TechGreatest
HTC One M8 vs HTC One Mini 2: Does Size Matter?
HTC’s miniaturised its One M8 flagship – how does the new model compare to its namesake?
The original HTC One gained HTC plenty of praise for its slick and stylish metal build, even though it didn’t sell that well. The company has gone on to continue down this avenue in the hope of it paying off, so we now have the HTC One M8 flagship and with HTC’s latest announcement that’s been joined (as its predecessor was) by a mini version – the HTC One Mini 2.
Aside from the obvious subject of scale, what are the main differences between these two devices? Let’s take a look.
Design
Design is probably the area where these phones differ least, apart from the size, but that’s because the whole point of the One range is to offer that cohesive, premium appearance and build with a metal body. As a result, the One Mini 2 looks nearly identical to the HTC One M8, right down to the curvature of the back panel and HTC’s distinctive “capped” design, with the punched front-facing speakers at either end of the display. Once again it looks pretty sharp, clean, and modern. The main distinguishing difference is the lack of the second depth-sensor port on the HTC One Mini 2; on the HTC One M8 this is present above the camera lens. The One Mini 2 also has a bit more curvature at its corners.
Of course the HTC One Mini 2 is much smaller in the hand, with a 4.5-inch display rather than the One M8’s 5-inch setup. Both phones feature the same brushed metallic finish for their aluminium unibody shells, and come in gold, silver, or grey colour options. Each also has the same level of high quality construction; the metal lends a solid feel and there’s no flex in the chassis.
Display
HTC usually delivers the goods when it comes to display tech. The HTC One M8 has a 5-inch Super LCD3 screen with a full HD 1080p resolution at 440 pixels-per-inch (ppi) and the results are glorious. Colour is incredibly rich, and it has excellent contrast and white purity. While brightness is great (and an improvement on the HTC One) visibility in bright sunlight even at maximum levels does trail off somewhat and viewing angles, which are relatively robust in normal conditions, go out the window. Still, it’s an extremely capable screen and razor sharp in terms of picture quality too.
The One Mini 2 uses the slightly older, but still formidable, SLCD2 technology at a lower 720p HD resolution, but as it’s a smaller 4.5-inch panel this is a perfectly acceptable downscaling as it still keeps the pixel density at 326ppi and things are nice and sharp as a result. Colour and brightness are still good but expect a similar set of sunshine related setbacks as its larger brother.
Hardware, Connectivity & Storage
Both devices are pretty chock full of connectivity capabilities, including all the stuff you might typically expect from premium-grade handsets – 4G LTE and 3G mobile data, dual-band Wi-Fi with Hotspot and Direct, DLNA, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, MHL TV-Out and microUSB. The One M8 also has an infrared blaster for controlling your TV.
Both handsets feature 16GB of onboard storage plus microSD support for cards up to 128GB. There is a 32GB onboard storage model of the One M8 but it’s not available in all regions and so far the UK doesn’t have it.
Processor
The HTC One M8 is equipped with a powerhouse of a processor in the form of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801. It’s a quad-core chip using Qualcomm’s Krait 400 architecture clocked at 2.3GHz, with 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 330 graphics processing unit (GPU). This thing is lightning fast, particularly as HTC has optimised its Sense UI and the Android KitKat software so all the animations and screen transitions operate smoothly. High-end gaming presents no problem for the One M8 and multitasking is a doddle.
The HTC One Mini 2 doesn’t boast quite the same muscle but it’s still capable enough for most smartphone tasks thanks to a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core chip clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM and an Adreno 305. This puts it on a par with Motorola’s Moto G and means it can deliver similarly fast performance thanks once again to HTC’s careful tuning. It will lack the One M8’s future-proofing as apps and games evolve, however.
Software
Android 4.4 KitKat is present on both devices along with HTC’s latest UI layer – Sense 6.0. Sense offers a very different look compared to regular Android but it’s a cohesive one and also neatly minimalist, enough that it actually feels like it’s in the spirit of Google’s original design. Sense takes advantage of Google’s changes like the transparent UI elements and HTC has even added some extra customisation options for things like font styles and themes. In all, it’s a really enjoyable user experience and it runs very well indeed.