 The Jazz Mini is a beautiful and compact aluminum stand for your smartphone that even holds tablets up to 8 inches. Click now to learn more. Finally, the update to the phone that's been my daily driver whenever I'm not working on reviewing something else for the last year. It is time to replace my HTC One with this, other more different HTC One. And if that seems confusing, you're not the only one. HTC's own website actually even resorts to using the code name M8 to clarify what product it is you're looking at. Now, as far as specs go, there's not much for me to say in a video. It's got a Snapdragon 801 chip clocked at 2.3GHz in most markets, it's got 2GB of RAM, and realistically, if you want to know more, there's an amazing site called gsmarena.com where you can enjoy a wall of text just like this one for any phone you can imagine. So without further ado, let's get on with the stuff that watching a video legitimately helps with. Kicking off our physical tour, I've got the gunmetal version which features what feels like a perfectly smooth back but it actually has a brushed looking finish to it, but the phone is also available in silver and pirate. The gorgeous backing wraps up to the screen which it nearly perfectly joins with a tasteful beveled edge and the overall fit and finish of the phone is immaculate with almost no discernible imperfections, even where metal meets glass at the top and bottom of the screen, a somewhat common issue on the last generation product. The increase in metal content for the chassis from 70% to 90% features prominently in HTC's marketing and while some reviewers preferred the flat, composite edges of the M7 for grip, I actually like the seamless rounded edges. It reminds me of Samsung's whole made for humans thing that they did with the S3, except that HTC does it with a level of build quality that Samsung for whatever reason just refuses to acknowledge is important. Bottom line, this phone feels great and even more solid in my hands than the M7, a phone that survived quite a few significant drops without damage for me. The one gripe that I had initially was the extra weight, but given the larger 5 inch screen size and even more premium feel it has, I can forgive this and in fact I'm beginning to appreciate the sheer this is a serious piece of hardware mass of the M8. It reminds me of the feeling I get when holding an iPhone 4, which it remarkably only weighs about 8% more than in spite of the larger screen. It really does set this phone apart. The 5 inch display is covered in Gorilla Glass 3 and features some of the most subtle, sexy haptic feedback I've ever felt and while objective testing on the interwebs would indicate that in fact the black levels are not as deep as the M7 and the color accuracy is perhaps not as good as the Moto X or even the One Max, I subjectively found both of those aforementioned phones very warm looking to the eye and the M8 much more pleasing, so your mileage may vary. One thing that really blew me away though was the lack of color shift or image quality degradation when viewing off axis. Kudos HTC. And I also really like the small tweak to their auto brightness since I last used it. 40% is enough for me even outside and now I can set a maximum for auto brightness so I use it all the time and it works great. Above the screen is a 5 megapixel camera that records 1080p video and here's an audio sample from it. More than enough for video chatting. Under the screen the dedicated multitasking button built into Sense 6 instead of requiring a double tap of home is very welcome but using that extra.3 inches of screen real estate that we gained from the M7 on on-screen buttons in general is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Google is putting pressure on handset makers to move towards them but between the HTC logo chin bar that HTC says they needed for internal components and the on-screen buttons in landscape mode the keyboard has shifted so much to the left that I find myself mistyping a lot more than usual. That combined with the way that the on-screen buttons disappear sometimes and you need two button presses to do stuff but I mean I like that they're contextual and stuff so I don't know. On the top of the phone we find an IR emitter a feature that I actually didn't use once with the M7 but one that's nice to have if you watch TV I guess and the power button or lock button which is actually as shallow as this might sound my second biggest gripe with this phone. You don't need to use it to turn the phone on thanks to HTC's gesture based motion launch controls that let you double tap to wake and swipe for home screen, voice dialing, blink feed or whatever was the last thing you were doing but I still use it to turn the screen off and I just can't find a comfortable way to do that without mashing the volume buttons on the side. On the left side we've got an unnecessarily large nano sim slot and then on the other that's somewhat too easy to press volume rocker that I mentioned before and great Scott what's this? HTC yields to Google's on-screen buttons and powered by Android startup screen branding but not to the elimination of the micro SD slot. Great inclusion here. If I had a dollar for every time someone bought a Galaxy S4 instead of a 1M7 because of the no micro SD slot I would have more money than HTC does right now. The headphone jack is now on the bottom next to micro USB a position I used to prefer since it tugs less while holding the device but I use my phone with my right hand and store it in my left pocket so I actually find this a little bit more ergonomic than this when I'm putting it away so now I prefer the top headphone jack but it's a very very minor complaint. Since we're on the subject of the headphone jack I complained about the amp on the M7 early on but later discovered that the problems were caused by the subpar HTC Music player app included with the M7. Since switching to Apollo on the M7 I no longer have any complaints about it and the M8 is also just dandy in terms of headphone audio output quality. Speaking of dandy, the speakers. Sure they're not stand-alone Bluetooth speakers but they're loud enough and sound good enough for me to legitimately enjoy YouTube videos in a noisy environment like a moving car and listen to music at my desk while I work. A freaking plus. As a content consumer I will trade the extra phone height that is consumed by resonance chambers for this sound experience every day and HTC is just making the other guys look stupid at this point. I mean these days whenever I get my hands on a device with bottom or rear mounted speakers I can't even bring myself to make the joke about the cupping your hand trick anymore. It's just not funny anymore. It's a miracle the other guys have let HTC stay more than a year ahead of them now with an innovative feature like pointing a sound source at the listener's ears. But since I'm an HTC user I guess it doesn't really matter to me what the others do and all I can really say is enjoy the cup trick everyone else. Turns out it's still funny when it's someone else. Moving around to the back of the phone we find the ultra pixel 4 megapixel camera is back with some capabilities added and others taken away. It lacks optical image stabilization this time but is now accompanied by a two-tone flash for better flesh tones and it has more processing horsepower behind it. A major contributing factor to the wicked fast shutter speed of this bad boy. Seriously whip your phone out horizontally press the volume button the camera app is ready to capture the moment you can rapid fire it when your kid has your finger up his nose or whatever it is that you're trying to get on camera. You can use Zoe's HTC's video slash photo at the same time thing that works really well with highlight reels a little software feature that cuts together photos and videos with music and effects and now allows more granular clip selection and your own music to be added but I found machine gunning the shutter or capturing stills during regular video recording was just as effective. But all of that is still pretty normal stuff what about HTC's other camera on the back? That one is used to gather depth information and in theory it allows images to be refocused in post or effects to be added to the background and also this funky parallax effect but in practice I use this about as often as the feature that lets me cover a photo with cherry blossoms or put scumbags Steve hats on everyone. All in all as someone who never prints my phone pictures I was already satisfied with the M7's camera for my Instagram needs and recording videos of my cats and I'm satisfied with this one too. It's good enough for me and even though the M8 does not support 4K recording like some other phones are starting to I actually got quite a few compliments on a video I uploaded of my cat that looked pretty darn fantastic so there you go. Moving on to software I'm not going to say too much about Sense 6 because I already liked Sense 5.5 and Sense 6 is pretty much more of the same. The keyboard prediction sucks the big one and I find the information density and blink feed just a little bit too low to be useful for me but SwiftKey for the win and blink feed can be completely ignored quite easily so those are really minor complaints and there's so many other good things I mean even though I'm not detail oriented enough to notice exact changes like the notification bar changing color depending on the screen you're looking at I do generally appreciate the improvements HTC continues to make to their overall aesthetic and the classy new stock sound scheme and I love their organization friendly app tray, their multitasking, the easy way that quick settings can be reconfigured and so much more. Sense is the Android skin that I started on and I actually like it better than stock Android sue me. It's super easy to use and low overhead enough that it feels just as snappy as stock Android I mean obviously the wicked hardware on this phone isn't hurting that either. This phone is a blast to use. So conclusion time. There was a time when being the most beautifully crafted Android phone on the market was about like winning the chimp Olympics but with the M7 HTC took Android phone design and build quality to the next level and the M8 picks up where it left off. There are some issues that persist. The battery is still not replaceable and iFixit gave the phone a whopping 2 out of 10 for repairability in their tear down video but the good news about the battery at least is that even though they only increased capacity to an unexceptional 2600 mAh the real world battery life is a lot better. At the end of a weekday that means conference calls with the speaker phone and constant emails and texting I regularly have 40% left at night and on weekends I can go the whole two days before recharging and I'm not cheating. I've got bluetooth on and paired to my pebble, wifi, mobile data, accurate GPS, location and the on board popcorn maker are all enabled at all times and I am still getting these results. The last phones that I tested that were like this for me were the Xperia Z with a bunch of power management stuff on and the One Max which just had a massive battery. Speaking of massive battery another improvement is the noticeably faster battery charging on the M8. With my old iPhone I could pop it on the charger for 30 minutes while I get ready to leave the house and have that actually last me long enough to get back home and charge it for real. Not the case with the M7 but the M8 is much closer to that experience and it's a really tangible improvement. No phone is perfect though and I'm going to wrap up this video with a couple of complaints. Number one is that a non-tech discovered HTC is still enabling higher power states when the phone detects a benchmark is being run. And number two is actually my biggest complaint about the phone and that is that for some reason we're in the 21st century. Yeah I mean this guy figured out this crap a long time ago and this phone still doesn't have wireless charging. Words cannot express how much I wish that it did but oh sorry hold on I've got to take this call. See that? Gesture based phone call answering. Oh it's Luke. Hey he arrived safely at PAX East where he and Brandon will be bringing you guys the very best of the show with a particular emphasis on the Indy Mega booth. Stay tuned over the next couple of days for all that awesome content and wait sorry what's that Luke? You also want me to give a huge shout out to our sponsors Intel and Corsair without whom you wouldn't have been able to go and remind everyone to tune in to our PAX East content? Ha what a guy. He also forgot a couple things though Intel and ASUS are also giving away a Tai Chi dual screen ultrabook. Just tweet what inspires you about PAX East with hashtag Intel Inspire before the 18th of April 2014 for a chance to win. Full contest rules are linked in the video description. Speaking of giveaways huge reward for those of you who were hardcore enough to stick around through this very long video. I have something exciting to share. HTC gave me two giraffe m8s to give away. Hey why did you bleep that? I didn't even say a bad word I said giraffeing. Anyway all you have to do is post your favorite thing about the m8 in the forum thread in the video description and no matter who you are or where you live you are entered. You don't even have to sign up for the forum you can use your steam facebook or twitter account to quickly log in and post your favorite thing and you're in the draw. But there is a catch. I only get two phones if 10,000 or more of you click the bit.ly link to HTC's m8 page on their site also linked in the video description. Oh I've been talking for a long time. Otherwise I just get one. So let's all work together to unlock the extra phone. All giveaway details in the video description as well. Anyway guys thank you for watching my team and I worked really hard on this video and we hope you enjoyed it. If you did please like and share it and if you didn't please dislike it and leave a comment with your thoughts. We do take constructive criticism very seriously. Also linked in the video description and in just all that other stuff is a support us link to buy t-shirts give us a monthly contribution or use our affiliate code when you buy random stuff on amazon but no pressure because whether you like it or not we're going to keep making videos about technology on YouTube.