HTC One now officially available in the market, retails for Php32,990

It’s late, but it’s finally here.

Last week, HTC officially launched its flagship smartphone in the Philippines – the new HTC One. Country Manager of HTC Philippines Richard Javier emphasizes the importance of keeping their devices up to date to be able to cope with the needs of the people. He adds that the HTC One is the result of HTC’s continued effort to put the consumer’s needs in their topmost priority.

The HTC One sports a zero-gap aluminum unibody with a 4.7-inch, full HD (1080p) screen and 468ppi resolution. It runs on the latest Android Jelly Bean and is LTE capable to offer users speedy mobile browsing. Color variations of the HTC One are available in stunning silver and stealth black.

The key features that distinctively make the HTC One stand out are the HTC BlinkFeed, HTC Zoe, and the HTC BoomSound. These key HTC Sense innovations set the bar high for smartphones in giving the best mobile experience to the consumers.

HTC BlinkFeed lets users transform their home screen into a single live stream of their favorite sites. Here, users can see fresh updates from their social media accounts, news and blogs at a glance so you won’t have to go to different applications to be on the know. HTC has partnered with media companies such as AOL, MTV, ESPN, Reuters to provide more than 1,400 media sources with more than 10,000 articles per day.

The HTC One features the HTC Ultrapixel Camera with HTC Zoe that would enables photo-enthusiasts to take quality photos even in low light. HTC Zoe lets users shoot 3-second snippets (about 20 still photos) to catch the perfect moments. Photos and videos are displayed into a motion gallery of memories. The Zoe also creates slideshows automatically with a twist by setting background music and adding themes and effects to the video for that unique camera experience.

HTC is well known for the quality audio experience their devices produce with the integration of the Beats Audio that is exclusive to the brand. For the first time, HTC introduces the HTC BoomSound in the HTC One. Users will even get better sound quality with its dual front-facing speakers with a dedicated amplifier. Watching videos, playing games or simply listening to your playlist becomes even more enjoyable with the HTC BoomSound.

The HTC One retails at Php32, 990 and becomes available today, May 24, 2013 at HTC concept stores.

Also do check out our quick review of the HTC One.

HTC One Specs:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 1.7GHz quad-core processor
Adreno 320 GPU
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
4.7-inch Super LCD 3 Full HD 1080p @ 1920×1080 pixels, 468ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 2
2GB RAM, 32 internal storage, no microSD
HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps; LTE
Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, NFC
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
4-ultrapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, ImageSense
Video recording at 1080p @ 60fps
2.1 megapixel f2.0 ultra-wide angle front camera
5.4 x 2.7 x 0.37 inches
142 g
Li-Po 2300 mAh battery
SRP: Php32,990

HTC One now officially available in the market, retails for Php32,990

Intel Atom poised to compete against ARM in Android device market

Intel really took its time in entering the mobile device market giving ARM chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Samsung the limelight for the past few years during the boom of Android smartphones and tablets. In this world, Intel finds itself in the role of AMD, the underdog, as it tries to gain traction against chips people have already known and trusted over the years.

Currently in the scene is the Intel Atom Saltwell chip powering just a handful of devices by less-popular Android smartphone OEM players like Acer, Lenovo, ZTE, Motorola, Xolo, and Lava; and Android tablet manufacturers such as Lenovo, Coby, Ramos, and ASUS. Still testing the waters perhaps?

What’s unknown to a lot of people is that their current system-on-a-chip (SoC) can keep-pace with ARM-based SoCs a generation higher. They’re always currently a generation lower but the performance is not.

As an example, their 2GHz single-core Medfield SoC (Atom Z2480) can go head-to-head with Qualcomm’s dual-core Snapdragon S4 chip as evident with the Motorola RAZR i versus the Motorola RAZR M, two similar phones having different but same-class chips.

In the tablet side, a prime example would be the recently-released ASUS Fonepad carrying a 1.6GHz single-core Intel Atom Z2460. Because of Intel Atom’s fast memory access speed, it gets a faster overall response time compared to the quad-core Nexus 7 and the dual-core Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.

With six energy states including an enhanced Intel Deep State, the 4270mAh battery on the ASUS Fonepad lasts longer than Nexus 7’s 4325mAh battery by two hours. Intel’s Burst Performance Technology can make this happen with a processor that smartly scales between a zero-power C6 standby mode, low, high, and max-frequency mode, according to demand.

These Atom processors are also optimized for Android OS, enhanced using Dalvik VM runtime optimization, x86 trace-based JIT, Native Code Generation, JavaScript, and HTML 5 code execution. Unlike Google devices though, each Android OS upgrade requires some sort of code optimization from Intel for the processor to function optimally.

But knowing Intel, they already have the next-generation Intel Atom processor for Android on hand. The smaller 22nm Silvermont chip will feature 3x higher performance and 5x lower power than its predecessor. It will be interesting how this will fare against the new-gen quad-core chips from ARM.

Time to shine for Intel and let’s just wait and see who will be the first premium brand that will carry a flagship phone that will run on an Intel Atom chip. And hopefully, the price will be competitive compared to its ARM brothers.

Intel Atom poised to compete against ARM in Android device market