M8S， That is HTC M8 fashion version. Compared with its flagship M8, it gave up the highly praised metal body on the M8, changed the body material to plastic, and changed the camera configuration from M8's dual lens to 13 million pixel single lens. With other main technical parameters basically unchanged, the sales price dropped from 5299 yuan (official price) of the M8 to 2999 yuan, As a result, when the fashion version just announced its specifications, many consumers cried out their conscience, and the voice of buying was also rising one after another.
I'm curious about the battle effectiveness of HTC, which puts down its posture and seizes the mid tier market at a cost performance ratio.
Appearance:
In terms of appearance, the M8S can give beginners a small surprise. Thanks to the arc shaped back design, it fits the palm very well, and gives beginners a high impression. But it's a pity that the polished plastic on the back of the white model has no anti pollution ability in the process of use. In hot summer, as long as you hold it in your hand for about an hour, the smooth back will become greasy and very slippery, which is really a must.
Front with family style design
The back feels good, but not dirty.
The power key is located on the top, with circular metal wire drawing decoration, but the key travel is short, and the feel is poor, At the same time, it also causes great inconvenience to the operation.
The fuselage is nearly 10mm thick, but thanks to the arc design, it looks very thin visually.
Universal data cable/charging interface and 3.5mm headphone connector are located at the bottom.
The left and right borders of the E8 are not narrow, so the size of the body is much larger than that of the NEXUS 5 under the same screen size.
Screen:
The screen parameters of the M8S (E8) are basically the same as that of their eldest brother M8, which is also a main reason why netizens are crying out for conscience. However, based on the consideration of the pricing range, the comparison object of this screen is the mobile phones that are also in the 2500 yuan range and have the same excellent cost performance: NEXUS 5。
The M8S screen has bright colors, but there are obvious color scales during color transition.
In general, the M8S screen has bright colors, high contrast, large viewing angle, and no whitening in the diagonal direction, but the color restoration ability needs to be improved.
Music playing ability:
The M8S supports playback of music in aac, amr, ogg, m4a, mid, mp3, wav, wma (Windows Media Audio 10) and FLAC formats. It is undoubtedly good news for music loving users to support lossless music addition. However, since the M8S has only 16G of body memory, if you are a music lover, you must buy an expanded SD card.
The M8S, like the M8, has BoomSound speakers, which are impeccable both in volume and sound quality when played out.
In the dynamic visual effect module, the mobile phone can automatically search the lyrics online and display them synchronously, which is very useful.
The music playing interface of the M8S has a "dynamic visual effect" module, and this visual effect is not as simple as the screen saver interface on Sony mobile phones. After it is turned on, the mobile phone will automatically search the corresponding lyrics online and display them according to the ID3 information of the songs, and the smoothness of this part and the animation effect of the interface are impeccably good, However, when using this function in the open screen state, it is basically to watch the battery brush off, and it will also increase the heat of the phone, so this function is basically used against friends.
The M8S has built-in HTC BoomSound sound effect. When the headset is plugged in and the BoomSound sound effect is not turned on (It is turned on by default and cannot be turned off when using external display) ， The M8S has a good listening sense and quality for a mobile phone without additional audio hardware (Compared with mainstream machines such as S4, S5, Note 3 and iPhone) When matching with the W4R, which is not easy to push, it can already do a good low-frequency diving, and its separation is also commendable. It also has enough thrust, and the sound is relatively good and endurable. It has been skilled in most popular music, and the biggest shortcoming is dealing with the songs of female singers like Liang Jingru, who have more teeth, The control force of the PO port of the M8ST is not enough. Sometimes it is not possible to control the dental sound within an acceptable range. Sometimes, there is a feeling of "prick".
After BOOMSOUND is turned on, it can be clearly felt that the mid frequency of the sound has been dragged down from the sea level, and the volume of low frequency and high frequency has been shamelessly increased, but the quality has not been greatly improved. The sound field has become larger and weaker, and there will be a sensation of blockbuster.
In general, this sound effect can be used as a means to improve the sense of hearing when paired with earphones like Apple's original Xiaobai. However, if your earphones are of a higher grade, it is unnecessary to turn on this sound effect.
Photo proof:
M8S firmware version is 1.0.0.M8St, Android 4.4.2； The NEXUS 5 firmware version for comparison is LPV79, Android L。
Daytime imaging comparison:
In the case of good daytime light, the performance of the M8S camera is only average. The overall white balance is yellow, and the color saturation and image contrast are not excellent. The only noteworthy thing is that thanks to 13 million pixels, the image details and sharpness are good.
HDR sample comparison (NEXUS 5 is HDR+):
In the comparison of this group of HDR proofs, the M8S is a disaster. During the light measurement, too much emphasis was placed on the dark part of the picture, resulting in the overall overexposure of the picture, and a serious purple edge phenomenon appeared in the upper left corner.
Night view comparison (M8 opens night view mode, NEXUS 5 opens HDR+):
In the contrast of night scenes, the white balance of M8S is seriously red, the saturation of color is also greatly reduced, and the picture is heavily smeared, which does not have any advantage over the NEXUS 5 with optical anti shake.
Of course, the M8S still has the HTC ZOE function, which is really playable Very high, but due to the mediocre quality of photography, sometimes people do lose the interest of playing.
The biggest highlight of the image part of the M8S is that it can record 1080P video at 60 frames per second, and the quality of video recording is very high, without any jelly effect, which is commendable.
Conclusion: The M8S uses the mainstream 13 million pixel camera, but it is obvious that this camera does not perform well at the same price in the daytime or at night. It is unknown whether the poor quality of the lens itself causes HTC to make bricks without straw, or HTC is afraid that the M8S will endanger the M8's position.
System:
Like M8, the UI of M8S is HTC's deeply customized Sense 6 based on Android 4.4.2. Since SoC, RAM, etc. are the same as M8, the overall operating experience and functions (of course, M8S has no infrared emission function, which is different from M8) are basically the same as M8. I won't repeat it here. Please refer to the detailed evaluation of HTC M8 on this website for details → Click here to arrive directly 。
Like M8, M8S It also has the function of Motion Launch, which can unlock the phone or start other functions without using the power key when the screen is not turned on. Of course, the precondition is to hold the phone in the right direction (the lower part of the phone should remain vertical and downward when unlocking, and the phone must be horizontal when turning on the camera), otherwise the phone will judge the operation as a misoperation and refuse to light the screen, 。
Performance:
The M8S has a built-in Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, the model is MSM8974AC, the main frequency is up to 2.46GHz, the performance is very powerful, combined with 2G RAM, the daily operation is very smooth, and there is no pressure to run large 3D games.
Test game 1: real car 3
It should be noted that, Real car racing 3 has no lock frame for the game screen The maximum number of frames in simple scenes can reach 60+, so the number of frames in some scenes (such as the first Suzuka track) will be very high, while the number of frames in complex scenes (here is the Spa GP) will drop sharply, which is the normal level of 8974AC in general, The average number of frames here is only for reference 。
It can run the real car 3 smoothly, but there will still be obvious frame drop in complex scenes (the above scene is Mount Panorama).
Spa GP track screenshot, real-time FPS is 32.
Test Game 2: Modern Warfare 5
On the premise of no cracking limit, GL's game will basically lock 30FPS, and the minimum frame number of M8S running most scenes of Modern War 5 will not be less than 28FPS.
5 screenshots of modern war.
The daily running score of Spider is 744 milliseconds, which is slightly lower than the 660 milliseconds of Note 3 with 5420, but it has exceeded the 800 milliseconds of NEXUS 5 with 8974.
Anthare V5 ran out of 45831 At present, the performance belongs to the first echelon.
According to the results of Anthare video test, the video playback ability of M8S is good. For DTS encoded audio, M8S can install MX Player and download a custom decoder for perfect playback.
Endurance:
The battery life of the M8S is good. I can use it normally for two days, including Wi Fi Internet access and playing large games. However, since the test model is mobile, it does not support Unicom 3G and 4G networks, so calls and non Wi Fi Internet access are mainly carried out under GPRS networks, which is one reason why the life of the M8S reaches one day.
In addition, the M8S will automatically turn on the built-in power-saving mode when the power is low to further extend the endurance. Of course, this automatically turned on power-saving mode can also be turned off manually.
Summary:
advantage:
Strong performance and screen Very good, good audio quality both inside and outside, elegant appearance, reasonable price, good endurance.
Disadvantages:
1. The body size is larger than many 5-inch models, and the frame is wider.
2. The top power key feels bad. It is recommended to install a one button screen locking tool for daily operation.
3. The camera image quality is poor.
In the second half of 2014, various manufacturers will launch smartphones equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 805. As the main force in the first half of 2014, the 801SoC still seems to have good performance. Compared with its flagship M8, the M8S has a more user-friendly price and lighter body, but it has not shrunk in performance, which makes the M8S powerful in the midrange market.
HTC, as one of the first mobile phone manufacturers to join the Android camp, has accumulated a lot of experience in the Android system for a long time. The Sense UI after the baptism of time has the most exquisite design and the most fluent user experience. These advantages are unmatched by many models in the 2000~3000 market. If you can accept the quality of the M8S camera, then in this level, M8S is a very good choice.
