Why You Can Trust CNET HTC One Remix review: Looks great, sounds great, works great
The gorgeous metal-and-plastic handset looks great, sounds great, and works great, too.
Made of brushed metal and plastic, Verizon's Remix has the grace, style, and superior speakers of its bigger sibling the HTC One M8 , with reliable specs that in many cases skim the surface of premium quality.
HTC One Remix
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
For the price of a two year-commitment and $100 (or as low as $50 on a promotional sale), the Remix is a decent value for what you get. Off-contract, though, its $450 full retail price (or $22.50 a month for 24 months) is significantly higher than the roughly $200 Motorola Moto G LTE (which isn't sold with Verizon) and $50 on-contract Moto X . Most of that cost difference pays for the phone's build, camera quality, and audio upgrades.
For my money, the Remix is worth the price for a smartphone that is clearly just a step below the top-of-the-line M8, and high above the typical "bargain" phone.
Editors' note: This review focuses on the Verizon model. You can read even more in CNET's full review of the HTC One Mini 2 , as the Remix is globally known.
Design and build
Classy, luxurious, and stunning are three words that describe the Remix's mostly metal build. With rounded corners and white accents, the silvery phone is absolutely kin to the larger One M8, though there's only one camera lens and LED flash on the back (versus two of each on the M8), and the power/lock button has a different placement on the phone's top edge.
One hardware difference, the Remix's 4.5-inch display has a 720p HD screen versus to the M8's larger 1080p display, but photos, text, and video still looked clear and sharp. In comparison, the Remix's 326ppi display shares the same pixel density as Apple's iPhone 5S.
You'll find a 5-megapixel shooter on the front, a 13-megapixel camera on the back, a nano-SIM card tray on the left, and a microSD card tray on the right. The latter two pop open with the help of an included tool (but a paperclip tip or earring back will work just as well.) A sealed phone, there's no getting to the Remix's 2,100mAh embedded battery.
Though smaller than the original M8, everything about the Remix screams "substance." At 5.4 inches tall, 2.6 inches wide, 0.42 inch thick, and 4.8 ounces, it's hardly tiny, though its slightly curved back helps it fit well into the palm. Slimmer than a lot of phones you can buy these days, it didn't permanently stretch out my back pocket.
In HTC One family tradition, the stereo speakers along the top and bottom edge of the phone's face project sound better than most other smartphones. They aren't as large as the One M8's so they're also not quite as loud, but the Boom Sound speakers, as they're called, are impressive nonetheless.
OS and apps
Running on Android 4.4 KitKat with the attractive, elegant HTC Sense 6.0 custom layer on top, you'll find such mainstays as the BlinkFeed news feed and Zoe camera effects. All the Android apps are there, too, including Google Search with Google Now, a ton of Amazon shopping portals, and a car docking mode.
Verizon piles on its own suite of apps and services for account maintenance and more, and also includes partner programs like Scribble and Slacker Radio, Isis Wallet, Kid Mode (a third-party app), IMDB, and NFL Football.
Camera and video
HTC decided against using the 4-"ultrapixel" camera module with the One Mini 2/Remix, opting for a 13-megapixel camera instead. Both CNET Editor Andrew Hoyle and I agree that HTC should have taken this tack all along. The Remix's images were colorful, crisp, and clear in photos taken on automatic mode as well as HDR. It handled close-ups well, and did a better job battling trickier exposure situations than the M8.
One scene especially stood out during my testing period was when the Remix faithfully captured an image of bees flying around a flower that was itself swaying in the wind. One moving object is hard enough to catch on a good day; this camera imprinted the moment without any softness or blur. Of course, the more carefully you set up your shot, the higher chance you'll get an image you like.
I was also impressed with the front-facing camera. A 5-megapixel lens doesn't necessarily mean you'll get higher-quality images, and in truth, you may not want to see that much of your own face in lifelike detail. The Remix exposed faces and scenes well, keeping skin tones fairly lifelike (they have a tendency to look overly gray). It also worked well for groups.
Video capture and playback was also smooth, avoiding stuttering, adjusting well to scenes, and picking up audio from subjects near the microphone. Although the camera is capable of 1080p HD recording, you'll need to change the default from 720p for larger resolution and files.
I'm including a few images from my testing below, but for more, including how the Remix/HTC One Mini 2 compares with the HTC One M8, see CNET's photo comparison in the HTC One Mini 2 review .
Performance: Speeds, processor, battery life
Performance was on par for a phone with Verizon's LTE data network and for the processor involved.
Starting with speeds, Verizon's data network was mostly strong in San Francisco, but was also spotty at times, churning out lower-than-average speeds in the downtown area. Anecdotally, I was able to download apps, stream videos, and upload content online with relative ease, and Web sites rarely hung or spun. You'll see timed results to some standard tests in the chart below.
Results with the diagnostic Speedtest.net app revealed a peak of 25Mbps down in San Francisco's metro center, with a high of 19Mbps up. My lowest lows, not shown in the screenshot here, were 1.36 Mbps down and 0.49Mbps up in the dead zones, though these weren't typical.
Internal speeds on the 1.2GHZ quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor were fair, but didn't break the land speed record by a long shot. The diagnostic Quadrant score came in at 9,795 (versus 24,593 on the M8). Both the Remix/One Mini 2 and Motorola Moto G pulled down comparable scores in Andrew Hoyle's Geekbench diagnostics.
In my real-world tests, navigation never seemed to drag; apps opened and tasks switched in an acceptable length of time. For instance, the phone's boot-up time and camera loading time were well within the realm of normal. Sure, it wasn't quite as light on its feet as other phones with more muscular chipsets, but it sure wasn't bad.
HTC One Remix performance testing
| Install CNET mobile app (5MB) | 13.3 seconds |
|---|---|
| Load up CNET mobile app | 5.2 seconds |
| CNET mobile site load | 4 seconds |
| CNET desktop site load | 17 seconds |
| Boot time to lock screen | 13.3 seconds |
| Camera boot time | 2 seconds |
| Camera, shot-to-shot time | Less than a second without flash |
Gaming is one area where the processing power makes a big difference, and that's certainly the case with the Remix. Graphics-heavy game Riptide GP2 played just fine, though with a tiny amount of lag and a lower frame rate per second than on lean, mean graphics machine like the M8 or Samsung Galaxy S5. In fact, the phone's hardware doesn't support all the game's most demanding graphics settings.
So far, the Remix's 2,100mAh battery lasts a full workday, requiring an overnight charge. Verizon rates battery life at 15.2 with standby time lasting up to 16.6 days. During our battery drain test for continuous talk time, it lasted 17 hours and 33 minutes.
In terms of storage, you'll find just 6GB of internal memory, but you'll be able to add up to 128GB more through a microSD card. The Remix has 1.5GB RAM and a digital SAR of 0.92 watts per kilogram.
Call quality
I tested the Remix's call quality in San Francisco using Verizon's network. Call quality was acceptable, with a few minor problems here and there. Audio was strong on my end, with voices sounding warm and natural in a moderately loud room with the volume set at about three-quarters of the way up. White noise in the background made itself known, but didn't distract too much from the content of the call.
Podcast
This background hush disappeared when speakerphone turned on, but it was also harder to hear my caller when I held the phone at hip level, even with the volume on max. Still, I appreciated the lack of echo, even if my test partner's voice sounded lispy when he spoke.
On the other end of the line, my tester said I sounded somewhat tinny, with an initial "warbly" vocal quality that subsided over time. Still, it was infinitely better than talking through speakerphone, he said, which made my voice sound distant and (again) warbly, and which made my speech hard to discern.
Buy it or skip it?
If your smartphone needs to look as good as it acts, then the HTC One Remix/HTC One Mini 2 is your kind of handset. Verizon subscribers who sign onto the two-year contract will shell out $100 (or less during a promotion). The same pricing will get you the original HTC One, LG G Vista, Kyocera Brigadier, and Motorola Droid Maxx (another good buy). With its excellent camera and brushed metal jacket, the Remix tops the list.
However, if you're paying off-contract, its $450 cost is $50 more than a lot of those other phones, and true midrange-priced handsets besides, like the Motorola Moto X. If you're paying off-contract and it's a real bargain you're looking for on Verizon, you'd be better off passing up on the Remix in favor of another device.