HTC One Mini

Price

The HTC One Mini is Priced at $600/Rs.37,000

Design

We have seen our share of elegantly designed phones, but we were still taken aback by the understated looks of the HTC One mini. You get a feeling of awe when you hold the One mini in your hands. The sheer slimness and compact form factor of the phone did impress, when the HTC One mini came to our doorsteps.

The HTC One mini looks like a replica of the One (except for its size), and this is a good thing, as it gives the One mini the same premium look as its bigger, elder sibling.

Display

It's worth pointing out that the HTC One's full-HD display won a lot of accolades and even was considered one of the best displays in the premium segment. The HTC One mini features a 4.3-inch Super LCD 2 display that sports a resolution of 720x1280 pixels and pixel density of 341ppi. The company has also used Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the device, making it stronger, and more scratch-resistant.

The Super LCD 2 display doesn't gives the fullest colours or the deepest blacks like AMOLED displays do, but it is a bright panel at nearly all times. Colours on the One mini are quite vibrant nevertheless, and consistently reproduced well. The viewing angles were never a problem. The display is not very reflective, and sunlight-legibility was acceptable. Reading text on the device was always crisp and clear against white backgrounds.

Camera

HTC, earlier this year, instead of continuing to run the race for higher megapixel counts, defected and introduced the UltraPixel technology on its flagship device, the One, which features a 4-megapixel rear camera. The megapixel count might be on the lower side, but the sensor size is bigger which enables the camera to capture more light. The result is usually better than regular cameras and one gets crisp and vivid shots. HTC ships the One mini with the same 4-megapixel UltraPixel camera at the back.

The HTC One mini further comes with a dedicated HTC ImageChip 2, the Taiwanese handset maker's own Image Signal processor (ISP), which enables faster and better shots in any light conditions. We did not face any lag, both in capturing and saving an image.

The 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera shouldn't be relied on for anything other than self portrait.

Software/User Interface (UI)

The HTC One mini runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Sense 5 UI on top, (slightly updated from the UI seen on the One) which is HTC's own skin that includes some custom apps as well.

The flagship HTC One natively runs Android 4.1.2 out of the box and is still waiting for the updated Sense 5.0. The device is expected to be going straight to Android 4.3 update, giving Android 4.2.2 a miss.

The central homescreen on the One mini is replaced by the BlinkFeed, the most popular Sense 5.0 UI feature that was first seen on the HTC One.

BlinkFeed is basically a blend of several Internet and social feeds running on the homescreen in the form of panels or tiles, as seen on Windows Phone. One can select which feeds to show on this screen and can pick categories of interests from topics like astrology, news, sports, lifestyle, society, videos, technology and others. There is also an option of having local news services in the BlinkFeed that popularly includes NDTV, Hindustan Times, India Today, Aaj Tak and a few others.

Performance/Battery Life

The HTC One mini is powered by a 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with Adreno 305 for graphics processing. It comes with only 1GB of RAM onboard. There is 16GB of inbuilt storage, out of which only 11GB is user-accessible and sadly the phone does not support expandable storage. Considering that the One mini comes at a premium price, the limited storage on the device is definitely a deal breaker. We wished that the One mini could come with at least 32GB onboard storage at its price, if not a microSD card slot.

The HTC One mini ships with a 1800mAh battery that according to the company can deliver up to 692 hours of standby and up to 13 hours of talktime on 3G networks. Based on our testing period the One mini delivered satisfying battery performance.

Pros

• Premium build and style
• Good ergonomics
• BoomSound feature
• UltraPixel camera

Cons

• Expensive
• Lags often
• Limited storage