speed
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competition to dial someone's phone number? No. T9 dialing is a big heaping
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wheelbarrow full of suck on top of all the other things that are slow about
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this process. Some stuff is okay though. Quick toggles are reconfigurable in the
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main stuff including portable hotspot sharing is here. Also, I was corrected
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when I said on our podcast that folder support on the desktop is still missing.
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You can create folders of apps, making organization quite a bit easier now. So,
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that's good. Uh, changing ringtones lets you change without previewing at full
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volume, which is nice. Good for parents with newborns. And I love the control
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that you have over snoozing and dismissing notifications. Every OS needs
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this. Let me control how long it snoozes
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for. And there's more positive stuff, too. Cortana is actually quick to use
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and seems to learn a little bit after the first time for a given task, like
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call Ivonne. It doesn't force me to navigate unnecessarily through menus to
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confirm things. So, for things like basic voice dialing and sending quick
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SMS messages, it's really fast. But I
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also think it's been oversold a little bit. While actual speech recognition for
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me was great, there's still no support for basic system setting stuff like
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volume control and screen brightness. And I found it very flowbreaking to have
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to press the voice button in between interactions. You know, like, "Show me
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where there's a sushi restaurant. Okay, here's something nearby. You can't just
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keep talking. You have to press the button again. It is very promising for
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the future, though, and I'm excited to see where Microsoft is taking this one because it's pretty darn mature for a
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first attempt. Okay, so it's conclusion and more thoughts time. I think the
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bottom line for me here is that while in my mind HTC did a great job of
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delivering the best enthusiast grade Windows Phone 8.1 experience they could,
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you know, their social media feed, Blink Feed, works as a live tile. the Duo
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camera weird depth feature and quick video and photo highlight reel features
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are enabled through apps as well and
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they did a great job. But even if their entire company was staffed by like
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cowboy astronaut millionaires, there was nothing they could do to make the
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Windows phone ecosystem suitable for enthusiast high-end use. Nothing. Basic
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functionality, call people, take pictures, and video chat on Skype. All
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this stuff works. So, I guess I could recommend it for my mom, but go any
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further than that, and I don't understand why anyone would want it. For
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intermediate users like my sister, she's going to be baffled by the need to use
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third party applications, some of which cost money, for stuff like YouTube. And
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then as we get into the higherend enthusiasts who are able to jump through
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those technical hoops, the ones that are likely to be also jumping on the trends
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of like wearables and connected devices and stuff. And we got another deal
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breaker. The lack of third party developer support becomes a complete
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nogo for Windows and it happens over and
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over. The unofficial Pebble app does some cool stuff actually, but doesn't
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notify of calls and texts apparently due to Microsoft policies. Deal breaker. The
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unofficial Drop Cam app supports new images every two and a half seconds with
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no live video, audio, or historical video scrubbing. Deal breaker. Um, and
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it's just on and on like that. Battery life was a very positive point with the
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phone often lasting me two full days or more. But I think a big part of this is
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how inefficient to use it was and therefore how little time I actually
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spent using it. Even stupid stuff like trying to find a draft email that I
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started creating on the desktop in the stock email client, which is otherwise
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one of the better aspects of Windows Phone was just such a waste of time that
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I would just walk to my computer if it was nearby. So, all in all, this phone
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baffles me a little bit. It's a phone for no one. I understand that some
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people have a thing for supporting the market underdog and are willing to work
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around numerous inconveniences to do it or have specific complaints about Google
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and Apple that would cause them to want to avoid using the services of both of
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those companies. And for you, there's high-end Windows phones like the 1 M8
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for Windows. For everyone else, there's stuff out there that's just plain more
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functional and easier to use. And in the case of the 1 M8, also exactly the same
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price. So, the conclusion pretty much writes
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itself here, guys. Thanks for watching. Like the video if you liked it, dislike
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it if you disliked it. Leave a comment letting me know if you have some thoughts on the whole Windows phone
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versus other platforms thing. I would love to hear from you. Uh, in the video
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