Many of the 2014 HTC One’s other tech specs are similar to last year’s model. Still, HTC has kept the black logo bar beneath the screen where those home and back buttons used to be, making the new One a lot taller than its predecessor. The 5-inch screen is also larger than last year’s 4.7-inch panel, and includes on-screen buttons for home, back and recent apps. On the new One, a single piece of brushed aluminum wraps around the back and sides of the phone, so instead of seeing nothing but glass over the display, you get a metallic lip surrounding the entire phone.

Those perks, and others that I’ll explain later, make up for the lack of extra “wow” factor in the hardware.Īesthetically, I still prefer the design of the original HTC One, a gorgeous phone with slabs of silvery metal sandwiching a layer of white trim. And if you crack your screen in the first six months of ownership, HTC will repair it for free. Instead, the new HTC One’s most important features are the promises the company has made to its users: HTC says it will keep the phone up to date with the latest version of Android for two years after launch, which is more than what even Google guarantees for its Nexus phones.

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