HTC One (T-Mobile)

T-Mobile's version of the nation's most beautiful smartphone brings a bit of a lighter touch, and a few fresh features, to the HTC One. While T-Mobile can't entirely stay off of the bloatware bandwagon, the HTC One makes a powerful and affordable competitor to the new Samsung Galaxy S 4. While the Galaxy S 4 keeps our Editors' Choice for being a little faster, a little more powerful, and a little more expandable, I personally prefer the One.?

This is the third HTC One we've reviewed, and all three carrier models are physically identical. To get a grip on the One's all-metal body, front-mounted Boomsound speakers and UltraPixel camera, read our Sprint HTC One review for details. We'll focus on the differences here.

Bloatware
T-Mobile goes lighter on the bloatware than AT&T does, but T-Mobile's phone still has a bunch of undeletable apps which bug you for additional subscriptions. The only one I really like is Lookout Mobile Security, which scans your apps for viruses. The $3.99/month Name ID gets up my nose because of the cost, and the tech-support tool LogMeIn Rescue stalled at one point.

T-Mobile TV shows why carriers should just step away slowly from the content provider game. It's buggy and expensive (at $12.99/month, it costs more than Netflix or Hulu). While you can download shows to your phone, I found it more often threw me weird error messages complaining about my location and Wi-Fi settings. There's just no consumer reason for this to exist any more.

Fortunately, in the default view, the T-Mobile bloatware is segregated into its own folder. I just wish you could delete it all.

If you're dissatisfied with the bloatware and you want T-Mobile, unfortunately, you're stuck. HTC's unlocked, "developer edition" and "Nexus experience" models all lack AWS HSPA+, so this is the only HTC One unit which will work well on T-Mobile's network.

T-Mobile also only sells the silver, 32GB model of the HTC One. If you want the 64GB model, you have to go to AT&T.

Call Quality and Networking
The HTC One runs on T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 and LTE networks. The HSPA network is available nationwide, but LTE is still only in seven cities, although T-Mobile says it'll cover 100 million people by the end of this month.

T-Mobile's HSPA+ network offers LTE-like, 4G download speeds, although it's a bit hobbled by slow upload speeds and a long time to first byte which makes Web pages tend to pause before appearing. With the Ookla Speedtest.net app, I saw download speeds all over the map between 6 and 12Mbps, and upload speeds at a pretty consistent 1.2 to 1.3Mbps.?

The HTC One supports both T-Mobile's new HD Voice system and its Wi-Fi calling system for seamless phone calls on both cellular and Wi-Fi networks. Call quality was good. Generally, I've found that you'll prefer the HTC One if you like a more bassy tone and find intense treble "harsh" or "tinny." You'll prefer the Galaxy S 4 if you think a treble focus makes sounds "precise" and think tuning it down makes things "muddy." As with other HTC One units, the noise cancellation is imperfect; a little background noise comes through, and heavy background noise makes voice transmissions scratchy. The speakerphone, as before, really stands out because of those front-ported speakers.?

Because T-Mobile's LTE coverage is so limited, the One has a useful network toggle to save battery by stopping searching for unavailable networks: You can even kick it into 3G and 2G-only modes. (The GSM-only mode would really slow down network connections, but it would absolutely sip battery.)?

The T-Mobile HTC One kept failing our battery tests for odd provisioning-related reasons: There was a limit on the SIM which would cause it to hang up on our talk time test after a few hours, and our long YouTube streaming video simply wouldn't load on the phone, although shorter YouTube videos had no problem. So we'll have to go with the battery results from the AT&T model, which is very physically similar. That unit scored 5 hours, 43 minutes of LTE video streaming and 12 hours, 48 minutes of talk time, both solid results that suggest a full day's use, and better results than the Galaxy S 4 on T-Mobile.

Comparisons and Conclusions
The HTC One is beautiful, well-built, and less expensive than the Galaxy S 4. It's $99 plus $20/month, or $579 up front; the S 4 costs $50 more. (AT&T's HTC One is $199-599, if you're keeping track.) The Galaxy S 4 scores just a little bit better than the One thanks to its lighter weight, faster processor, high-res camera, and tunable call audio. That means the Galaxy S 4 keeps our Editors' Choice. But the big difference between the One and the GS 4 is really philosophy: The One is about all-metal elegance (all that bloatware aside) and the GS 4 is about more, more, more.?

Both phones are great choices on T-Mobile, and both have fresher technology than Apple's iPhone 5.?

You may still want to turn to the iPhone 5 for its more easily pocketable size and unbeatable library of apps. But the HTC One delivers the best combination of style and performance on T-Mobile today.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/UhJ3sOjwIiM/0,2817,2419994,00.asp

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