HTC says it has one phone to rule them all.
I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET Update.
HTC has announced a brand new flagship smartphone called One.
HTC has not been doing so well lately, so the company is really hoping to wow you on this new phone.
It has an all-aluminum body, moving away from the cheap plastic feel of most Android phones.
The homescreen interface called Sense
looks different.
Gone are widgets like that retro flip clock.
Instead the homescreen has something called Blink Feed, which is like a Flipboard collection of news stories, social media updates and photos that you can flip through.
Oh and there's no way to shut off Blink Feed entirely.
Another unique feature is something called Zoe, which is a photo mode where the camera will automatically take a short 3-second video the same time you take a photo.
So when you scroll through the gallery, it looks like the photos come alive a little.
It might remind you of
Harry Potter photos, but the only people who can see Zoe files are other HTC owners, unless you convert the files.
Oh, and there's also the matter of the rear camera which is 4 megapixels.
HTC calls them UltraPixels and that the sensor can pick up more light and can work better in the dark than the iPhone or Galaxy SIII, but that's gonna be a hard sell for consumers who only care to look at megapixel numbers.
And most top phones have 8-megapixel cameras.
The company is trying to streamline its phone models this year, so the HTC
One will be the same version sold at AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
The 32-gig model is $200 with a 2-year contract.
It appears that Google doesn't wanna feel left out of the retail store trend and is looking into opening Google stores later this year.
At least those are the reports buzzing around.
There wasn't word on exactly where or when, but it could be a place for Google to show off its products like Chromebooks and the latest Nexus tablets and smartphones.
Hotmail is entering its final chapter.
Microsoft is
starting to move all Hotmail users to Outlook.com.
The new free web mail service and the Hotmail service is being phased out.
Users can keep their Hotmail.com accounts, but the others have the access them through the Outlook.com web portal.
Some folks joke about people who still have Hotmail accounts, but I see no shame in Hotmail.
It could be a point of pride when it's hard to get like owning a classic car.
I still have my AOL account, and I have no plans on getting rid of it because it was first email address.
And now it manages all my graymail, but
what's your take on old email addresses?
Do you use Hotmail proudly or get teased for an old email account?
Send me a video reply using Tout or email your comments to update@cnet.com.
That's your tech news update.
You could find more details on these stories at our blog CNET.com/update.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
