[T-Mobile HTC One (M7)] kiint:
I got mine as promised from T-Mobile this morning. I have been with Verizon since before they were Verizon (pre-Cingular days even) but lately the reception on my phone has been getting worse and worse at my house in Mar Vista, and in other places around Los Angeles, although the *LTE*has always been very good at my workplaces in Culver City and El Segundo...but not so much at home.

I've had a succession of HTC Rezounds for several years, and while it was a great phone, it was definitely showing it's age.

I've always liked Sense and HTC in general so when I started reading reviews on the One, it sounded like the phone I'd been thinking about.

Thing is, I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan with VZW, so I was waiting for *any* sign they were going to bring the One on before the end of the summer, but so far it doesn't look good ( and even if they DO announce it at the end of May, they are notoriously slow with this stuff).

I was hoping perhaps a newer phone would help my reception issues at home as well.

Last weekend though, I had the unfortunate experience of having a very important call get dropped, and I decided that was it. I would try another carrier (but keep the VZW account until I was sure of things)

Unfortunately, One's are scarcer than hen's teeth here in L.A stores, so I was forced for the first time to order a phone, sight unseen, just videos, pics and the like, a bit of a leap of faith.

T-Mobile had better, less restrictive deals than AT+T and I wanted to buy the phone outright in case things didn't work out I could sell it later on.

T-Mobile also had them in stock for new signers so that was also a factor. I was a bit concerned because AT+T had already started their LTE rollout, while T-Mobiles is behind and won't hit L.A. till early summer supposedly, but many forum posters were getting extremely good HSPA+ speeds in L.A., certainly better than I was getting at my house on VZW's true LTE anyway, so I went with them. Plus they could get to me by Tuesday.

So, today being Tuesday, it arrived as expected. Didn't get the car dock but oh well.

At first I was a little underwhelmed, the inevitable anticlimax when you realize it's not going to be shining like wet platinum as angels sing while you lift it out of the box, but merely another typical mobile device unboxing, cardboard, plastic, paper, etc.

I must say though that the packaging seems very minimal and eco-friendly, so kudos to HTC on that one.

So on to the phone. It is, in a word, serious.

When you pick it up there is not doubt that some very talented people spent a long time figuring out how to make this the most serious, thin, dense, slick piece of hardware you ever laid eyes and hands and ears on.

At first I was a little peeved because T-Mobile didnt have the black variant like AT+T, but now that I've got the silver/white one, I am glad I didn't get the black. It's elegant without being flashy, designed without being ostentatious.

Maybe not as much as the iPhone5, but pretty damn close in terms of minimalist aesthetic. And if you like metal baby, well this is the phone for you.

So, you take it out, no battery or sd card to put in like on every other HTC phone I've ever had. Kind of nice, I've never gotten anywhere near 32gigs anyway so who needs another slot.

The battery of course, is always a different story. But the 2300mh battery in the One puts on a good show, for most of the day at least. Certainly blows doors on the Rezound, who's battery

was never one of it's strong points anyway.

So, turn it on, set it up, same usual HTC setup stuff, nothing remarkable.

Sense 5. Generally, I like it. At first I was a bit pissed because things are very different in many areas, especially new menu UI's that are a little hidden if you don't know the drag-down-there-it-is trick.

But it only took an hour or two to figure it all out and most of it makes sense (ahh) in an evolutionary way. I'm still getting into the corners but mostly it's quite do-able.

Speed.

Many have used the word "butter". Many have also used the word "iPhone5". Probably because it's the closest any Android phone has ever gotten to the whisper-smooth, completely fine-tuned, hardware-accellerated no-lag wonder that is IOS on a iPhone5.

(before you light the torches, I have never owned an iphone or macbook and am not an apple person at all.) But any one can see that IOS has some serious advantages over the competition in that arena.

Until now.

So, yeah, it's smooth like butter, clean slick UI, and almost entirely lag-free; the only thing that made it stutter was a new tower defense game with heavy graphics and hundreds of on-screen enemies, but I think it would have made an iPhone5 stutter too.

Apparently HTC made a deal last year with Apple for something or the other, and now its looking like maybe it was for some butter. I do wish they had swapped the home and back buttons so my right thumb didnt have to reach all the way across the phone, but that's a relatively minor (right handed) complaint.

But hey, you say, what about the reception? At your house, remember the whole reason you went down this road? And what about at work?

Well, here's where it gets interesting.

When I got it this morning at work, I immediately ran a speed test and was disappointed to see it was around 1.1D .9U on HSPA+. My office in Culver City is a big multistory affair of the modern style, and the VZW Rezound gets good LTE data there, usually around 9-10D 2U. The One, not so much.

But when I got home, well, then the whole love affair really got going. Incredible reception, and data in the 15-20D 5U range! Now, this of course has something to do with the cell tower two blocks from my house that went up a couple of years ago, and which until today did me exactly zero amount of good apparently. Now I know who owns that tower, and it's not Verizon. So, the tradeoff for now is home vs. work, but its not contest because I need to actually HEAR and TALK to people first and foremost, and now I can.

I just want to emphasize that one of the things that makes this phone interesting is that IMHO it's different that most anything else Android coming out these days. The construction is, like I said, a serious affair. The tolerances are reasonably high. The metal has this curious sense of being tough and refined at the same time. The weight and size are, for my hands, just right.

It's heavy, but not too heavy. Wide, but not too wide.

It is, in the words of Goldilocks, just right.

Yeah, it's a Goldilocks phone alright.

I think I'll keep it.