HTC One M8 UK SIM-Free Smartphone - Glacial Silver

Excellent phone! HTC has worked for me and several friends for years - and the M8 so far has been great for me. The price was good value through Amazon, and I've calculated it will work out as saving me money, purchasing a phone myself and going SIM only with a network rather than going onto another contract for 24months!! Especially as I'm hoping this phone lasts me a good few years if I look after it properly, with no need to upgrade after 2. I love the colour - as I was after something a bit different from the normal greys and silvers. The size isn't too big either - I had the M7 previously, which is slightly smaller but not much. And as always Android is so much easier to use and get on with than a certain fashionable brand which teenagers flock to. The HTC has a great camera and often takes better photos than my little digital camera, lots of storage, great screen organisation, and battery life is really good - On a normal day I often only use around 50% and even using my phone as a Sat Nav without charging it in the car I still have battery life left at the end of the day!! I imagine this will wane as the phone ages, but for now it's great. The HTC also has the best speakers of any phone on the market, no matter what model you have, and on the M* there's no exception. Fantastic sound from this phone! As with all phone changes there are some differences to get used to - but these are minimal here and easy to get used to - such as the home and back buttons no longer being physical buttons but part of the touch screen, and the power button on the top of the phone being on the opposite side to what I was used to! I had been toying with getting the more up to date M9 but after lots of comparison reading I decided on the M8, and am glad I did. I think for the hike in price for an upgrade to the M9 it's not worth it. The cost was a big factor for me - esp after finding that after 2.5 yrs the M7 had lost nearly all its value (originally £600 brand new down to £25!!!), so don't weant to invest such a huge amount when it's not going to be worth much in a couple years. And from what I've read it seems that the M9 doesn't have much of an edge over the M8 for me to warrant paying out for it. This phone is great, and in my opinion should be outselling the Samsungs and Apples out there!

The phone arrived way earlier than expected. Was absolutely over the moon. It was packed so well I could've dropped it from a roof and it'd be fine. The phone was described as grade B, but in all honestly I'd call it a grade a. It's immaculate. However, the major sting in the tail was that it was listed as unlocked but came locked to Vodafone. So I had to pay to get it unlocked. It's a real shame as these guys had awesome reviews and very happy previous customers. Furthermore, I've replied to all of thier courtesy emails and they've ignored them all.

My HTC One M8 has just failed completely so whilst I look for what my next phone will be, this is my final verdict on this. When I first purchased this phone it was £485, this was in June 2014, so it has lasted me almost exactly 4 years before it gave up completely though I think the really hot weather we have been having finally finished it off. ----------------- Good Points ----------------- - Large Screen, amazing speakers and headphone hack, makes it a great phone to have with you on long journeys as you can use it to watch movies and listen to music - Headphone jack, though I have said this already, with new models getting rid of the headphone jack, I think it's important to mention this one hasn't done that - Great camera, it has dual camera which I never made use of but the picture quality was amazing - Great user interface, I had my main pane where I select what apps I wanted set up really easily and it would easy to turn off any notifications I didn't want to see - Notifications were easy to see, e.g. if someone sent a message on a particular application or someone posted a new video, it was very good at notifying you of the news --------------- Bad Points --------------- - Large screen, this is a good point and a bad point, being so big combined with it's slim design means it feel a bit over the top, the phone could easily fall out of your pocket if you have other things at the bottom of it - Poor battery life, towards the end my phone started cutting out at 20%, the battery would go down so quickly especially if you watched any videos, the battery life was never great to begin with - Poor phone reception, people calling me couldn't always get through, I had another phone to compare it to so I know it's not the greatest in this area - Confusing contact list, when adding people to my contact list, I didn't find this so user friendly - Slim design, it's great that it is so light and thin but it's so thin you can easily drop it which meant I always used a case, in turn this meant I never felt motivated to test out the dual camera as the second camera was always covered - Difficult to repair, I took this to a repair shop and they wouldn't repair it and if you watch a video of someone replacing the battery, you'll see what I mean, it's like mission impossible, I know people have successfully replaced their battery however, in my case the phone is completely dead so I think it's destined for the scrap heap - Screen Time Out function kept resetting, meaning my phone would go into sleep mode sooner than I would like and when I changed the settings, one day it would randomly reset and I would have to set it again. - Unwanted notifications, though I could turn this off easily, there were way too many and HTC kept asking if I wanted to share my data and every time I let it know and it wouldn't be long before it asked again, I found this bit a little intrusive. - Small Internal Storage, the amount of updates that come through, I barely had anything installed on my phone so expect to run out of space, though you can purchase an external memory card to compensate for this. ---------- Overall ---------- Though I gave this lots of bad points, I was happy with the experience this phone gave me and definitely helped me decide what type of phone I want to buy next. It was a series of little things that let this phone down but the things it did well at, it did them very well. The fact that this phone is a lot cheaper now, if you want a good experience without paying a mountain of cash and you are okay with the bad battery life then you will like this phone. It's an inspirational model and worth a look.

Having bought a M7 in October 2013, (after reading a many reviews) and really loving it, I seriously doubted the M8 could be much of an improvement. How wrong I was! Took me a couple of months but I eventually took the plunge & invested in an M8 - boy, am I glad I did. Whilst the screen resolution is the same on the old & new models, the larger (5") M8 screen doesn't appear to have any clarity loss against the 4.7" M7 screen. Strangely, despite looking a fair bit bigger, the M8 feels as good as, if not better than, the M7. The ability to add (up to) 128Gb memory with a microSD card is a real bonus. With the M7 I used a USB flash drive connected via a micro USB cable. The beauty of the external memory on board means you can save considerable space by transferring a lot of apps on to it. The biggest improvement on the M8 is the battery charge life. The M7 would last 12 hours if you are lucky, but the M8 is usually good for at least 36 hours and I have seen times approaching 48 hours. I now leave my portable battery charger at home when I go out. Tablet wise, I have a Nexus 7 which I carried around when I was using the M7 but it too has been relegated to my bedside table when I go out since getting the M8. I also had a Nexus 5 which I sold in March which was a nice phone for the price but it lacked the quality feel & performance of the M7 and isn't in the same league as the M8. Software wise, the M8 has just enough & fortunately doesn't suffer from being overloaded with "bloatware apps" that take up space and can't be deleted and also slow down the phone. (My opinion of a popular manufacturer of cellphones whose name begins with 'S' & isn't Sony!) Be warned that the M8 uses a nanoSIM which is smaller than the currently popular microSIM. I simply went down to the high street shop of my service provider & they transferred my existing cell number onto the new nanoSIM while I waited & at no charge. The main beef that the critics point out on the M8 is the camera. I have used the camera several times & found it quite suitable for my needs. The photos have been reasonable & the quality acceptable. HTC's Zoë is a pleasure to use and gives the user the pick of a group of photos to choose the best shot. I doubt any serious photographer would ever sell their camera & replace it with a cellphone! Overall, HTC seem to have got it just right with the M8 and there isn't anything I could really fault. As I stated in the subject title: 1 word describes the HTC One M8 - SUPERB!

I was extremely excited about the release of this handset. Marking off the new year of Android handsets, the HTC One M8 was supposed to fix a few faults while sitting pretty. Unfortunately, new design language and odd proportions combined with stripped down hardware has left me with the frustrating feeling that although HTC have done well, this phone could have been so much more than it is. Size It seems to be a pervasive tradition in the Android smart phone industry to make each iteration of a flagship larger than its predecessors. The New HTC One M8 steps up its screen size from 4.7" to 5", warranting a larger chassis. HTC have usually chosen screen sizes slightly smaller than the ones Samsung choose and it remains the case for its 2014 flagship. However, Samsung had the S4 last year with a 5 inch screen and it was imperceptibly different in size to the HTC One X (4.7") and Galaxy S3 (4.8"). It is therefore reasonable to expect that when HTC moves from 4.7" to 5", the phone's footprint would remain similar but unfortunately this is not to be. But does this matter? To reach the notification bar on the HTC One M8 you must reach further from the bottom of the phone that on the LG G2 which has a larger 5.2" screen. In fact, you may well need a second hand to reach some apps and widgets only halfway up the screen. We can normally expect some sort of trade off between screen size and ergonomics, but it's a shame to see a manufacturer produce a handset both with a smaller screen and with a less ergonomic front footprint than competitors such as Samsung and LG. Phones without removable batteries should also be smaller but the HTC One stands a full centimetre taller than the 5" S4, a 12 month old phone with the same size battery. And WHY is that huge HTC logo and its big black bezel on the front without any useful purpose, not even a notification light or capacitive button for the notification draw behind the logo and it's certainly not a cleverly concealed fingerprint scanner. Battery Again, HTC has opted to improve and yet underwhelm relative to it's peers. Last year the S4 was released with 2600Mah, 6 months later the LG G2 was released with 3000Mah. The Xperia Z1 then matched LG. A further six months has subsided and with such a large footprint from a 5 inch handset, I was expecting another 400Mah increase to keep the competition on their toes. Perhaps they went with a 5 inch display instead of a 5.2" display like LG and Sony so that it could make room internally for a bigger battery? 3400Mah would have gone down very well indeed. Alas, HTC have merely matched last years Samsung device, with a 2600Mah battery. Getting on the train after a long days work and seeing 10% battery remaining on the HTC (260/2600mah) will make you wish you had the extra 600mah the Z2 would have provided -> 33% equivalent capacity remaining (860/2600mah). It's by no means a trivial difference for all-day and power users. Camera 1.)So HTC decided to go with a smaller megapixel count and therefore have larger pixels on it's sensor? It's giving the consumer what they really want and it's not just a money saving gimmick? If they wanted to have larger pixels for better low light, why did they not use a larger sensor? Sony's Xperia Z1 and Z2 use 1/2.3" sensors and HTC use 1/3" sensors. It doesn't sound like much but actually the surface area of the Sony sensor is nearly DOUBLE that of HTC's, in fact it's 91.7% larger. And (you guessed it), using a nearly-double the surface area sensor means you can have nearly-double the number of pixels and have exactly the same pixel size. HTC could, at the expense of producing a more expensive handset, have introduced an 8MP (or nearly-8MP) ultrapixel camera this year with technology that is already in existence in Sony phones. Sony even sells these sensors for use by other mobile device makers so it was a feasible option that HTC chose not to take. 2.) But surely HTC have built on and refined the idea they started on last year, by working on what they already know they can optimize the camera and it's results? One of the best low light photographer's tools and a must-have for any one taking a video is optical image stabilization. It's a mechanical operation in which shaking hands and bumpy movements are counteracted by physically moving the internals so that the camera is essentially held still and blurry photo's are avoided. This allows you to have the camera shutter open for longer and more light is absorbed. To fit this technology in to a phone however is an extremely difficult feat. Samsung has not yet got O.I.S in it's flagship S series or Note series. Sony, the camera and optics expert, likewise forgoes this hardware even though it doesn't have its camera hardware behind the screen like most manufacturers do. It is only format-beating, revolutionary devices such as the Nokia Lumia 1020 that had this technology last year. Since then LG's critically acclaimed flagship the G2 managed to squeeze it in due to it's thicker than average body (and hence by association so did the Nexus 5) as well as a sprinkling of Nokia devices. HTC was among those proud few that perfected it in their HTC One M7 and released it in their flagship device, one of the areas that it truly leapfrogged it's competitors, technologically speaking. Roll forward a year to the HTC One M8 and I'm saddened yet unsuprised to say....they've removed it. Citing "compatibility issues" with the depth sensor, HTC made the decision to remove the stabilization technology that had inevitably contributed so much to the HTC One M7's low light performance. 3.) A back side illuminated sensor helps low light performance by reducing noise. HTC's rear camera does not have back side illumination. But HTC's front facing camera does..?? This is probably because at 5MP the pixels are so small they need all the help they can get to remove noise. Excluding it from the main camera seems a little too frugal. Screen Samsung is pulling ahead from last years S4 flagship with a 27% ([...]) more battery efficient screen. That's despite being bigger and bright. That's a HUGE year on year improvement. Undoubtedly it's down to the use of Sharp's IGZO (of which Samsung owns part of) or some LTPS tech in conjunction with the AMOLED displays. HTC have stuck with the same screen tech, no more efficient or bright, just 0.3" larger than last year. Hardware The S5 has a snapdragon 801 clocked at 2.5Ghz but sticks with 2GB of RAM. The Xperia Z2 has a snapdragon 801 clocked lower at 2.3Ghz yet combines this with 3GB of RAM. Sadly, HTC chose the lower RAM of 2GB and pair it with the lower clockspeed of 2.3Ghz, leading to the lowest hardware specifications of the leading flagships, on paper. They then cheated on the benchmarks ([...]) and admitted to benching it in a special "high performance mode". Other manufacturers have done this in the past but the practice had largely stopped. In a "real-life-mode" no-cheating Antutu benchmarking application, the HTC One M8 scored just 27,000 to the Z2's 32,500 and the S5's 35,000. It also scored below the LG G2 running on last years snapdragon 800 (score 29,000). Audiophiles The HTC One M7 had a custom dedicated headphone amplifier made by Beats Audio. This years model does not (HTC is no longer affiliated with Beats). Having said that, the HTC One M8 has by far the best audio output of any mobile device yet tested both with and without headphones. ([...]) Internal Memory Last year users had 32GB of app storage space, this year only 16GB of app storage space (Apps can't go on MicroSD card in KitKat). While a 32Gb model does exist this year as well realistically no carrier is going to sell that one, it will always sell the cheaper one with 16GB so around 95% of users will find themselves with less space to store apps than they would have with last years model. Life-Proofing It is IPX3. Unfortunately, both of it's chief competitors, the S5 and Z2 have IPX7 or higher. It is therefore the least resistant to dust and water of this years lead flagships. Side Bezels The side bezels on the HTC One M7 were huge. Progress has been made here but not as much progress as competitors. The bezel thickness still makes the design appear slightly more dated than if it had matched the likes of LG in this area. Finger Scanner Originally introduced with the HTC One Max, the smaller body of the M8 would have let it be easier and more convenient to operate. Unfortunately for "Aesthetic reasons", it was not included in the M8. Removable Battery Quite honestly I prefer a sealed battery. If your phone gets stolen and has a pin, there is no way to turn it off without breaking open the device and damaging it. The would-be thief must just wait for the battery to eventually run out, meanwhile it can be tracked via gps/signal/wifi. For a phone with a removable battery these can be turned off immediately despite security measures such as a pin or pass code by ripping out the battery. Build The handset, which I still maintain is far too large for a 5 inch screen, feels superb in the hand. The curved back sits perfectly in the hand and the high quality brushed metal looks and feels superb. A very pretty phone in real life and it looks better than on a computer screen so go try one out! OS & UI The new version of sense, sense 6.0 or "sixth sense", is marginally different from sense 5 or sense 5.5. If you were expecting a radical design overhaul with the new sense edition, prepare to be sorely disappointed. Charging Don't handle the device while it is charging. The speed at which the back of the handset heats up when you are warming it on one side with your hand and charging the battery on the other results in the handset getting extremely warm. This will cause the charging rate to slow right down to a crawl (barely faster than you can use the battery up if you're playing a game like angry birds). When isolated and in a cool environment it charges as expected. No where near as fast as the LG G2 and the latest Oppo Find 7 (0 to 75% battery charge in 30 minutes) will embarrass it. Does not do 4K - While everything else coming out does. It would need at least a 8.3MP camera (4K resolution = 3840 x 2160 = 8.29 million pixels.). 4K video can be useful for digitally zooming in and continuing to retain a Full HD (1920 x 1080) picture after 2-3x digital zoom. It begs the question why it even has the snapdragon 801 over the snapdragon 800. The only other new hardware benefit was the option to use faster bandwidth memory which HTC opted not to use. The other options provided were to clock it at a new high of 2.5Ghz, which HTC did not do. The older snapdragon 800 would have been cheaper and the benchmarks show it's just as capable at the same clock speed. Overall, the new HTC One M8 is a bit of a mixed bag. I feel as though everywhere it has improved, it's competitors have improved faster such as screen power efficiency, battery capacity and camera technology. Every unique aspect has hardly changed or been watered down. (Ultrapixel camera still only 4MP, removed OIS, went with on screen keys but kept an even bigger bezel below the screen). The speakers are no better, just slightly louder at the maximum end which is useless for personal media consumption. And with Sony making the switch to stereo front facing speakers, this becomes less of a unique selling point for HTC, reducing its appeal. Conversely, it is the best feeling Android handset with the best audio performance to date and has a superb looking display. Personally, I cannot get over the shortfalls. There are just two many caveats and compromises. The HTC One M8 both captures and breaks my heart but ultimately it fails to sway my mind. Back to the LG G2 and onward to the Xperia Z2 from release date. EDIT: After additional use of the handset I have to say the implementations of some of the OS and other apps is superb, but some have annoyances: The HTC Music App is slick and gorgeous but the settings do not allow you to use an EQ and you cannot switch gapless playback on. The tap to wake function is great because you don't have to use the ridiculously placed power button, but there's no tap to lock (or at least mine just won't do it) meaning the power button has to be used if you want to slip the phone in to your pocket, when you're most likely not to want to go searching for the power key. HTC Blinkfeed although unchanged from last year in any significant way has a smoother UI and more sources as well as a less aggressive transition from the home screen. Last years Blinkfeed was a jarring experience, a bit like switching between the desktop screen and the metro screen on windows 8, they're completely different. Moving some of the HTC apps to the play store has confused some people in to thinking that the apps might start coming to other handsets. HTC have put them in the play store so that they can update the camera software for example, without having to push the update out via the operators, which usually takes ages. This is a great decision and I hope more manufacturers start modularising their additions to Android so that updates of both the OS and the extras is much quicker. I rotated around a few handsets taking pictures with one in my left and the HTC One M8 in my right. It had a wider angle than any other handset, which I think is definitely better. I asked 6 or 7 people for their subjective opinions on 20ish identical shots from the HTC and on the LG G2, Samsung S4, Nexus 5 and Xperia Z1. On screen, the HTC was almost unilaterally preferred. However, opinions reversed once the pictures had been uploaded to a computer with the same individuals asked again. The front facing speakers are better than last years but the grill protecting them is now (low grade) plastic, dyed the colour of the metal to make it look as though they have metal speaker grills. HTC managed metal grills last year and it's a bit of a cheek to go on and on about how this one has more metal than ever before and then strip away the only metal that was on the front of the device before and replace is with plastic. I'm sure the plastic has allowed for a better loud speaker audio experience but making allowances on build in order to achieve better usability and practicality is supposed to be Samsung's domain. Overall from these additional experiences I would like to award an extra two stars for camera performance and UI and take one away for the plastic speaker grills on the front that ruin the metal aesthetic. Also because the "HTC" logo on the back is not etched in to the metal or placed on top of the metal but is actually a different material alongside the metal, so dirt often builds up between the Logo and the metal which is hard to clean. Oh and finally, the USB dock on the bottom isn't in the centre, which is annoying for docking if you have an Android dock and it also makes it more difficult to charge in the car while using it as a sat nav, the tight springy cord that connects to the 12V DC pulls unevenly on one side of the device and sometimes causes it to lose connection or ping out.

I write this after half a year of use. Great phone. If you are or were an Apple fan, you just have to accept, that as every android phone it needs basic attention as clearing the memory sometimes, turning it off once a week, reinstall it once a year, etc. I always try to keep my phone fresh and clear, and so it never let me down, did not freeze at all in the last 6 months. Runs everything on google store. A proper high end phone. I chose this over the One M9 because I also needed a good camera, and as I see it, the Ultra Pixel dual camera wins over the M9's 20 megapixels, especially in nasty light conditions. Also I think if you ever try the android interpretation of the HTC, the Samsung or Lg, or Sony, can't satisfy you any longer. I just love it since I had my first Desire C back in the day. Blink Feed is nice, although it needs care and patience to make it display the contents you are interested in. The motion launch features are great, but I actually use only one of them. The double tap. I just love that I don't have to find the buttons on the phone to turn on the display. It is very stylish that it wakes with a double tap. The camera has great features, it's like you have a basic photoshop in your device - but I don't really use those. I just need nice regular pictures. I also like that you can change the focus of the pictures even after the picture is taken, thanks to the dual camera. What I also like is the built-in face primer/makeup effect that you can set on a scale, to make your skin look as you want on the picture, when you use the selfie cam.

The phone succeeds on many levels but ultimately I switched back to an S5. It's a large phone and heavy. It feels heavier than an S5 which is to be expected as it's one solid chunk of metal. The metal finish is nice, although I felt the buttons were poorly integrated (feel a little wiggly). The sim and sd card sit under separate covers iPhone style. The sim card has to be cut down to micro mini ittsybitsy size which is not always straight forward even with a dedicated cutter. The metal is also a bit slippery. It's surprising how many times I've dropped it while grappling one handed with it in bed or at my desk at work. The screen is disappointing. It's no where near as bright or rich as the Samsung screen. Depending on whether you use any other shiny toys during the day you may or may not notice after a while. It was a constant disappointment to me though. The HTC take on Android is good. It scores better than the Samsung in this. HTC appear to have designers doing the design instead of lawyers and it works for the most part. One thing that fails miserably is the tap screen to wake feature. Tapping works occasionally, picking the phone up and accidentally touching the screen works 100pc, usually launching the camera app or dialing someone. The lock screen is bypassed by such actions seemingly. The biggest let down is the camera. It's only 4mp, but promises great low light performance. It's a promise it breaks. Worse, bright light performance is pretty horrendous too. If the scene is very bright, the camera won't function at all. If the scene is normally lit the auto focus feels slow and lazy. The less light the slower and more lazy it becomes. I've kept none of the photos I've taken in the few weeks I've had it. Sound quality is excellent through decent headphones. I was going to give it three stars, but proof reading what I've written, I think it's worth 2 now. For me the camera, touch to wake, screen and slippery surface cost it dear.

Beware I bought this phone in October 2015 from Amazon market place from a supplier called Mariner2007 who was based in Hong Kong, the phone worked good until February this year when it upgraded to Android 6 then it promptly died, when I got in touch with the supplier, I was emailed with a list of instructions to flash the phone and because I had the phone for over 3months the warranty was up (this was a brand new phone) I was quite shocked I tried to flash the phone but could not get it to work so I tried a independent phone engineer, who told me I should not have to flash the phone as its something best left to a engineer, he tried to flash it too but it would not work, he suspected a damaged board in the phone, I then contacted Amazon who were helpful up to a point when I put a claim in to there A to Z guarantee, it was turned down due to me not contacting the supplier by 30 days (this time was when the phone worked fine. All I then got from Amazon and there third party supplier was I should contact HTC directly, Don't take it for granted that your new electronic device comes with a 12 month guarantee, it may not, also mariner2007 as left Amazon market place. The long and short is now I am stuck with a phone I cannot use and a complete distrust in Amazon