Can HTC's One mini take on Samsung's S4 mini?

Apart from the absence of a memory card slot and smaller battery this new entrant in the market has the potential to take the crown among the battle of the minis.

HTC One mini finally makes an official appearance. After months of speculations, rumours and leaks we finally see the official word on the mini version of the hugely popular HTC One mobile phone.

The HTC One mini seems to be the more affordable younger sibling of the HTC One. The construction includes the same aluminium unibody which made the earlier version hugely popular.

The ultrapixel camera is also present along with an LED flash support making the deal more lucrative.

According to Peter Chou, the executive officer of HTC, "The HTC One mini embodies everything that makes the HTC One a success on a smaller but equally eye-catching scale."

And seems like he isnt too much off the mark with this one. Pun intended.

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Going by the specs, the phone comprises of a 4.3" screen which might please many due to its more practical size.

The Super LCD 2 is capable of dishing out 720p resolution. The screen's 341 ppi surely makes the display a treat and is a major draw.

Also the Gorilla Glass 3 will make the buyers more confident regarding the protection deployed by HTC.

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The HTC One mini is powered by 1.4GHz Krait 300 processor and is accompanied by Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Chipset. Adreno 305 GPU and 1GB of RAM completes the hardware array.

The phone is running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean straight out of the box with HTC Sense 5.

Other goodies included are the BlinkFeed and social media aggregator, Zoe camera and Video highlights.

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Seems like HTC has got the OS software part right for this phone absolutely.

The phone has the same 4 Ultrapixel cam as the HTC One and comes along with an LED flash. But it lacks the image stabilisation feature. The image stabilisation should have been included as it does comes in handy but not something which you cannot live without.

HTC kind of compensated it by providing the ImageChip 2, which basically means the image processing will result in fantastic results.

The other features are the same vis a vis the HTC One, and so is the front facing camera at 1.6 Megapixels.

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The phone's front side comprises of dual speakers with BoomSound.

The phone's major downer can be the lack of memory card slot. The phone inherently comes with 16GB storage capacity which genrally should be good enough but certain section of prospective buyers might prefer not to be tied down with 16GB.

To make matter more glaring, only 12GB is user available.

Another factor which should have been taken care of is the lesser battery being supplied. At 1800mAH, it does seem less.

The fact that it is non user replacable, it does score a significant negative point.

We can expect the Indian pricing of the HTC One mini to be near about Rs 30,000 to sustain in the competition.

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Verdict and competition

Another flagship phone, another mini. So what drives HTC One mini here? The answer is pretty much everything. Pretty much everything except for the lack of memory card slot and the smaller battery. Otherwise this new entrant in the market has the potential to take the crown among the battle of the minis.

The HTC One mini is directly pitted with Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and by the looks of it, the HTC model is winning this battle. HTC has done a great job at not scaling down the HTC One drastically which was the case with the Samsung's counterpart.

While comparing the HTC One mini with Sasmsung Galaxy S4 mini: At about 20 per cent better clock speed vis a vis processor, better screen, better display, better build quality.

The HTC One seems to be getting the critical things right. This is refreshing to see.

Ofc with the S4 mini, you get the memory card slot, slightly faster processor and slightly bigger RAM, and the slightly smaller footprint overall, which just might tilt the balance in its favour.

A few voices may vouch for the IR blaster as well (the remote control feature for your TV) but it still is a very close match between the two and the slightly better features of S4 doesnt seems to be really bothering HTC one mini too much.

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