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Pros : Premium design, a good camera and a crisp display.
Cons : Poor battery life
Verdict : The HTC One Mini is a great phone for anyone that can’t quite stretch to the cost of an HTC One or just wants a smaller screen. While some things have been sacrificed it still feels like a premium device.
The HTC One Mini is an impressive phone, particularly at first glance, as the aluminium build makes it look like a top end handset. It’s positioned as a direct competitor to the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, right down to the name and its combination of specs, design and features really help it stand out.
Design
We’ve said it before but we love the look and feel of this phone. Like the HTC One, it has an aluminium back and aluminium panels above and below the screen. Most top end phones don’t even use that much metal and this is positioned below HTC’s flagship. The back is curved too which makes it comfortably fit in the contours of your hand.
At 132 x 63.2 x 9.3mm it’s not the sleekest phone around, but the look is so striking that it hardly matters.
Performance
The HTC One Mini has a 1.4 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. Those are definitely not top end specs and are quite a step down from the 1.7 GHz quad-core HTC One with its 2GB of RAM, but they’re still comfortably mid range and for the most part the HTC One Mini feels quite powerful and slick when you’re using it, though there can be a little slowdown on more processor intensive tasks.
It comes with 4G LTE, which is a feature usually reserved for top end phones and ensures that web browsing and anything else that involves data is handled at enormously high speeds even when you’re away from a Wi-Fi connection.
Display
The HTC One Mini has a 4.3 inch Super LCD2 720 x 1280 display with a pixel density of 342 pixels per inch. While that’s a drop in resolution from the HTC One it’s still plenty enough to provide crystal clear images. It’s also smaller than the screen on the HTC One, but there is still a market for smaller screens, as Apple is proving every day, so the HTC One Mini may actually suit some people better.
Camera
The HTC One Mini has the same 4 Ultrapixel camera as the HTC One. There’s some disagreement on how good the HTC One’s camera really is. Personally we’re quite fond of it, though it’s definitely been topped by the likes of the Nokia Lumia 1020. Whatever your feelings about it though it’s certainly of a better standard than we’d expect to find in anything other than a flagship phone, so to have it on the Mini is great.
It’s especially good in low light and it also has access to HTC’s ZOE mode, which takes multiple shots in rapid succession and includes a number of editing tools.
The HTC One Mini can also shoot 1080p video at 30fps and has a 1.6 megapixel front facing camera.
Other features
Many of the HTC One’s key features have carried over to the HTC One Mini, with the main two being BlinkFeed and BoomSound. BlinkFeed brings you all of your news updates and social network feeds straight to your homescreen in an attractive, easily digestible feed. It’s a great feature and the only downside of it is that you can’t turn it off, so if you don’t like it you’re stuck with it anyway.
BoomSound meanwhile is the overall audio experience of the HTC One Mini, which includes the front facing stereo speakers and Beats Audio. Combined they create loud, bass heavy audio, that sounds great even through the phones speakers.
The HTC One Mini also has 16GB of built in storage, though there’s no micro SD card slot so that might be a little tight for some people. It supports Wi-Fi, 4G LTE, 3G and Bluetooth 4.0.
It has an 1800 mAh battery, which is on the small side really and unfortunately that shows, as it will drain pretty fast if you try and do much more than make a few calls or browse a few websites. With moderate use it should just about squeeze out a day, but that’s all.
Conclusion
The HTC One Mini is a superb handset which is only really let down by a poor battery. Everything else is good or great, especially for the money. If you plan to use your phone sparingly or don’t mind carrying a charger with you this is well recommended, but power users may want to look elsewhere.
You may be interested in reading the HTC One Review - the mini's big brother.
HTC One mini Specification Details Dimensions : 132 x 63 x 9 mm Weight: 122 grams Screen size: 4. inches Screen Resolution: HD 720p Pixels Per Inch (PPI) : PPI = 341 Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, quad-core, 1.4Ghz RAM: 1 Gigabyte ( 1GB ) Battery capacity :1800 mAH battery On-board Memory: 16GB Flash Camera : HTC UltraPixel Camera Operating system: Android with HTC Sense Ultrafast / 3G / 4G LTE : Yes / Yes / Yes Bluetooth / NFC : Yes / Yes Colours : Black, Red and Silver Launch Date: On Sale Price : Around £380 SIM Free
