Since the HTC One ‘Google Edition’ was made official earlier today at the D11 conference, there’s been a lot of questions regarding the IR Blaster, Camera, and Boomsound. Well we’ve got some answers that you may or may not like. Let’s start with that camera.
Will the stock Android camera experience replace the HTC camera app (and thus all the HTC features)?
The HTC One Special Edition contains the stock Android camera experience. It doesn’t contain HTC features such as Zoe, etc… It will not be the Sense camera experience, but the camera will still produce comparable high quality pictures.
So you basically will only be able to do what the stock Android camera app allows you to do. So no Zoe’s, no video highlights or anything else HTC bakes in. But we will see Photospheres and panorama’s since it will come with Android 4.2.2. HTC does promise that the camera will still produce high quality pictures. We don’t have proof yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Now onto that IR Blaster.
Will the IR blaster be functional?
The IR blaster will be disabled out of the box since this is a stock Android device.
So you won’t be controlling your TV with the HTC One “Nexus”, at least not yet since stock Android doesn’t support infrared devices yet.
What about Beats Audio and BoomSound?
Will the Beats Audio mode software switch be present in the stock version (Hugo Barra has seemed to indicate it will)?
It features the hardware benefits of Beats Audio, but it does not have the software indicator in the status bar.
The actual Beats Audio software is still present, the switcher is just taken out. So BoomSound should sound relatively similar to the regular HTC One. Additionally, Beats Audio will be on all the time.
Will the buttons be remapped?
Will the HTC logo on the front be remapped (as it’s an inactive button area) as the recent apps button, or will the old double-tap on home gesture still be used?
Button configuration will be the same as the original HTC One.
Google/HTC will not be remapping the buttons on the HTC One. So you’re still stuck with the Home and back buttons only.
So there are some answers to your questions, we can thank Android Police for getting all this information for us. The HTC One ‘Google Edition’ will be hitting the Play Store on June 26th for $599, that’s the same day the Galaxy S4 ‘Google Edition’ hits the Play Store as well. It’s going to be US only for now as well.