oddly enough, HTC felt that the three capacitive buttons that it used on its 2012 Android phones were one too many, and it has pared it down to just two for the One (one on each side of the HTC logo below the display). The button that got the axe is the multitasking key, which HTC believes is not used by most Android customers. We tend to disagree on how important the dedicated multitasking key is (as would most of our readers, we imagine), but HTC has now buried the function behind a double-tap of the home key. Similarly hidden is Google Now, which requires you to long press on the home button. It's an strange experience and we're not so sure how it makes anything easier for users in day to day practice, but we'll reserve final judgement for when we have spent more time with the device.
If there is one thing that we can take away from the New Sense experience, it's that it's fast. The One is powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core processor clocked at 1.7GHz and paired with 2GB of RAM. The interface was fast and fluid in our experience, and though we didn't get to fully benchmark and stress test the One, we don't think that there will be many performance complaints with it.
HTC will be launching the One globally beginning in March, including with AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile in the US (sorry Verizon users, no One for you). We'll be looking forward to spending more time with it and the various decisions that HTC has made in its software and design when we give it the full review treatment. We'll have more pictures coming soon, so stay tuned!
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They straight jacked WP.
