HTC One (M7) - my 3rd smartphone

4 years ago, I bought my 1st smartphone running on Symbian OS. It is a Sony Ericsson P1i with physical QWERTY keypad, 208 MHz ARM9 PNX4008 processor, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM, 160 MB internal storage, 2.6" touch screen, 240x320 TFT display, Wi-Fi 802.11b, 950 mAh battery, and a stylus. It is a 3G phone.

2 years ago, I bought my 2nd smartphone running on Android OS. It is an HTC Incredible S with 1 GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, 768 MB RAM, 1.1 GB ROM, 8 GB internal storage, 4" multi-touch screen, 480x800 WVGA display, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, 1450 mAh battery. It is a 3G phone supporting HSUPA/HSDPA/HSPA+ connection. I have just upgraded it to Nik ROM with Sense 4.1 Lite and Sense 5 visual.

Recently, I bought my 3rd smartphone, also running on Android OS. It is an HTC One (a.k.a. M7) with quad-core 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Krait 300 processor, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB LPDDR2 RAM, 29.8 GB ROM, 32 GB internal memory, 4.7" multi-touch screen, 1920x1080p HD display, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/ac/b/g/n, 2300 mAh battery. It is an LTE 4G phone.

From the specs of the 3 smartphones that I have, you can probably see the evolution in smartphone  over the past 4 years period. By the time I purchased those smartphones, they were the topliner in the market at that particular time period. The One is currently the flagship phone of HTC.

The speaker sound of HTC smartphones had be criticized for being too soft until they finally made significant improvement with Beats Audio from the Sensation series onwards (Sensation was the successor of my Incredible S). Now the HTC One comes with dual front-facing stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers and Beats Audio enhancement (they call it the BoomSound) is a real breakthrough. The sound quality is really good, loud and clear.

There are lots of comparison made among the HTC Ultrapixel camera with F2.0 aperture with HTC Zoe features and the camera of Samsung Galaxy S4, Apple iPhone 5, Nokia Lumia 925, Sony Xperia Z, etc. The camera quality in smartphones has been improved a lot especially over the past 1 year, which is a good competition. Perhaps sooner or later, the photo quality developed by smartphone cameras will be comparable to those taken by my Canon PowerShot S95.

One thing I noticed is you can launch the camera from lock screen directly by pulling its icon up, bypassing the security checking (password/pattern/etc.). This enables us not to miss the precious moment by having quick access to the camera and make it ready to shoot photo soonest possible.

I don't quite like the BlinkFeed on the default home screen. A lot of people find it annoying especially when linked with Facebook. I have unlinked it with my Facebook feed too. The BlinkFeed news photos can only be fed with a handful of predefined websites. It would be more favourable if the user can self define the feeds from the web.

The HTC TV Remote works well with my LCD TV, Astro B.yond STB and Panasonic hi-fi system. I am able to get the Astro TV guide too. However, I am not able to configure it to work with my UniFi HyppTV STB.

The NFC function well, able to detect the Touch 'n Go chips embedded in Zing card as well as MyKad.

Google Now is accessible by long press the Home button (double tap the Home button will open the Recent Apps screen). When Google Now is off, it will show a normal Google Search screen. If you are unable to find Google Now there, try switching your system language to another, such as "English (Singapore)". At the moment there is nothing much available in Google Now for Malaysia user yet. It will show the weather information, estimated travelling time to home, to work, and to other user-defined places.

I use the Metal-Slim transparent hard case to cover the phone. The case provides protection to the phone while keeping its nice full metal body unhide. However, it makes the phone heavier and bulkier. I am thinking of getting the Mophie Juice Pack, but its price is a bit high, especially after adding in the shipping fee.

I have been searching for the DestraShield nanoliquid screen protector that I applied on my HTC Incredible S before, but it seems that this product has disappeared from the market. I ended up applying the Kristall nanoliquid screen protector on my HTC One. They seems to function the same, except Kristall is cheaper but doesn't have Ag+ anti-bacteria formula in it.

Upgraded my HTC Incredible S to Nik ROM with Sense 4.1 Lite and Sense 5 visual

My 2 years old HTC Incredible S Android smartphone with official HTC ROM was last updated to Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich, ICS) with Sense UI 3.6 in July 2012. Since then, it didn't receive any new ROM update from HTC anymore.

Since its 2-years warranty period is now over, I upgraded it to a custom ROM called Nik Project X Rebirth v3.0 with Sense 4.1 Lite and some Sense 5 visual (a.k.a. Nik's ROM). This custom ROM for HTC Incredible S is also running on Android 4.0.4 but bring us the Sense 4.1 UI experience found in HTC One X and some Sense 5 visual found in HTC One (M7).

Although there are some other HTC Incredible S custom ROMs running on newer Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or even Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), but they don't include HTC Sense with the ROM.

If you are still using HTC Incredible S, you might probably also want to try out Nik's ROM because it brings new Sense experience as in HTC One series of smartphone, and it runs faster, smooter and more battery efficient than the stock HTC ICS ROM with Sense 3.6. This ROM will also upgrade your phone's filesystem to EXT4 too.

It really makes your HTC Incredible S remain fit and fun for use for quite some times.

In order to upgrade your HTC Incredible S to Nik's ROM, you need to get your phone rooted and S-Offed. There is a detail instruction in XDA developers forum to guide you through the process.

Click here to get the detail instruction to root and S-Off HTC Incredible S.

Note that you need to follow the instruction exactly, including flashing the CyanogenMod 7.2 ROM. This is because you might not be able to install Blackrose HBOOT with some other ROM.

At the end of the process, when you boot your phone by pressing Volume Down and Power key together, your screen should show the information as below.

Once you are done, you can proceed to download Nik's ROM, put it in your SD card, and flash it into your HTC Incredible S with ClockworkMod Recovery.

Click here to go to the download page of Nik Project X Rebirth v3.0 ROM.

After successfully upgraded to Nik's ROM, you can find the 4EXT Recovery Updater app in your app drawer. You can use it to replace your ClockworkMod Recovery with 4EXT Recovery Touch then.

Nik's ROM uses AROMA Installer for its installation. Along the process, you can customize your installation and choose whether to include or exclude the Sense UI, select the looks and feels of the icon style, battery icon, font, etc.

You can also exclude some of the "pre-install" apps that you don't want to install into your phone.

What are the new things and experience you can get in your HTC Incredible S after upgraded it to Nik's ROM? Well, here are a few of them...

The weather lock screen (among the available lock screens in Sense 4.1):

The home screen with Sense 4.1 looks and feels:

Press the phone's Power button, and you can see more options, including taking a screenshot:

The Quick Settings menu:

Now your HTC Incredible S can also have HTC Sense input with trace keyboard:

Long press the Home button to open this Recent Apps screen:

And you also get a faster, better, more feature rich Camera app with HDR, panaroma, show motion video, etc.

In addition, you can just swipe your finger from left to right (from Home button to Search button) to wake up your phone from sleep, and bring it to sleep mode by swiping your finger from right to left (from Search button to Home button). Therefore, you no longer need to use your phone's Power button as often as before.

Diagnose the HTC hardware function with HTC Function Test (*#*#3424#*#*)

The HTC Android smartphones including the new HTC Butterfly and the HTC One series come with a hidden diagnostic software that enables you to test on its parts and hardware.

Just go to the phone dialer and dial this sequent: *#*#3424#*#*

The HTC Function Test diagnostic software will be brought up.

The tests available are:

• Audio test
• Backlight test
• Bluetooth test
• Button test
• Charger test
• Flashlight test
• G-Sensor test
• Headset test
• LED test
• Light-sensor test
• Line drawing test
• P-sensor test
• SD card + camera test
• Vibrator test
• Wi-Fi test

You can tap on the "Select All" button and then the "Run" button to run all the tests above. If you are unable to see the "Run" button on your screen, just scroll down the screen. It is located at the bottom.

There are some more tests available after you tap on the "More" button:

• Battery test
• Device information
• Factory data reset
• AGPS test
• Hardware information
• Live call test
• Safe mode
• Software version
• Line drawing test (no time-limit)

This HTC Function Test is particularly useful when you want to buy a new or used HTC Android smartphone. You might want to make sure the phone is working perfectly before making your payment to the seller.