Back To Android: Day One

I have to admit that I was really looking forward to my next week or so with the HTC One and seeing what Android has to offer in today’s smartphone world. This excitement is only counteracted by two things. The first is can the hardware of the One keep up with the excellent Nokia hardware that I currently carry and the second is, what if I like it more than my Windows Phone?

The first thing I did out of the box is fire up the camera. Now, I posted the two images that both were auto-uploaded to OneDrive via the excellent Apps for both Windows Phone and Android. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, Microsoft has made it very easy for me to take my OneDrive and OneNotes with me to my HTC One.

So, that said, my first impressions of the hardware… Brilliant! The device is huge, but very comfortable to hold. The ‘hugeness’ of the device is mostly due to the larger stereo speakers located on the front of the device. These make listening to music and watching movies a dream. That said, the first impressions of the One really were impressive to say the least. Below are two photos, one with the Lumia and one with the One.

Now that you’ve seen them both, Which one would you say is better? If you answered the second image, Then you just picked the HTC One camera over the Nokia Lumia 925. I know, I was shocked too, but there’s no doubt that the Ultrapixel concept works, it’s just a question how the rest of the OS will stack up.

After my short first day, there are quite a few aesthetics that I grew a custom to in Windows Phone 8.1 that aren’t in Android, or at least this Sense version of Android. I am really missing my great ‘weekly view’ calendar. I downloaded aCalendar to make up for it. I’m missing my darker backgrounds, which I can’t believe is not an option to change this late in to an OS. The other feature that just stinks is email handling. I had 8 email accounts on my Windows Phone. They all had their own Live Tile (3 were combined in a Linked Inbox) and had indicators of when I had messages. The HTC Sense inbox combines all the email into one ‘box’ with separate folders.

This was a shot I snagged last night without doing any editing to it. You can see the color range on the camera is quite good and the details are very clear. Overall the M7 camera does an exceptional job.

This shot was taken this morning with the M7 as well. I’ve taken quite a few shots over the lake and just love the detail and the color that the UltraPixel system delivers.

I think I will be enjoying the M7 for a bit, which means I will be a bit light on the App testing for the next few days. Just hang in there and we will see how well the M7 holds up against the ease and comfort of Windows Phone over the course of the next few days.