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As Close As It Gets? (HTC One M8 vs. iPhone 6)
- Thread starter nviz22
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In what respect exactly? The M8 has a great design and build quality, so if you are talking about Android phones with great quality, this is the one to get.
I have owned 13 different flagship Android phones the past 4 + years, and before that just the Original iPhone and iPhone 3G.
IMO, the HTC One M8 is easily my favorite smartphone to date, and I converted it to 'GPE' which is the stock Nexus Android OS.
The M8 is a beautifully crafted device, on par with the iPhone as far as high quality and cool design goes. Speed wise, the M8 is a beast, and super fast with zero lag, the Sense 6 OS is smooth as water, just so slick. Battery life is AMAZING, this M8 lasts as long as my old Note 2 which was a battery champ. The screen is gorgeous.
I would see ZERO why you'd want an iPhone 6 over the M8 ? The iPhone 6 is just more of the same walled garden, outdated and offering nothing new.
But that choice is yours
IMO, the HTC One M8 is easily my favorite smartphone to date, and I converted it to 'GPE' which is the stock Nexus Android OS.
The M8 is a beautifully crafted device, on par with the iPhone as far as high quality and cool design goes. Speed wise, the M8 is a beast, and super fast with zero lag, the Sense 6 OS is smooth as water, just so slick. Battery life is AMAZING, this M8 lasts as long as my old Note 2 which was a battery champ. The screen is gorgeous.
I would see ZERO why you'd want an iPhone 6 over the M8 ? The iPhone 6 is just more of the same walled garden, outdated and offering nothing new.
But that choice is yours
I have owned 13 different flagship Android phones the past 4 + years, and before that just the Original iPhone and iPhone 3G.
IMO, the HTC One M8 is easily my favorite smartphone to date, and I converted it to 'GPE' which is the stock Nexus Android OS.
The M8 is a beautifully crafted device, on par with the iPhone as far as high quality and cool design goes. Speed wise, the M8 is a beast, and super fast with zero lag, the Sense 6 OS is smooth as water, just so slick. Battery life is AMAZING, this M8 lasts as long as my old Note 2 which was a battery champ. The screen is gorgeous.
I would see ZERO why you'd want an iPhone 6 over the M8 ? The iPhone 6 is just more of the same walled garden, outdated and offering nothing new.
But that choice is yours
I understand what you are saying and I mostly agree that the M8 is a great phone. I certainly prefer it to the iPhone 5S but I am not sure I prefer it over the iPhone 6.
Where I think the M8 has an advantage:
- It is the best designed phone. Better than the iPhone.
- Great speakers do make a difference
- Android has some nice features I miss on iOS
- Battery life is very good.
- Blinkfeed is great
What I don't like about the M8:
- iCloud integration is not as good as on iPhone (understandably but this is an issue for me since I am using iCloud for Mail, calendar and contacts - I could change to Exchange though, thus problem solved)
- The camera. Why HTC? Why can't you make a great camera like on the iPhone?
- The color accuracy of the display. Colors appear warm, sometimes warmer than real life and that bothers me. The iPhone has a much better display.
I would love to have an M8 with the iPhone camera. That would be the perfect phone for me.
I would see ZERO why you'd want an iPhone 6 over the M8 ? The iPhone 6 is just more of the same walled garden, outdated and offering nothing new.
But that choice is yours
The cameras on the M7 & M8 totally suck when compared to most Android phones and the iPhone.
I have owned 13 different flagship Android phones the past 4 + years, and before that just the Original iPhone and iPhone 3G.
IMO, the HTC One M8 is easily my favorite smartphone to date, and I converted it to 'GPE' which is the stock Nexus Android OS.
The M8 is a beautifully crafted device, on par with the iPhone as far as high quality and cool design goes. Speed wise, the M8 is a beast, and super fast with zero lag, the Sense 6 OS is smooth as water, just so slick. Battery life is AMAZING, this M8 lasts as long as my old Note 2 which was a battery champ. The screen is gorgeous.
I would see ZERO why you'd want an iPhone 6 over the M8 ? The iPhone 6 is just more of the same walled garden, outdated and offering nothing new.
But that choice is yours
The Camera?
It's a cellphone. I take the phone out of my pocket, snap a pic, and maybe text that or share on Facebook, which get compressed anyways, and all good
If I wanted professional National Geographic pictures, I'd bring my stand alone Canon camera. But for a cellphone, it is more than good.
I never understood people looking for #1 best camera on their cellphone ? Because cameras in general have gotten pretty good on phones the last few years, To me #1 is battery life, or maybe best display on the phone, or smoothness of the OS, or processor type, etc... But camera type on a cell phone would be like 5th or 6th on my list.
I actually picked the M8 over iPhone 6. Primarily this was due to better battery life on the M8. The M8 is a wonderful device to use and Sense 6 from HTC is a very nice adaption of Android. I prefer It much over other renditions (except maybe the Nexus OS). The phone is beautiful and it comes with 32GB built in. Camera can be considered ok. It Can take great pictures but the lighting needs to be appropriate for it to look good. Still, I use my Canon 60D for photos, I don't need to use a phone necessarily for such purpose.
Overall, I love my M8!
Overall, I love my M8!
I'd argue if you want an android phone as good as iPhone, then look at Sony z3. That's my opinion
I have both the HTC ONE (M8) and iP 6+
Here is my take for what it is worth:
1) HTC Camera lens (not sapphire) scratches easily. Common problem. There is a thin film that scratches and you have to send it to get it fixed. I know people who sent it 3-4 times. Others recommend sanding the film off by using toothpaste.
This cause photos to glare and have white spots. This is a pervasive problem I joke you not. This is not accounting for the dramatic photo-quality difference. The IP6 has a really good camera. Since I have a physical defect on my HTC, I don't use the camera at all.
2) SDCard is handicapped. KitKat (and further versions of Android in future) does not allow apps to go out of their sand-box. What does this mean? You can't use ES File explorer to move files around. Have a USB OTG Dongle? You can't copy files from your USB stick to your sdcard. Again, this is known and is just a matter of googling to know I am not kidding on this. I bought a 128GB sd card just to see it un-used due to the restrictions. Apps can only write to their little sandbox and it is stupid.
I have picts on my Google Drive. I download it. Gallery sees it. VSCOCAM has no access to it. I can't edit my jpeg I download off Google drive in VSCOCAM to upload to instagram. Again, those with HTC ONE M8. Try this exercise I just laid out. So this is part of the sandboxing restrictions Google has enacted.
3) UI elements grossly over-sized on the HTC. Toolbars, navbars, fonts are way too big. I have a 6Plus and I can see way more content. Also, since it has soft-virtual keys, web browsing real estate is taken up by the virtual soft keys. Emails, I see more lists of text. For example, Instagram, I see more content. 12 thumbnails vs 15-16 on the IP6. And Instagram isn't even optimized on the 6 plus yet!
Despite both having the exact same 1920x1080p canvas area, the IP 6Plus will always show more content on-screen due to the proportions of the UI.
HTC UI reminds me of folks who run disability assist mode on their PC who have their screen DPI multiplied by 2x, and run XTRA-Large window themes. If you have aging eyes, you may prefer the bigger buttons, text bar, shorter lists. I don't.
4) HTC has better sound card DAC. But that point is going to be moot because lightning 24bit/96k audio DACs will be coming to iOS very shortly. So if you have $500-800 headphones, you'll need a DAC/headphone amplifier. Both the HTC and iPhones due not have enough juice to power the higher end audiophile headphones. I rather have a small slimline lighting solution than a bulky USB-OTG-box and headphone amp.
5) HTC has extreme power saving mode. You can go 3 days if you just use it as a phone. IP6, 2 days but then again, I'm actually using the camera lot on the IP6; editing photos and editing video.
2 & 3 can be solved with rooting, third party launchers, new mail app, new email client, and a 3rd party web browser that gives you full screen. But, you will be relying on 3rd party solutions for the HTC. For the IP6, those things just work.
The biggest selling proposition of Android and SDcard is no longer there.
Everything else is personal preference. Oh, for the first time in 7 years, I have actual Group IPSEC VPN on Android. HTC bundled a 3rd party app that actually works. I had that on iOS for 7 years as a requirement to connect to multiple VPNs I needed. I went through a lot of flagship Android phone and the HTC was actually the first I could use for work.
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I agree that the M8 camera isn't as good. I didn't have the issue with the scratches though, but I have read these reports too.
I agree but with one of the latest updates the M8 has its own File Manager that can write on any folder on the SD card. Still having the card is an advantage and you can use it in many ways, despite these restrictions.
Have you changed the font settings on your M8? The default is too big for me and I always set it to small. Most apps show more content than on an iPhone 6, and yes the buttons do get in the way, but not when watching a video or pictures in full screen mode. I agree though that iOS does a better job of using space.
The M8 has amazing sound, much better than the iPhone.
I agree, but I don't use the power save mode since it doesn't allow you to choose what apps to use. Only the default apps are allowed...
I agree, but that is the point of using Android. People that want sth that just work should better stay with Apple. People that don't mind experimenting should use Android.
I do not agree. See above.
if the lens have a coating, it will scratch easily. i wonder why they have done that... it is common with camera lenses, but you dont keep them in your pocket without covers. it sounds like they, who had this idea, didnt really understand the coating thing...
This isn't universal. But thanks for the tip anyways. My carrier Verizon doesn't have this. So does my friend's AT&T. This is one of the problem with carrier updates. I just got advance power saving modes 6 months after the phone was released when everyone got it. Updates are carrier specific which is BS. I've dealt with this on all my Android phones. E.G. Gimped Galaxy Nexus on Verizon. You don't have this on iPhones. Updates are universal.
Anyways, I downloaded the APK and it still doesn't work.
The HTC ONE M8 still has a GIMPED sdcard. It will get worst with Android L as Google is locking it down even on rooted phones.
Don't know about the regular 6 but the 6Plus shows more. I can post screenshots side-by-side of all the popular apps and the 6Plus will show more than any comparable app on the ONE M8. And apps haven't been optimized mostly on the Plus yet. Those that are optimize, e.g. Pinterests, CNN, Twitter, the real estate is much better.
Yes, I have the smallest setting Helvetica on my HTC. I've even downloaded many flip-fonts on the playstore.
The leading in the type is at least 3x the baseline of the height of any font you choose. Same with kernel spacing. It just looks weird. It needs to be 3 points smaller.
Still, the canvas is smaller compared to the 6plus.
HTC scales at 3X. the 6plus scales at 2.5. They weren't kidding when they said it had a desktop scaler. Point your web browser to any site that does user-agent browser sniffing. You can point to any mac or linux machine running apache. Read the user agent. Or google "what is my screen resolution" and you'll find sites that will do the user-agent reading.
HTC scales at 3x in HiDPI mode. iOS will show more. Both machines have native 1920x1080p screens. The scaler on iOS simply shows more.
So basically any web-kit app (a majority of them) will show more content on the 6 Plus.
And that bad banding/dithering you see on the HTC. That is system wide. The Video renderer seems to work at a lower bit-depth/resampled and it obvious in many games like Asphalt 8 Airborne.
True... but.
Still not strong enough to power a 200ohm high end headphone. Still need an external DAC/Amplifier. With Lightning cables, the edge goes to iOS. Also, the iPhone still has some cool things. Most cars steering wheel controllers work with iOS playlists. iTunes match can play on 10 devices vs one on Google Play music. HTC has bluetooth APTX but iPhone, I can stream to 12 speakers all at the same time in all my rooms of my house with airplay. So it is a wash depending on what you want.
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Don't for that the Plus has a 5,5" screen and the M8 a 5". There are definitely differences to see and I would expect to see more on the plus.
Both have 1920x1080p native displays. You would expect they render similarly. I expect the phones with 2560x1600 displays to even show more real-estate. E.G. LG G3/ Note 4.
I don't have a regular 6 but just casually looking at friends and co-workers, I see more stuff in various apps and things like email/calendar.
I love iOS and Apple's hardware and all, but please do not spread mistruths.
1. If you want to compare headphones, there are definitely DAC/AMPs that are usable with Android phones via OTG cables (if DACs aren't MFi certified, they'd require a camera connection adaptor as well)
2. APTX will sound much better on bluetooth headphones, so I don't understand why you're comparing it to AirPlay speakers (granted, it's a lovely feature) - it's really apples and oranges. The fact that iPhones do not have APTX means the vast majority of bluetooth headphones will sound better on the HTC. And no, you can't use a speaker as your headphone.
And to put things in perspective, who really uses high impedance headphones portably? Most headphone manufacturers are increasing headphone sensitivity for easier driving when using on the go. Sennheiser HD25 -> Momentums. Most IEMs can be driven without external AMPs. And honestly, how many people have you seen carrying DAC/AMPs around? It's nothing more than a niche market ATM.
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