HTC One

Why You’ll Like It HTC is second to none when it comes to industrial design. The HTC One has a full metal unibody case that a short study of potential consumers said they prefer over the Samsung Galaxy S4. It runs Android and runs it well, and has a customized skin/launcher in HTC Sense 5 that does a great job in making the features of the phone shine. Released in April, the HTC One is still probably the best phone launched this year. Why You Won’t Unless you're getting the “Google Nexus” edition of the HTC One, there are some quirks you might not like. First among them is the “Blink Feed,” a news aggregation feed that you can’t get rid of without installing a third-party launcher. HTC also likes to do odd things with photo sharing with its “Zoe” features in the camera. Then there's the camera itself. HTC calls the technology behind its camera “ultrapixels,” as opposed to the classic megapixels. The camera works well enough, especially in low-light conditions but it's not the best smartphone camera on the market this year.