



Two things have been universally true of Android phones over the last few years: stock Android is the best Android, and HTC’s Sense skin is bloated and overwrought. The One certainly can’t change the former — I immediately missed the clean and cohesive look of Android 4.2 on the Nexus 4, plus the features the One eschews by only offering Android 4.1.2 — but it does soften the Sense blow. HTC’s skin’s biggest fault was always that it slowed down an otherwise speedy operating system, and that’s not really the case here. Aesthetically, there are still some frustrating changes, like the cartoonish icons in Settings and a few ugly app icons, but throughout the UI HTC has exercised some much-needed restraint. (Though in case you forget what you’re using, that flipping clock widget is only a couple of taps away.)

This time, instead of re-skinning Android, HTC re-thought it. In a very Windows 8-like move, the company decided that our home screens are an underused space. Why have a desktop full of icons and shortcuts, they seem to be asking, when you could fill it with actual content? HTC answers with BlinkFeed, a Flipboard-like news reader that occupies your entire home screen. Basically, you pick a bunch of news sources (full disclosure: The Verge's parent company Vox Media is a BlinkFeed partner), or connect to Twitter and Facebook, and your phone’s home screen becomes a constantly updating list of stories and updates you might want to read. It’s a handy tool, sure, but I really don’t like having it there every time I unlock my phone — it’s like having someone shove a newspaper in your face every time you open your eyes, and left me overwhelmed by the idea of turning my phone on. You can’t turn BlinkFeed off entirely, but you can set another panel as your home screen, and I found having BlinkFeed’s news one screen away was really nice for when I had a couple of minutes to kill. For those moments, it’s great; for the moments when I don’t have those couple of minutes to kill, I much prefer the normal home screen.

BlinkFeed is handy at times, but it's an exhausting home screen

Once I changed that, swapped the app drawer from its iOS-aping "custom" sorting to alphabetical, and set it to show more than nine apps at a time, I didn’t have much trouble with Sense. A lot of things about Sense aren’t necessarily worse — in fact some, like the tiled multitasking menu, are better — they’re just different when they don’t need to be. The worst offenses are when HTC seems to have refused to decide how best to do something, so it just offers every imaginable solution. In the People app, you can navigate by swiping, or tapping, or long-pressing, and it just gets confusing how best to do something. It makes Android feel unintuitive in places it really doesn’t have to, and gets away from the cohesive design philosophy Android has cultivated over the years. I learned to ignore the excessive options and just go about my day, but it's kind of a disservice to how usable and smart Android can be.

Android’s notification system already far outstrips iOS, and HTC adds a couple of things I like even more. There’s a notification LED embedded in the top speaker grille, which shows when you have a message, a missed call, and the like — you can customize it, too, to only see what you want to see. You can also set the One to show certain notifications on the lock screen, and then swipe the icon up to launch straight into the proper app; it’s really handy for seeing text messages, and neatly combines the strengths of both iOS and Android's notifications.

There’s not much bloatware on the One I tested, though that’s almost certain to change once the American carriers get their bloat-loving hands on the device (look no further than the Droid DNA for an example). This model comes with a few third-party apps like SoundCloud and TuneIn Radio, and adds or redesigns a handful of first-party apps too. I really like the Google Tasks-syncing Tasks app, the Notes app that lets you take audio and written notes simultaneously, and even the News & Weather app despite its apparent total lack of connection to BlinkFeed. The best add-on is the TV app, though, which works with the IR blaster to control your whole home theater system. It’s not a particularly elegant app — it’s basically an ersatz version of Peel, combining a basic on-screen remote control with a visual TV Guide — but it’s easy to set up, and has already come in handy a number of times when my actual TV remote was either lost in the couch cushions or just too far away for my lazy self to go get.