My Impression after 5 days - AT&T HTC One (M7)

So I decided to write this little review to try talk about/point out/explain certain things that I thought other major reviewers (Engadget, The Verge, etc) didn't mention or didn't explain well enough, as well as things I do and don't like about the phone. (Don't let the Great Wall of Text scare you) Here goes!
The first thing I have to point out is how well this phone feels in your hand. I never want to put it down. Ever. That cold aluminum body feels amazing when you pick up the One and really drives home the flagship status of this phone. While this is great, I am terrified of dropping this phone. It feels like it would scratch very easily on a rough surface (I have yet to see a scratch, but I have been babying it until my case arrives). The aluminum feels very similar to the Macbook Pro case. While a lot of people are complaining about the false "zero gap" manufacturing, it virtually is zero gap. I have the slightest of space between the top aluminum strip on the front and the white band circumventing the phone. I would be hard pressed to fit even an eyelash in this gap, however. So far all intents and purposes, I think we can call it zero gap Anything larger than this, and I would consider returning it or waiting a few weeks for HTC to iron out the issue. Just ask to see the phone they give you before buying it and you can avoid this problem all together.
Sense 5 is a welcome upgrade and I don't miss CM 10.1 as much as I thought I would. My most missed feature is quick reply from the notification shade, but I'm living without it. This software flies through animations, opening apps, responding to input, scrolling, everything. Slick as oil. And the aesthetics of Sense 5 aren't too bad either. Not everything is rosy perfect though. Adding apps from the drawer to the homescreen is annoying. You have to tap and hold the app as you normally would. But then instead of transitioning to the home screen automatically so you can place the app somewhere, you have to first drag it all the way to the top left where it says "shortcut" and then it transitions to your homescreens. Gets old when you're setting up your home screen. Also, let's say you open an app by searching for it in your app drawer (not from the home screen). If you exit that app by hitting the home button, it does not send you home. Rather it sends you back to the notification drawer with all your apps. That's annoying. Pressing the back button also does not send you out of the notification drawer and to your homescreen like it normally does. You must hit home once again to enter your homescreen.
At first, I thought blink feed was gimicky. Just some marketing technique to set HTC apart in the consumer's mind. But after playing around with it, it has grown on me. The selection of news sources is small, but hopefully that will grow or allow you to add your own custom websites. I do find myself occasionally scrolling through it when waiting in line, the drive thru, waiting for someone, etc. Which was the original purpose anyway. I have not noticed a hit on battery life from this feature.
An annoying feature of the gallery is that in throws in all your Facebook Friend's photo albums into your gallery. Yes you read correctly. Jimmy Bob's recent Everglades field trip WILL show up in your gallery as well as other friend's albums. So far I have not figured out a way to remove this besides unlinking my phone from my facebook account (aka logging out of the app). While your photos have their own area/folder apart from these Facebook albums, it's still annoying to see the faces of people I never talk to in my own gallery.
Now onto the camera. There is definitely some truth behind the "UltraPixel" marketing. Compared to an iPhone 5 and Note 2, the One most definitely takes better pictures in low light settings. Even in extremely dark settings (night time with some light filtering in through closed blinds), the One is able to make out rough pictures, something the iPhone and Note 2 could not do at all. While the One is able to take pictures in very low light, this does not mean the pictures come out amazing or noiseless. Don't expect to just run out into the pitch black night and be able to photograph anything. In very low light settings, the pictures are still grainy and sometimes crappy. But most definitely better than the two phones mentioned already. All these comparisons were done with the flash off. Even with the flash on, the One still managed better photos in my opinion. They looked more natural and less like the came from a camera phone. Slightly lower than ideal lighting is where the One is able to shine. The other phone's flashes sometimes washed out or harshly lit up the scene while the One didn't even use the flash and took a great photo. Can't wait to use it more.
Zoes are pretty cool, another feature I initially thought was gimicky. The short clips appear as normal photos in your gallery, but then begin to randomly play like the photos in a Harry Potter movie. Looks pretty cool in person. A feature I haven't been able to try out is the "Event" categorizing of my photos. Basically the phone looks at the time and location where you took pictures, and tries to group them into "events". Think of these as different albums in your gallery. When you open an event, at the top there will be a highlights reel: basically a slideshow of your photos, zoes and perhaps videos (not 100% sure about the videos). It adds music, transitions, Instagram-esque filters and automatically starts playing. Watching your whole photo gallery come to life is pretty cool.
Other tid bits: there's a permanent power saver notification in your notification dropdown. Always there no matter what. There's an app that lets you remove it if you're rooted however (the app is somewhere in these forums). The front facing camera is a big upgrade from the HOXL one. Did I mention how amazing this phone feels? Finally, 32GB on an HTC flagship. 24.4GB available to you. Although the camera lens is slightly slightly slightly recessed, I still feel it can get scratched.
In the end, this is definitely the best Android phone I have handled and used (yes, including the S4 yes I said it). And I used to work in Best Buy Mobile until very recently, so I have handled my fair share of smartphones. I would highly recommend this phone to anyone and everyone.
Well this turned out a lot longer than I anticipated. Hope this shines some light on the One from the perspective of an everyday owner. Let me know if you have any questions!
TL;DR. Read it! This took [email protected]#$ing forever to type.

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Congrats on getting away from Best Buy!

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are we going to have one of these at 15 days 30 days etc etc ?

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Great review! I would like to point out though that you can get rid of the power saver notification by long pressing it, going to app info, and force stopping it. It reappears when your battery gets low since it automatically turns on, but you can avoid looking at it most of the day!
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app

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Excellent review. I've had it 4 days and I guess I haven't opened my gallery since linking my Facebook account, cause that annoyance was new to me... Thanks for pointing it out!
One other thing that I feel isn't getting the attention it deserves is the addition of IR. I haven't had IR in a smartphone since my Treo, and I missed it. The first thing I did when I got my One was setup all my TV's/Receivers to be controlled by my phone.
Wallaby8 said:
Great review! I would like to point out though that you can get rid of the power saver notification by long pressing it, going to app info, and force stopping it. It reappears when your battery gets low since it automatically turns on, but you can avoid looking at it most of the day!
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this tidbit.. It would be nice if the "show notifications" option allowed you to select/deselect...

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The chassis is zero gap. the speaker covers are add-ons to the chassis.
To add apps, widgets and shortcuts to your screens long press any blank area for your home screens and the popup will allow you to select said icons to which ever screen you want by highlighting it with a tap 1st. It will put the icon in the first available space starting from the top left but you can then move it.
I haven't setup Facebook yet but I have read there is a setting in the gallery to un-check this option. *Edit* My bad. The only way to stop pic syncing from Facebook is by not allowing Facebook to sync in the 1st place. Not an ideal solution but all there is atm.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2197998
Lastly, with pics/camera. Set sharpness to -1 and there will be much less post processing. (Credit hamdir) I think you'll like the pics even more!
Hope this helps.

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Thanks!! it was helpful.

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Yeah I haven't had a chance to test out the IR but I've heard its pretty cool. But it may not work on cases that cover the button and I wish they allowed you to hit "hide notifications" it almost looks like they went our of their way to block that setting lol
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app

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If you long press on the 'Power Saver' notification and go to App Info, you can force close that app. Then the notification will no longer be there. Each time the phone reboots, you'll see it and need to do it again, but I did it once and haven't had to reboot for any reason. Notification Gone!