A few months ago I had a HTC One for review, ever since it went back my life has been different, I’ve been constantly looking for a new phone to fill the 5″ 1080p Aluminium unibody sized gap in my life. I’ve played about the Galaxy S4 and the Xperia Z and I recently was offered the HTC One Mini for a few weeks, whilst I know that it isn’t 1080p the design is much the same, I just hoped it would help me out with that gap in my life.
looks wise the HTC One Mini is similar to its bigger brother, the edge details are where you can see where money has been saved, in white this edge detail looks like a small bumper case. The other part that looks odd is the speaker grilles above and below the screen, they look like there made of metal, but in reality they are a plastic type material.
Spec wise for a phone of it’s size the HTC One Mini is pretty good, normally manufactuers tend to make their smaller devices much lower spec, this isn’t the case with the HTC One Mini
- Chipset – Qualcomm Snapdragon 400
- CPU – Dual-core 1.4 GHz Krait 200
- GPU – Adreno 305
- Display – 4.3″ Super LCD2, 720p (1280×720), 342 ppi
- Rear Camera – 4 Ultrapixels, autofocus, LED flash
- Front Camera – 1.6 MP
- Internal Memory – 16GB
- RAM – 1GB
- Micro SIM
- Bluetooth 4.0
- Stero speakers
- Beats Audio enhancement
- Network – GSM, HSDPA, HSPA+, LTE
- Battery – 1800 mAh Li-Po
- Dimensions – 132 x 63.2 x 9.3 mm
- Weight – 122g
- Colours – Silver, Black, Blue
The camera on the HTC One Mini is the same unit as on the HTC One, so all of the Zoe photos are the same, the super quick shutter is the same and the low light performance is the same. It is a really nice camera if you often take shots of things that move a lot, like kids, animals or sporting events. The Zoe camera let’s you take a clever burst shots which are stitched into a little video. Here are some sample shots taken with the One Mini.
HTC have recently updated the One and the One Mini to Android 4.2 and they also updated the software which handles input methods, namely the little home button, now you have an option to use the home button as a menu button as well. Which is nice.
When I used the HTC One a while back the Sense 5 launcher and skin really took some getting used to, this time round I stuck with it. The extra widgets and tweaks really make for a functional device. Although HTC really do need to let you remove Blinkfeed.
Sound quality is an area that HTC really have excelled at. The integration of Beats Audio really make music sound good, using decent headphones the audio is great, as long as you like it bass heavy. Listen to music through the two front facing speakers and you get a decent loud non distorted experience, nowhere near as bass heavy as with headphones, but what do you expect with phone speakers. I did find that HTC have disabled third party equalisers now, so you can’t tinker the way your music sounds anymore. Below shows the settings in Google Play Music one the One Mini and on the Samsung Galaxy Note II.
Conclusion
Overall the HTC One Mini is a great device, the cutbacks to reduce the price do not impede the user experience, if you want a lower priced well made smaller screen device then the HTC One Mini should definitely be on your list of possibles. Especially if you like listening to music, as the speakers and the Beats Audio options are really quite good.
Thanks to Vodafone for lending us the HTC One Mini, if you’re interested you can get a One Mini here