Battery life was fantastic most of the time. Even while constantly streaming music and podcasts, and using the phone all day, I was able to make it home with a enough juice left over that I was never worried. That\u2019s all I really need from a smart phone; anything else is a bonus. Like the Sony Xperia, HTC has it\u2019s own battery saving mode that can stretch the phone further. I like to think of it as weekend mode, and it\u2019s one of the features I wish Apple would steal from Android. There were one or two days when the phone battery suddenly sucked for no reason. I\u2019m not sure why, but the phone seemed to correct itself pretty quickly, so all in all, it was a positive experience.<\/p>\n
Android purists will only accept vanilla Android. I\u2019m not one of those guys. I\u2019ve always thought HTC Sense was one of the nicer of the Android Launchers, and it\u2019s been interesting to watch it evolve over the years, from the iconic clock of the HTC Desire, to today\u2019s Blinkfeed.<\/p>\n
Blinkfeed is beautiful and very easy to set up. While I expected to become bored of it quickly, I found myself using it for quite a few weeks. When I switched to a new lock screen, it wasn\u2019t because I was sick of Blinkfeed, more that switching home screens is half the fun of owning an Android.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
Better still, the built-in Mail and Calendar apps are excellent. One of my biggest complaints over the years using Android is just how butt ugly the Exchange mail and calendar apps are. While the Gmail and Google calendar Apps are always great, and constanty updated, the apps that support exchange are often neglected. That\u2019s not case here. Calendar, Mail (and a Tasks app that most Android phones ignore) are as nice to use as they are to look at. They\u2019re just –I don\u2019t know– classy<\/em>, which makes the One mini a great work phone. There is a common design between the apps, it\u2019s all clean lines, black borders and just a hint of colour. Classy as hell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Conclusion<\/h1>\n
I really love this phone. About two weeks into testing, I was enjoying it so much more than my main phone (the iPhone 5) that I switched my SIM so it could become my main phone. The mini just feels like a more solid experience right now, and while I\u2019m happy to keep beta testing iOS 7 for Apple, it\u2019s nice to use a fully finished phone day to day. A non-geek would be quite happy sticking with HTC Sense and it\u2019s built in suite of goodies, but a tinkerer like me can waste days testing new launchers, lock screen replacements, and all the other fun Android has to offer. The hardware never feels like it\u2019s being pushed by the software, everything is responsive and smooth, even when you throw a bunch of competing hacks and launchers at it.<\/p>\n
At $480 RRP, the HTC One mini is a high-end phone with a mid-range price, and is the best damn small Android I\u2019ve played with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The HTC One was a triumph for Android hardware. Can the mini live up to its sleek big brother?\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[122,183,72,240,551,134],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"reckoner_social_message":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}