Ten things I hate about my HTC One

HTC One is a powerful piece of hardware. The battery life is amazing, charging curve is off the roof. The design itself is sleek not to mention the beats audio component which is a plus. The blinkfeed is my favorite news aggregator I ever used, it is so initiative and simple as if am holding a refreshing newspaper.

However, there are some key software features which makes it really annoying, I have compiled this list not because I'm moving from HTC but to somehow deliver this post to mobile makers to remind them that they are making a smart phone, manufacturers tend to forget that. Some of you will reckon that most of these items in the list can be achieved with apps, workarounds and little tweaking, the problem is that a phone is suppose to deliver these out of the box. 

This list may apply to other smart phones as well.

EDITED in 29-Oct-2010 after Android 4.3 Update Sense 5.5, HTC fixed few of the things in the HTC making it much better.

1. Phone Only Option

Although RIM lost track of their goal recently, the Blackberry had some wonderful options which make a core phone including this option. In meetings or while you sleep you can keep your phone in Phone Only mode thus making all notifications silent yet make calls active. 
Android 4.3 Update Sense 5.5 introduced this function DO NOT DISTURB, good but still it you have to go and add exceptions for that to work.

2. Panels Limitation
Panels are the place holder for apps, HTC allows up to 5 panels only. Android 4.3 Update Sense 5.5 added one extra panel to make them 6 panels. I really don't get the limitation here, If it is a kind of a Zen thing it is not working. I use a whole panel for a calendar, another one for a blink feed another one for a TV widget.

3. ScreenShot Sharing
When you take a screenshot the usual common sense is that I want to share it. I have to go and dig for it in the gallery to find it open it then share it from there.
Android 4.3 Update Sense 5.5 introduced this function 

4. Making Phone Silent
Here are the steps to make a phone silent, Switch on phone, Unlock Phone, Pull Down Notification, Then click twice on the sound icon to make it silent. Such operation should be available in a slightly simpler approach don't you agree? Like holding the power button and make silent for instance?

5. Downloading a New App
When i download a new app it is supposed to naturally be found at the end of the apps list. Someone made a decision to sort the apps alphabetically confusing us by default and I had to change this option to most recent so I can see them. You see the options are there, however configuring them is hectic, these should go for granted.

6. Shortcut

Have you tried creating a shortcut to the panel. It is like a puzzle. You hold the app and you have to drag it a small icon on the top of the screen which then allows you to drag . I don't know about you but I usually hold my phone with one hand and use my thumb to click and drag it is physically impossible to do that, see picture my thumb cannot reach the shortcut menu. The panels should pop up automatically whenever I drag an app.

7. Sharing contact
What attracted me to Android is the flexibility. One of the features is the ability to share almost any object. In HTC surprisingly you cannot share a contact via email or whatsapp, you can only send a contact via SMS. To me and you this is probably ancient technology plus it costs money.

8. Cannot share downloaded image

When you download an image from the web or I receive it on whatsapp or any other application there is no option to share it or interact with it. You can only see the image details, this is one of the most frustrating missing features in HTC One. See image below

9. What day is it?

Can you imagine how frustrating it is that you carry a quad core device with 2 Gigabytes of memory that you have to struggle with it to tell you what day is it? To find out what day is it first i turn on my device. I unlock it. Then i drag the notification window down to find out that it is Sunday.  Seriously this should be available on the lock screen. I don't get it seriously how difficult is to think of intuitive essential things.

10. Accessibilities
Calculator, notes and calendar are not available instantly. These apps or widgets are important and should be accessed with ease.

I LOVED what HTC did to fix this, they added an option to add a panel on the lock screen, I added my calculator there.



11. Pinch and Zoom 
Apparently there is a limit to which you can zoom in to a picture. I don't know why