With the HTC One Mini, the Taiwanese manufacturer is aiming to capture a chunk of the smartphone audience which is keen on its slick, aluminium exterior designs seen on the HTC One but can’t or won’t pay the premium price tag to get it.
The Motorola Moto X also has an appealing exterior build but for very different reasons – customisation. The manufacturer is enabling buyers to choose from a range of back panel, front panel and trim colours to name but a few of the tweaks on offer.
But which is a better bet for the mid-range consumer?
HTC One Mini: Key specs and features
The main pull of the HTC One Mini is its bid to offer users an HTC One-like exterior on a more compact scale and with a slightly lower internal hardware spec to bring the price down. As a result, the design, fit and finish is just as impeccable as it is on the more expensive flagship, with a nicely contoured aluminium unibody in either silver or black and a pair of punched, front-facing stereo speaker grilles.
While the smaller 4.3-inch display isn’t as highly specced as the flagship HTC One's, it’s still an impressive setup with Super LCD2 technology with a 1280x720 pixel resolution at 342 pixels-per-inch (ppi). The picture quality is sharp, bright and has rich colours, so it ticks all the right boxes.
Onboard storage space is reasonably generous for a mid-range model with 16GB to play with, though there’s no microSD slot to expand with. The processor is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 dual-core chip with a 1.4GHz clockspeed, Adreno 305 graphics processing unit (GPU) and 1GB of RAM which nets you some zippy performance on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean loaded with HTC’s well optimised Sense 5 UI overlay.
Sense 5, at first glance, may appear to be quite a dramatic change from stock Android. A big part of this will be the first homescreen you see, a new addition called BlinkFeed, which is a tiled feed of news, social networking updates and photos. There’s an additional homescreen for app shortcuts and you can add more if you wish. HTC has opted for a re-designed font, which looks quite slick, as well as a new clock and its own set of shortcut icons.
HTC has kept exactly the same camera setup from the HTC One flagship which means a 4.3-megapixel back-illuminated sensor (BSI). But don’t let that relatively low megapixel rating fool you into thinking it’s a basic configuration, it uses larger Ultrapixels, optical image stabilisation (OIS) and a wide f/2.0 aperture to capture as much light as possible and to perform well in low-light conditions. The 1.6-megapixel front-facing secondary camera also features OIS.
Video capture is 1080p full HD and there’s autofocus, face and smile detection and an LED flash. Picture quality is excellent for a 4.3-megapixel sensor and well above average for a mid-range model. It’s very good in terms of dynamic range and colour reproduction, images usually come out with good quality but can be lacking in detail compared to some 8-megapixel setups. Low light performance is great.
Connectivity options are what you might expect – 4G LTE, HSPA+ 3G, Wi-Fi, DLNA, Bluetooth, microUSB, GPS and Micro-SIM.
Motorola Moto X: Key specs and features
The Motorola Moto X’s big party trick is its customisation options – when you buy the phone, you buy it direct from Motorola's site and you have a wide range of tweaks to choose from in terms of how it looks.
Motorola says there are roughly 2,000 different possible variants for the Moto X from a selection of colour and design choices for the rear panel, the front panle (display surround) and trim (around the camera lens and both the physical power key and volume rocker). You can also stick a personal ‘signature’ onto the rear panel, choose a custom wallpaper, custom power-on message, storage variants between 16GB and 32GB and a clear or translucent black hard case.
Colour options range from the bright magentas and cyans we’ve seen on many Nokia devices of late, to the usual black and white, but there are also some wildcards in there like navy blue, olive green, burgundy and lime green, to name but a few, and even at least one woodgrain effect for the back panel.
In terms of how the phone actually looks, regardless of colour choice, the overall shape is rather nice with a slightly curved back panel, rounded corners and a slight lip around the front fascia, although the vast majority of the frontage is the display, which is always a smart move in the looks department.
The display itself is a 4.7-inch AMOLED with a 1280x720 pixel resolution at 312ppi. This gives suitably bold contrast and rich colours, while sharpness is also pretty good.
Another appeal is the use of a more-or-less stock Android 4.2.2 build which is well-optimised to the onboard hardware. This includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro dual-core chip clocked at 1.7GHz with an Adreno 320 GPU and 2GB of RAM.
As well as offering the usual Android perks – smooth multitasking, responsive operation, reliable performance and 700,000 apps to choose from – the Moto X also has a few added bits of functionality.
A lot of this revolves around the Moto X’s ‘always on’ capabilities, the phone has a couple of extra dedicated cores on top of the Qualcomm chip which are directly linked to an array of sensors. These low power cores are always active, even when the phone is apparently in sleep mode, meaning the sensors are always ready to detect things like voice commands. This enables you to do plenty of interesting stuff via Google Now, such as setting reminders, taking notes, submitting search queries and controlling alarms without having to touch the phone.
It also means you can access the camera instantly by literally flicking your wrist – a quick twisting motion with the sleeping phone brings it online and into the camera mode straight away.
The camera is a 10-megapixel ‘Clear Pixel’ setup using a BSI sensor and LED flash. It captures video at 1080p full HD with autofocus, touch focus, panoramic capture, face detection and HDR mode. There’s also a front-facing 2-megapixel secondary for video calls.
Connectivity includes 4G LTE, HSPA+ 3G, microUSB, Wi-Fi (including Hotspot), DLNA, Bluetooth, NFC, nano-SIM and GPS, while the battery pack is a competitive 2,200mAh unit.
Direct spec comparison: Shootout
| Device | HTC One Mini | Motorola Moto X |
| Dimensions | 132x63.2x9.25mm, 122g | 129.3x65.3x10.4mm, 130g |
| Display | 4.3-inch HD 720p, 341ppi | 4.7-inch AMOLED,1280x720 pixels,312ppi |
| Camera | HTC UltraPixel, Smart Flash, 1080p video | 10-megapixel Clear Pixel,LED flash,1080p video |
| Storage | 16GB | 16GB/32GB |
| Processor, RAM, Graphics | 1.4GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 1GB RAM,Adreno 305 GPU | 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB RAM,Adreno 320 GPU |
| Operating System | Android 4.2.2 | iAndroid 4.2.2 |
| UI | HTC Sense 5 | N/A |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB, DLNA, Wi-Fi, 4G, GPS | Bluetooth,microUSB,Wi-Fi,Wi-Fi Hotspot,GPS,4G |
| Battery | 1,800mAh | 2,200mAh |
Points to consider: Practical use
Normally, HTC’s recent One branded models win hands-down on the subject of exterior design in most Know Your Mobile comparisons as there really is little else on the market currently quite like these aluminium unibodied devices.
However, aluminium certainly isn’t the be-all-and-end-all, as nice as the finish is in the hand and as well-made as the HTC One Mini feels in terms of the solidity and lack of flex, aluminium is simply not a very durable build material when it comes to knocks and scratches.
Keeping the HTC One Mini in your pocket, even without keys or coins to rub up against it, will quickly see scuffs appear on its finish. Add more objects to the mix and things become even worse. Meanwhile, although most phones suffer badly if dropped on the display, many rival models survive reasonably well if most any part of the chassis hits the ground first. The HTC One Mini, unfortunately, can’t make the same claim with visible denting of the soft metal and in some tests I’ve seen chunks of the front panel have even pinged off. Say goodbye to those handsome speaker grilles.
I could forgive the drop durability to an extent but the way in which the HTC One Mini scratches when in your pocket is pretty tough to accept as it ultimately removes much of what is attractive about the handset in the first place – it’s only gorgeous when it’s pristine.
The Moto X is made from more durable plastic, but rather than go down the Samsung tacky/shiny route it at least has a nice feel to it and although the visual design is largely quite different from the HTC One Mini it’s just as nice in its own way.
Then of course, you factor in the customisation options. For some, this will be a tremendous pull as we do appear to be living as much as ever in the age of individualism – want a red and yellow Moto X to match the custom paintjob on your car? A black and white two-tone scheme to go with your favourite pair of trainers? Maybe you like the earthiness of a wood-effect back panel? Knock yourself out.
That said, I’m sure there are still plenty who will not care as they’ll opt for black or white anyway. Fortunately, both perspectives are catered for. Everyone wins.
The interplay between internal hardware and the Android software is a bit of an interesting subject. On the one hand, HTC has a more up-to-date Qualcomm Krait processor inside the One Mini, but it’s clocked at a slower speed, carries half the RAM and has a lower-end GPU stuffed into it. The chip is also sucking power out of a smaller 1,800mAh battery pack along with a relatively demanding Super LCD2 display panel and as a result the battery life on the HTC One Mini is not the best. The chip has been well-optimised with Android 4.2 and the HTC Sense 5 UI so things do perform admirably.
But, it’s difficult to suggest it performs better than Motorola’s setup, which is equally well-tailored. It’s an older chip, but clocked faster at 1.7GHz with 2GB of RAM (a very sensible quantity, I think) and an Adreno 320 GPU. The battery is much bigger at 2,200mAh and as AMOLED displays tend to be a bit more power-friendly anyway there’s plenty of scope for a much longer battery life, though whether it meets Motorola’s claimed ’24 hours’ on standby remains in question.
While both handsets lack microSD the Moto X at least has an option for a higher 32GB internal capacity. Both devices have excellent display quality, though the HTC One’s will likely prove a little sharper and brighter for some users.
Camera tech is a little more difficult to judge. The HTC One Mini’s offering is excellent but not the best, while Motorola’s 10-megapixel Clear Pixel setup is yet to be truly tested. Just because it’s 10-megapixels doesn’t mean it’s the bees knees but it’ll probably prove better than average for mid-range.
What’s actually very compelling about the Moto X is those value-added features Motorola has included. It’s too early to say whether they’re that good, not having tested them thoroughly yet, but on the face of things they actually sound appealing and something I might use, where so many similar ‘value-added features’ on rival handsets are so often yawn-inducing.
Conclusion
At the end of all this, as much as I love HTC’s penchant for slick design, I have to side with the Moto X.
It still looks and feels great, appears more durable and has a wealth of customisation options you won’t find anywhere else. I still maintain it would’ve been nice to see interchangeable back covers/bezels, but I digress. Performance on both handsets is likely to be in a similar ballpark at the end of all the optimisation and tweaking which has gone in from both sides, but it seems, given how poorly the HTC One Mini stands up to battery drain, that the Motorola Moto X offering better battery life is a foregone conclusion.
Both devices do well in the camera stakes and I imagine most users will be equally happy with either setup at least as far as holiday snaps and Facebook sharing is concerned.
As well as offering customisation, durability and longevity, the Moto X’s unique sensor and always on capabilities also sweeten the deal and I can actually see these changing the way people interact with their handset. Having virtually stock Android is also a nice touch.
I should finish by adding a caveat: Motorola hasn't announced availablilty of the Moto X for outside the US and it's been suggested it will remain a US-only device, however, Motorola has also said that other devices will be launched outside of the US soon, suggesting we may see something very similar in the UK in the coming months. If a UK-facing device is anything even remotely close to the Moto X in terms of features and design (and let's face it, that's very likely) then many of the conclusions here are going to be applicable.
by pbriden via Featured Articles
Reviewed by Ossama Hashim
on
August 12, 2013
Rating:
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