Making phones smaller seems to be bucking the trend at the moment, but HTC clearly think that there are still people who want phones that aren’t the size of the side of a house. Taking its cue from its big brother, the HTC One Mini brings nearly all of the features of the HTC One in a smaller and more manageable form-factor.
Users of previous HTC phones will be right at home. The home screens feature all of the standard widgets and configurability with HTC’s Sense UI built on top. One of these is a social hub, BlinkFeed, where all of your social networking is placed into tiles for you to easily flick through. BlinkFeed picks out which posts are media rich and interesting and gives you a place that just a glance keeps you caught up with everything. If you’re a social media junkie, then this probably isn’t the best way to keep up as you’ll probably miss a lot of things. Despite having the option to filter this view by which network you’re interested in – the best way to keep up with your favourite network is still going into the app itself. This can be a touch annoying as there seems to be no way to remove BlinkFeed. It’s always there whether you want it or not.
HTC’s settings backup tool still works well. Migrating is a snap thanks to this and should keep HTC fans happy enough to easily bring their settings and details along for the ride.
Sense UI’s app-list is different from other iterations of Jelly Bean. The app screen itself is a scrolling list of icons. It’s somewhat irritating when you’re trying to find an app that you didn’t have the foresight to place in the widget screens.
Another trend that HTC seems to have eschewed is the ability to use a gesture to wake up the device. The HTC One Mini has a power button on the top that you use to wake up the device and then enter your password if need be.
The HTC One Mini carries a similar fascia to its bigger brother. However just like any younger sibling, it’s not quite the looker because of its smaller form. The finished metal effect has been replaced with a plastic three piece panel that wraps around the stylish metal. Despite these changes, the phone feels good in the hand – the curved back panel works extremely well with the smaller form. Maybe this is a good argument to return to popularity for smaller phone? Its benefit is certainly felt as the One Mini is so easy to tuck away in a pocket that this more discreet model has something going for it that the HTC One simply cannot do.
Hardware casualties are about though. The camera has lost image stabilisation, and the connectivity has lost NFC. Maybe these are small sacrifices, but as this is the smaller version of HTC’s flagship phone, you don’t want to lose too many features. Also like the HTC One, there is no SD card support either which means that you are just left with the internal storage of the divice.
The processor has been downgraded from quad-core to dual-core. This might alarm some people who insist on having a powerful device but the HTC One Mini also comes with a screen resolution of 720p. Those who insist that we should be toting full-HD displays on the device can’t even complain as the smaller 4.3 inch screen gives an impressive 341ppi. The CPU saving on pushing out full-HD graphics is a compromise here. For the most part it works, but the more demanding games seem to struggle a little more than with the HTC One.
A knock on effect from these compromises is that you may find that some of those demanding games won’t install. The benchmarks rate the HTC One Mini at about half the power of the HTC One, rendering some of those high-powered games such as NOVA 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and incompatible. Hopefully a future software update or the KitKat upgrade will resolve these issues.
Running on the Vodafone’s network, the browser was very responsive. Backing up data and images to Google worked well – happily notifying me of the updates once they had been made shortly after taking any pictures or videos. As we all capture more and more rich media content on our phones, we need to be sure that we have the bandwidth and power to push these things back to the cloud.
The camera app and Zoe have seen some refinements, but also some losses due to hardware. Zoe itself now that the option to add audio tracks over the pictures that you take – much like BlackBerry 10’s Photo Story. While using Zoe to take pictures, the HTC software is intelligent enough not to synchronise all of your snaps into the cloud, meaning that your storage of choice won’t be bombarded with similar looking snaps. The interface for the camera has seen some changes to the menus, making the options for the camera that little bit more pleasant. Unfortunately, image stabilisation has been given the red card along with a reduction to a 4-megapixel camera. The camera can still take some decent photos, but when you look at the detail you can see that there is some quality drop and unusual artefacts.
If you want this device to last a whole day, then the 1800 mAh battery might just manage it. The smaller screen and dual-core processor make less demands on the HTC One Mini, so even though it has a smaller battery than the HTC One it’s a trade off that seems to work. Of course power users may find this underwhelming and could burn through the life of the phone in half a day quite happily. I found with moderate usage I could get it to last will into the evening.
One sticking point may be the price. Vodafone is offering the HTC One Mini free with a basic £25 per month tariff. This isn’t too bad, but when the HTC One is just £7 more per month you have to weigh up whether the compromises are worth the price difference. Maybe HTC could have made the margins between them a little wider. This may not be a problem for you if you actually do want the smaller phone. Those with tinier digits would probably pay as much to have a phone that they can actually reach the entire screen with their thumb. If this is you, then the HTC One Mini is definitely a phone to look into on your next purchase.
Overall, the HTC One Mini manages to encompass the elegant and ergonomic design of the HTC One and bring in a solid device that scales down the HTC One experience into a more manageable form. Despite the annoyances of the lost features, the benefits to your pocket in terms of space and money may make the HTC One Mini the right phone for you.
