[One (M7) General] hamdir:
Yup I passed by the same HTC guy today, himself was sad about the crazy pricing around here and was clearly advising not to buy this first batch anyway he was very nice and let me play with it

And I just found the time to read Brian's epic review

But for now here's my super quick initial impressions hands on which would interest those who didn't buy it yet

- When you meet this phone in person expecting so much (especially if you love your one x like me) it does have a weird effect, the combination of metal and plastic is polarizing but it does scream premium, more premium than the glossier white iPhone 5, more importantly it feels nothing like the iPhone 5 and screams HTC, its like the peak of their design language, it does feel bigger than the One X unfortunately, but thankfully you can still access the whole screen with one hand, so I guess you will get used to the extra height, now like I said the combination of both colors had me preplexed a little and I left feeling I wanted more, but here is the thing, three hours later I miss the damn thing already, it has such refreshing uber appeal, the same appeal as silver apple laptops (not the iPad), I would say the One is more Apple than the iPhone lol

- Naturally I spent most of the time inspecting the finish, sadly both speaker covers have the same front gaps, the back is one piece zero gap with the plastic, no over hangs, no misalignemnets to the screen edge or any dent to the metal, it was perfect except the speaker cover gap, I could see the plastic is indeed molded and so there are some micro imperfections to the roundeness of the SIM eject hole for example but it's nothing in the way of the quality of this device, it still screams premium, however like I said before i am not really ok with the gaps and personally I would want a more perfect unit, since I know how much HTC refined and perfected their One X assembly I don't mind waiting for the end of April or early May

- Unfortunately I missed checking the firmware number or serial so I have no idea which batch this is

- I tested the camera indoor in daylight, it was clearly producing bright shadows out of box and needed a slight contrast fix, also to my eyes the sharpness 0 aggressive edge algorithm was clear and I lowered it to -1 which solved it for me, I think the camera is defaulted at less than 4MP? I didn't check, the HTC guy was more proud of the front camera though :) the shutter and focus speeds were exact like the One X but I prefered the old focus sound

- Next I checked the screen coming from the super famous screen on the One X I was not mind blown, yes indeed it's much clearer up close but it was clearly not as saturated which might actually be a good thing for some, I disabled auto brightness and set it at max thankfully It was almost a match to my One X brightness, but yes we know there are variations to these screens

- Sense 5 was very odd to me especially in the weird default 3 column drawer, I couldn't check for much except smoothness it's incredibly smooth like the One X JB but there are some areas where the fps drops, like the gallery photo effects area, scrolling between those effects was not as smooth but the battery of the device was depleted so maybe its a reason, I searched for the photshop like custom effects mode from the One X and sadly they indeed removed it, instead we have customisable effects for faces only which Is kind of odd

- The guy was eventually surprised I wasn't checking for the phone's most hyped features, instead I was being picky and so he told me you still didn't try the most important thing, so I wondered what it was and of course he meant the speakers, Oh My God!I never heard such crystal clear sound quality coming from a mobile device, it's the area I still can't get over the most, most impactful, I think it will set the standard for future flagship smartphones

Finally I felt I'm abusing my luck with a 1400$ device so I handed it back and left :laugh: he did say one funny thing though. he asked which color I want and I said silver ofcourse, so he was pleased but told me the black version is the most wanted around here

And that's it, my first encounter with the One, slightly ruined thanks to all the nagging on this forum, I'm pretty sure if I saw it with a fresher mind I wouldn't have wasted the time inspecting the molded plastic micro finish lol (yes in talking to you Rovex)

Absolutely gorgeous device, bold and simply demands respect, can't wait to have my flawless one :rolleyes:

One more thing I have a problem with these HTC devices, I don't want to sell them :rolleyes: llike right now I want the One but I also don't want to sell my One X, damn you HTC!

Edit: one more thing I've tried to figure out if the volume rocker is indeed plastic but I couldn't! it looks and feels metal but not as cold, so I guess it could be metal plated?