Episode 40: The HTC One gets an extreme summer torture test

-This week on Always On. -It's incredible. It's enormous first of all. -It's a 45-foot fun bus. -This is so much nicer than my house. -Fish it out, fish it out. Get it out there. -Only 65 miles to get to Vegas. Say goodbye. -Now we're talking. I'm Molly Wood. -And I'm Jeff Cannata. -And we are on our very first Always On road trip. We're in Anaheim, California. -And we're headed to Vegas. -Hey. We thought you know it's summer time. What better way to test our gadgets on the road, in heat. -But we weren't sure what kind of road trip? Do we wanna do a plane, a train? -Just that plain old car thing. No. -What to do? -How about a rad RV? -It is so rad we're gonna do an unboxing. -We are because this thing has got some tech in it. Meet the Woody. -It's incredible. It's enormous first of all. And all tested right. -How long is this? -It's a 45-foot bus. -Okay. -That we transformed into a California Surf Wagon, Woody entertainment fun bus. -Wow. -This is normally where like luggage and stuff would go if I was on a regular bus, right? -Yes. And we got plenty of room for that too. So you know there's room for everything. -Well, this is more important. You gotta have the beverages and you gotta have the barbeque. -Way more important. We got 40-inch high-def 3D TVs. All the speakers are inset into the panels. -Built right into the doors. -Build into the doors, 4 Bose speakers up in the awning up here. So you get 7.1 surround sound outside. -You're literally surrounding the outdoors with sound. -Yes. Oh, to draw a crowd. -Not that this isn't enough. Like can we see the inside? -Absolutely. Let's go check it out. -All right. Awesome. -All right. -Oh, my God. Look how nice this is. -Unbelievable. -This is so much nicer than my house. -Pretty cool, huh? -Oh, and the flooring is amazing. -And the flooring. -The mirrored ceiling. I mean it's all incredible. -So the floor is teak. -It's teak and holly and then we have solid granite countertops. -Wow. -All leather furniture. -You have everything. You just live wherever you want. -We have a lot of fun. -The Woody is 45 feet long and 13 feet high and weighs 52,000 pounds. -It runs a Detroit Diesel 60 Series engine which is a 14-liter 525-horsepower monster that puts out 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. -This RV can go up to 90 miles per hour. -It also has battery power storage of 4,000 amps. Basically that means it can power all of the components in the coach for 8 hours with no external power. -The interior audio system is a combination of Orb, Onkyo, and Pioneer. That's a lot of speakers and a lot of electronics both inside and out. It has a GPS navigation system. -There are 5 televisions. -High-def satellite and internet. -Total cost, $800,000. Well, I'm thinking we better get some tasty beverages ready. -Yes. I gotta decide which of the 5 televisions to watch. -True. -And we should heat up the barbeque. -We really should because when we come back, we're gonna torture test the superhot HTC One. Stick around. The HTC One baking in the sun, such a nice phone. -It's lovely out. We're enjoying a nice couple of beverages. -Like a little rest, a little rest here in the midst of our long journey, maybe taking some photos, looking at things. Yes. -The other thing about these beverages though, they have very wide open tops. -They do because they're double. -Double. I think they're illegal in New York actually. -I think so, yes. So we've got them filled with energy drink from our super long road trip here. We are exhausted. -Yes. -And then you know I mean here you are in the middle of a torture test really. Anything can happen. -Anything can happen. -Don't you think like-- -That's a big phone but that's a big opening right there. -Well, it's just very slippery. -It is. -3, 2, 1. Oh. -Oh, no. -Look at that. -What do we-- -Oh, no. -Where do we get-- I'll get a-- what? -If only I had some-- I do. -Fish it out. Fish it out. Get it out of there. Oh no. -You noticed how I just waited until Jeff did it. -It's still on. -It's still on. Okay. -It's dripping. -Yes, it's dripping. -All right. We're drying. -Poor darling. -It smells like orange. -It looks-- -It's on. _It's on. -It's still on. For some reason, it's playing a video. -It's playing a video. Let's see if we can get it to power up. Power up. Oh no. -Nothing happening? -Oh, I can see like-- I can see the water seeping in the water. -Oh, he's still wet. Look at his little drip coming out. -Oh. Poor little thing. I can't get it to turn up. -It's leaking. -I don't know if it was me or of its own volition but it is now shut down. -Poor HTC One. All right. We're rolling down the street. We got the HTC One. We got the open window. Unfortunately, sometimes you try to lean out the window, you try to take some pictures but when the window is open and this happens. 3, 2, 1. -Oh. -You know and we'll first be tossed. I was what I wasn't hoping for. I should've given it a twist. I should've given it a twist. -That did not sound good. We definitely have some scratching and denting. It looks a little bit like buckshot on the back here. What if we can get old Jeff to hit his mark? Let's try it again? -Say goodbye. Going out the window. -Yes. Nice. Now we're talking. Oh, I see damage. Oh, where's my USB card slot. It's like dramatic reveal. Oh. No screen crackage. Our SIM card slot popped out a little bit. We got a nice big dent right here where you chucked it right on the corner, but this thing is looking remarkably intact. That's one tough phone. I'm gonna call the drop test a pass and we're gonna find out if it could take the heat, like kind of like a lot of heat. -Nothing says road test like a barbeque. -That's right. -And nothing says barbeque like safety goggles and safety mask. -For once we're going safety gear because here's the theory. We think with the metal back the HTC One would get very hot if you left it in the car, on a sunny day, or you left it outside for a long time. We're gonna put it on the top row. -Safety first. -Safety first, everyone. -All right, HTC One. -We've been told that lithium ion can become combustible at about 300 degrees. -We'll see if HTC stands for heat test compliant. -We're just gonna leave this on, let this guy cook for just like, well maybe like a minute or two. -Are we putting the lid down or leaving it up? -No. I don't think we need to put the lid down. You think? -I don't know. -All right. It's been like a good 2 to 3 minutes. I think we're gonna get grill marks on the phone. -Yes. I love how you like get the phone off there, man. -I was starting to freak out like it's making me a little nervous. All right. I'm gonna get it off of there. -All right. -We're just gonna like basically put it on the ground. -Well. -Oh. -There's no marks. -Yes. It does seem kind of wimpy now that you mentioned it. Let's put it here. Why not? -I could just put it here. Let me try something. -Yes, put it sideways. -Yes. -Careful. You're close to the top there. Oh, there we go. I'm dropping it on my foot if it's blazing hot. Oh, we got some grill marks now. It is 215 degrees-- -215 degrees. -On the outside of that phone. Don't touch it. See. What I saw like a boing. That's just like a boing. When I looked at it-- -It's not-- -We're really not seeing much damage at all. -No. I mean I'm sure the electronics inside aren't very happy right now. -Yes. Probably not. So what we're gonna do is take this back, dry it out, see if it can come back on. -Yes. -In a couple of days, but I have to say so far I'm really pretty impressed with how oh, look, hear the- -Oh, is it warping? -It's coming away a little bit. -Okay. -It's warping a little bit. I think because it was already cracked there. -Yes. -Like you know-- -I mean that's the drop test. -Frankly I would've expected more like an explosion. -I'm surprised. -I'm a little letdown. -I'm surprised the screen is all right. -I know. All right. Good job, HTC One. -Very good job. -We'll check on you in a couple of days. So now that we're well under way, it's time to start our road test of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. -We're in a luxury RV. What better place to enjoy some media with a nice compact little tablet device. -Oh, a portable little chubby 8-inch tablet. We have the stylus. I loaded mine up with some movies like A Movie and some TV, my Kindle app, just to kind of-- and as usual with these road tests, we're gonna try to evaluate the design, features, and usability. -What's your first impression? -So it's not a one-handed tablet. It's too hard to hold it like this and it's just a tiny bit too big to comfortably type with 2 hands. -The plastic to me is a real benefit. I'm able to hold on to it. It really has a great first impression when you pick it up and hold it. I don't understand the raised camera. It seems odd when you wanna set it down. I feel like I'm always setting it on the most sensitive part of the back. I'm worried about scratching the lens and hurting the camera. The stylus integration is really slick and when you pull it out, you get both a tactile feedback and an audio feedback that you've removed the stylus. -I think that the pen although is nicely designed doesn't seem that useful. -I feel like the stylus is kind of unnecessary. -There's no way to rest your hands. If you rest your hand right here, you start doing things. -Oh, welcome to the world of being left-handed, Molly. Some of us have to deal with that our entire lives. Thank you, Galaxy Note 8. -Man. -Bridging the gap. -This Galaxy Note 8 is perfect. Their satellite TV is all over this coach and this has that Watch On app. So in theory I should be able to fire this up and it means that you can share video between the tablet and the television and the phone and that is super nice. I would like to watch that. The remote control setup is required which I already tried. I can't get the Watch On app to work. I can't get it to control that TV and it might be because so many other things are trying to control the TV. Turn on-- I'm not saying this wouldn't be magic if it worked. This is annoying and it doesn't. This is supposed to be magic. And it requires a Samsung account and then once you set that up, I was supposed to get a verification email that would let me enter the code to keep using the Watch On app and I never got the email. -One of my favorite things about the Galaxy Note 8 is that right out of the box, it comes loaded with some really cool apps. I really like the fact that Dropbox is integrated. You've got Flipboard which is really nice. Another one of my favorite features especially as an old school PC guy and somebody who's had to deal with not having it on the iPad is that I can use this just like a hard drive. It's got a nice little button that lets me go to my files and then I'm looking at file folders that I can just drag and drop files in when I plug it into my computer. If I drop something into the video folder, the video player knows to look there. Everything is quick, easy, and painless. I like that a lot. -This ought to be a full-featured device because it's running Android Jelly Bean, although with Samsung TouchWiz interface on top, it is plenty fast. I mean you're definitely gonna get as much performance as you need for surfing. It does everything that a full-pledged Android phone would do and then some stuff that a tablet does too. So it's not lacking the features department at all. In terms of usability, I mean the Galaxy Note 8 is an Android device so anyone who's been using Android should know how to use it. I wished that it were stock Android. The TouchWiz interface is very good, but the problem is if you get used to Vanilla Android, there are differences about it that will annoy you and it makes me kind of wish I had just plain Jelly Bean if that's what you're used to. -I love playing video on this machine especially since I can just pop the video that I'm playing into a smaller window and keep browsing the internet or check in my email while the video plays in a small window. It moves quick. It's snappy. It feels great. -Video quality is okay. It's 1280x800 resolution which even though that's better than the iPad mini, it's still not great. Oh, the Calendar app is nice. -I love the Calendar app. You can just swipe to the left from the home screen and your Calendar is right there, and it's so easy to read and then if you wanna edit it, you can either use the stylus or the touchpad. I love like circling the date that it actually is. -I know. -It's great. -And then the color coding all shows up, it makes me look like really organized. What the hell? So I actually had rented a movie that I downloaded and I've been sitting here trying to start them, trying to watch them. So this one says expires in 30 days and I got it like 8 hours ago, but when I tried to play it, it says the rental period has expired. This is totally a waste of my time. I paid for that. Oh, my God. I hate that. I don't know that I could necessarily blame the tablet but Google services are not working. Oh, you know what we should do? -What's that? -We should see where we are. -So obviously it's got Google Maps on here but it also has its own Navigation app. -Oh, let's compare. -I'm on the Navigation app. -Okay. I'm gonna try Maps. Oh, I found we're on the Barstow Freeway. I haven't put in Las Vegas yet, so let me do that. Las Vegas, Nevada, navigate, getting driving directions. Oh. Look at this. -Very nice. -I know. I've got like I love. This is like a screen size benefit like I have the directions on 1 side and then the actual map on the other. -That's great. -That's not bad. -You can see how far away we are now? Only 65 miles away under an hour left to get to Vegas. Vegas, baby, Vegas. And then if I go show the map, it goes and now we're into sort of turn by turn navigations. -Okay. Look. Yours is like kind of better. -The sound effects provided by me but-- -He's making me jealous. I want mine to do that. So the Note 8, we had a pretty good time with it on the road trip. -Yes. It's a fun device. I just wished it wasn't so expensive. -I know. That's the problem because then if something goes wrong like Google Play, I can't excuse it because it's $400 even more than an iPad mini. The price is the killer. -Yes. I like $269 or even $299. I would say this would be a "buy, no questions asked" because it's a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun little features. -But it's $399, so for me it's a "do not buy." -Yes. If money isn't an issue for you, you can find a lot of fun here but if it is, I have to agree. -Yes. Sorry. Now it is time for my favorite part of the show. -Almost to Vegas? -That and your mail. -Oh. -All right. Now, I asked you guys on Twitter and Google+ to send in your worst road trip disasters. -This is a doozy. -You've had some bad ones. This is just short and not sweet. Bob says "We had a cellphone fall into a commode in a rest stop." -Ouch. -No way to recover it. I'm picturing one of those scary deep hole ones like the Candyman movie. -Yes. -Let it go, let it go. -Yes. Sometimes it's just better to buy a new one. -It really is. That is awful. -I really love this one from Let's Roll. Well, not sure if this what you mean but my laptop that I bought while serving in Iraq made it through the war and back to the States. My cat then decided to rub up against a vase of flowers which in turn knocked the water out of the vase on to my laptop. No hope as the water mixed with the sand in the vents and became mush. I still have the cat surprisingly. -Thank you for all the amazing road trip feedback, everybody. I think it deserves its own blog post. -Indeed. -And keep all the other feedback coming. You could email us at AlwaysOn@CNET.com or find us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. In the end we made it to Las Vegas and that wraps up our special summer road trip episode. -Next week, even more beautiful pictures as we head to Hawaii bringing you our land and water torture and road test. -Thanks for joining us, everyone. -We'll see you next time on Always On. -It's been about a week since our RV road trip and the HTC One has been drying out in rice that whole time because I wanted it to get the best possible chance at survival. Now, now, little dude. Still has some barbeque marks on it. Got this genius little power brick here. I'm sorry to report that we warped the plastic around the actual mini micro USB port. I might have to do a little surgery before I can plug it in. There. I got it. I made it work. Power. Wait. Oh. Oh, my God, you guys. It's on. Look at this thing. The fact that this thing went through all that it went through and it is on, I would say that's a keeper.