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Honey, HTC’s shrunk the kid! The HTC One Mini was officially unveiled this morning. Check out Andy’s glorious hands-on photos, video and carefully considered opinions here. Go on, I’ll wait.
Pretty nifty, huh? The One Mini will be available in the UK “later this year” according to high-street phone-flogger Phones 4U, who’ll be selling the bejeezus out of it.
EE and O2 would also like you to know they’re selling the mid-sized metal marvel, but had no further deets to share. It’s a 4G phone, so it’ll work on EE’s pricey superfast network.
We don’t yet know how much the One Mini will cost, either SIM-free or on a contract, with HTC keeping schtum on the subject.
The aluminium One Mini is clearly inspired by Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Mini, a mid-range blower with the same style as the mighty S4. Both are slightly disingenuously sold as being just as powerful as their bigger-screened brethren, when their specs are significantly weaker.
A dual-core processor sits inside the One Mini, in theory less powerful than the One’s quad-core bruiser. Makers Qualcomm claim the chip’s new design means more grunt for less battery power than the quad slurps, but we’ll have to judge that for ourselves when we get it in for review. Saving the battery is a reasonable concession, as it’s inevitably a less capacious cell in the phone’s smaller chassis.
The S4 Mini, meanwhile, is measurably less powerful than the normal S4, but was still able to play 3D games comfortably. In general it’s up to most things Android can throw at it, but you are losing bragging rights over the S4 and S4 Active.
As for the screen, it’s shrunk from 4.7 inches on the One to 4.3 inches on the One Mini and lowered the screen resolution and pixel density. At 720p though, it’s still slightly sharper than the iPhone 5‘s 4-inch screen and Andy reported it looked “satisfyingly sharp” in his hands-on.
What do you reckon of the One Mini so far? How cheap does it need to be? Is it a shame it’s not packing a quad-core chip, or a sensible battery-saving decision? Leave a comment below, or over on our uncompromising Facebook page.
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HTC One Mini hands-on
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Update: O2’s been on, and it’s going to sell it too. Lovely.
