HTC One Mini 2 Review: The One M8 Miniaturised
We get to grips with HTC's latest, a shrunken HTC One M8 called the HTC One Mini 2
Rating:
Typical Price:
£360.00
Latest Prices:
Pros:
Beautiful and premium feel design, Compact form factor, Great display and audio, Good battery life, Slick software and performance, Decent camera
Cons:
Delicate bodywork, Expensive
Verdict:
A rather well-rounded smartphone offering wrapped in a luxurious outer shell and with excellent multimedia capabilities. The main drawback is the relative fragility and expense for what it is compared to similar devices.
More Info:
HTC has shrunk the One M8. Does it benefit from being smaller and more compact, but with a slightly reduced spec? We take a look.
Design & Display
I think we can all agree that it’s good to have choices, which is why it’s great that phone manufacturers have latched onto the idea of different strokes for different folks. Some people want gargantuan touch displays while others are happier with something that’ll fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.
The HTC One Mini 2 falls into this latter category with a smaller 4.5-inch Super LCD2 screen. It’s nice and sharp thanks to the 720p HD resolution, which really is as high as you need it to be for a screen this size. Colour is rich, and the brightness levels are good too. Also the visibility doesn’t suffer at wider viewing angles, meaning that the unnervingly close person breathing down your neck while on a packed Tube gets a good look at your Flappy Bird fails.
The SLCD2 technology is a wee bit older than HTC’s current favourite aboard its flagship, SLCD3, and while both do lose out a bit in direct sunlight the SLCD2 overall they don’t fare too badly.
Design wise this will be familiar territory to anyone who has seen the HTC One M8; it is more or less exactly the same, just smaller. The only deviations being a polycarbonate edging around the outside of the display and the lack of a second "depth" sensor above the camera lens on the back.
It’s got the same aluminium bodywork, the same “cap” design at each end of the handset, the same punched front-facing stereo speaker grilles, and the same sleek, curvy shape. So, lots of sameness then. In some ways that’s not really a bad thing as the overall design is both better looking and nicer to handle than the first HTC One and its own diminutive clone.
Now, HTC is onto something here with all the metal, I’m not sure what it is exactly, but there’s a part of my squishy, primitive, apparently Magpie-infused brain which associates metal, particularly the brushed variety, with high-end luxury niceness, and it’s as effective in consumer electronics as anywhere else. This isn’t new either, I remember buying a Sony MiniDisc player way back when such a thing was an up-and-coming, totally not about-to-become-redundant technology, and grabbing one seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do. It too was all shiny-shiny metal. There’s some kind of reassurance that if it’s made of metal, it must be dead good. It is oddly, indescribably satisfying.
But in some ways this is kind of a bad thing. The thing is aluminium isn’t the only material that can achieve this “ooh it’s all expensive and lovely” effect and, unlike other materials that do achieve the same thing, it is rather delicate.
During an HTC One M8 preview briefing I was fortunate enough to attend, the company reps did seem to answer a lot of questions relating to its design and features with much the same line, which roughly went, “we didn’t want to compromise the beautiful aluminium bodywork.” Hence no waterproofing, in case you were wondering, as that would mean adding flaps, and flaps, apparently, are not sexy. Just ask this guy...
And that’s fine HTC, really it is, but nothing will compromise the living crap out of the beautiful aluminium bodywork like a pocketful of loose change and house keys. It might not happen overnight, but we’ve seen it before with Apple’s iPhones and the HTC One – sooner or later they get pretty beat up with use, while plastics remain resilient. After a week of use scratches are already visible on the back panel. It does feel like any sense of practicality based around actual real life has gone out the window in favour of the glitz and glamour.
“But you can just stick it in a case to protect it you moron,” I hear you inevitably cry. Yes, that’s true, it’s one argument, but I happen to think phone design should stand on its own both in form and function without the need for a case. Otherwise, what’s the point in phone design? Sod it, just give me a small cardboard box with a screen embedded into it and i’ll stick it in an Otterbox case, it’ll be fine. While we’re at it I’ll move into a soulless beige-painted house with no furniture, watch mind-numbing reality TV, and drive a boringly amorphous car...oh, wait.
This is a shame, and frankly rather unnecessary, because it is possible to have your cake and eat it too in this regard. It’s particularly possible for HTC in fact, as it’s happened before. The company produced some of the best smartphone design I’ve ever seen using some fantastic polycarbonates back when it created the HTC One X. It looked and felt premium and was much more durable – win-win.
Quite why HTC has since firmly planted itself on this metal-only trajectory I can only guess, but it definitely has downsides and really seems a bit like something of a company mid-life crisis. The HTC One and its offshoots are effectively HTC’s post-divorce convertible sports car – a loud and flashy smokescreen for the hollow void of all its unachieved ambition and shattered dreams. Fortunately there’s already talk of HTC moving on from metal with the next model.
I can’t be too critical of HTC for this though, it is kind of how the industry works, it chose to use metal and this meant a whole product line was planned out with the wheels set relentlessly and irreversibly in motion.
User Experience & Performance
What about the experience of actually using the phone? Well again it’s rather a lot like the full-size HTC One M8 as it also packs Android 4.4 KitKat with HTC’s Sense 6 user interface layered on top. As I mentioned in the One M8 review, the Sense UI is slick, cohesive, and really rather excellent. Whoever came up with the design of all the bits that move, fade, slide and pop-up deserves a freaking medal – the UI in action just brings a stupid satisfied grin to my face. It’s simply enjoyable to use and looks good at the same time. Features wise there’s nothing here particularly significant over regular Android, apart from the easily ignored Blinkfeed, it’s simply a different style on the same theme.
Operating performance is good, surprisingly so, despite being further down in HTC’s pecking order it feels just as buttery smooth as the HTC One M8, even under intensive multitasking workloads or when using graphically demanding games such as Asphalt 8. Which really makes you question why you need to pay hundreds of pounds more for a Snapdragon 800 (2.3GHz, 2GB RAM) in the flagship, when a Snapdragon 400 (1.2GHz, 1GB RAM) will apparently do the job very nicely. Hurray for optimisation. Boo for number-based hype.
Hardware
I also heartily approve that HTC has included the same amount of onboard storage and microSDcard support as the full-size flagship – 16GB and up to 128GB respectively. Still, for some users 16GB might be too little and I can understand there being a bit of annoyance from some corners at the lack of at least a 32GB option. Personally, I’ve never filled a 16GB phone, but then I typically install only a handful of specific apps, and don’t take masses of photos, or store loads of music or films on the device – but for these multimedia roles the microSD should really be adequate, it’s the apps and games scenario you might need to worry about.
As long as HTC continues to be the only phone manufacturer to fit its handsets with high quality front-facing speakers I’ll continue to look on the company rather fondly. It is, frankly, baffling why no other phone maker has cottoned on to this being a good idea yet. It’s as if HTC is one of the first lifeforms to start walking after emerging from the primordial ooze; “Hey guys, you should sprout some of these leg things, they’re well good,” it might say. “Nah, we’re fine with crawling around in the dirt, thanks.” Yes, HTC’s BoomSound speakers are back, complete with their built-in amplifier. This remains, quite simply, the best built-in audio setup in the mobile space with exceptional audio quality, range and volume, making multimedia consumption a rare treat.
Battery
The HTC One Mini 2’s battery is a 2,110mAh cell, but with a more modest processor and display setup this all works in its favour. Our standard video test running a 2.45 hour film on maximum brightness, with Wi-Fi and mobile data switched on, left the phone with 61% battery life left from a full 100% charge. Not too shabby at all, and it should mean you can expect to get at least five and a half hours of continual video playback.
In general use, I frequently found that not only would the handset last me a full day, but would also survive overnight and into the next morning. Admittedly my typical phone usage is not exactly hardcore and I imagine those who spend large chunks of their day gaming, social networking and instant messaging might bleed the thing dry with more speed and ease than Dracula at a Twilight convention, but still, them’s the breaks. It does have a battery saver mode which seems quite effective if you think you need to keep things in check.
Camera
These days the camera is always a bit of a beard-stroking element of HTC’s handsets, what with the company’s peculiar experimentation with “Ultrapixels” and depth sensors. Thankfully with the HTC One Mini 2 it seems to have got over that phase and is offering a far more conventional set of imaging gear. On the back there’s a 13-megapixel BSI sensor with a balanced f/2.2 aperture, 1080p video and LED flash.
How’s the image quality then? Pretty good actually, there’s plenty of detail even when you zoom in, and the dynamic range and contrast are robust. Colour reproduction also appears to be very natural.
Meanwhile, on the front HTC has brought along the same 5-megapixel setup we saw on the HTC One M8, and guess what, it’s designed with (*bleargh*) “selfies” in mind. I don’t know about you, but this trend of smartphone makers actively promoting this trend of taking loads of pictures of your own face is somewhat troubling to me.
Not your face, obviously, I don’t know what your face looks like, it might be a very nice face. Anyway, I can’t say I’m exactly in favour of anything which will introduce yet more of this questionably motivated self-portraiture into my social networking feed. But, if you do insist on contributing to the downfall of society by taking selfies at funerals (yes that’s a real thing), making duckfaces, or any of that other guff, then I guess this is the phone to do it on as people will be able to see your gurning mug much more clearly.
The UI is also worth mentioning as it's really clean, simple, and straightforward, which is exactly how camera interfaces should be.
Conclusion
After all this you simply have to boil it all down to whether the handset is nice/fun to use or not. And the answer is yes, it’s a pleasant experience. Android KitKat is nice, Sense 6 is nice, and the performance is really rather good. Battery life and camera performance is also decent, the audio is excellent, and the display is certainly satisfying.
I guess it really depends on your priorities though. You can get a similar experience and performance level from the Motorola Moto G for less than half the price, admittedly wrapped in a somewhat unsightly plastic shell.
What do you gain for effectively doubling up on your investment? Some very specific stuff, and that stuff will be worth it to some users and not so much to others; the premium bodywork, the fantastic audio and the superior camera, oh and as a minor point: HTC’s take on Android.
In its own right the HTC One Mini 2 is a neat little handset well worthy of recommendation, it hits a lot of key areas with high marks, but you’ll have to assess for yourself whether it’s worth the high-end price, considering the equally capable and cheaper alternatives.
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