HTC One with Nexus Experience Announced
by Brian Klug on May 30, 2013 12:30 PM ESTAt Google I/O 2013, the search giant announced the Samsung Galaxy S4 with Nexus Experience, and almost immediately rumors began circulating about a potential HTC One with the same Nexus Experience moniker.
Today, Google has announced the HTC One with Nexus Experience. The hardware is the same as the HTC One (AT&T variant) we've seen before with the same set of banding, which is unsurprising given the HTC One Developer Unlocked Edition is the AT&T variant. I had hoped for this being the T-Mobile variant which includes AWS WCDMA and none of the arbitrary AT&T RAT locks, but it's still good for T-Mobile and AT&T LTE in the USA. This is the same great HTC One hardware but this time with a pure AOSP (Android Open Source Project) build, skin, and thus pure Nexus experience. There still are some customizations like Beats, for example, but they're not at the expense of the rest of the software platform.
HTC has pegged the One with Nexus Experience for release on June 26th on Google Play for $599 with 32 GB of onboard storage. Updates are of course provided by Google directly.
Update: There's a bit more information now about what features the HTC One with Nexus Experience will support compared to the Sense 5 version. First, Beats Audio is included and is always on, with no UI or notification to disable it. Camera again only comes with UI and UX provided by the stock camera application and implements those features. When it comes to the IR Tx/Rx system there's no common Android API for it, but I've been told this should work with third party applications. None of this should come as too big of a surprise, that's what the tradeoff is for a completely stock Android device.
Source: HTC Blog
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madwolfa - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Just get the DSLR...JDG1980 - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I've tried DSLRs and their depth of field is way too narrow. You take a picture of a game cartridge, for example, and half the label will be out of focus. I'd prefer a point-and-shoot that can take RAW photos, and since one of this smartphone's selling points is its quality camera, why shouldn't it support that?Death666Angel - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
I read a while back that several Canon point-and-shoots could be upgraded/hacked to take RAW photos.ioannisg - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Just use a smaller aperture (higher F number) at your DSLR settings.superflex - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
A photography class would be good for you. As others have pointed out, reducing the aperture and increasing the exposure time increases the depth of field. If you cant take a decent photo with a DSLR, you sure cant shoot RAW with a smartphone.gireeshjoshi - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
Sorry but I have a noob question: this means no Zoes, right?aryonoco - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Yes that's right. No Zoe, no Blinkfeed, no IR/TV functionality.This is just pure Nexus/AOSP experience. Seems like the only thing they've added is the Beats Audio APK, which is smart.
This is great for folks like us with a One. It means going forward, I can choose to stay on HTC's stock firmware, or I can head over to XDA and know that quality stable AOSP ROMs with all the required drivers etc are going to be available. Best of both words really.
superflex - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
The TV app and IR blaster are awesome. Using the program guide on the phone vs the one on my cable box is way more convenient, plus you can have the phone send a reminder about an upcoming program.Tetracycloide - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
It seems like the HTC One and the S4 implement a number of their core selling points in software. Software the nexus experience won't have. It seems like the question now is which phone looses the most when you strip out all the features that are implemented in software?superflex - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
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