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HTC is finally getting serious about putting some color on their Android phones, too, after starting doing that with WP8 phones last year. However, I’m not sure if this “glamor red” color looks like that on purpose, or it’s some weird effect when it’s applied to aluminum.
So far I haven’t been very impressed with the leaked colors for the HTC One (the blue one, too), but it’s hard to tell if they look like that because that’s exactly the colors HTC chose, or because they chose colors that looked a little different in their rendering programs, but when applied to HTC One’s metal body, they look different.
Samsung’s choice of colors are even worse, for the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4, but I thought the Moto X colors are quite amazing, so clearly there’s a right way to do this. Speaking of Moto X’s colors, HTC says that they were already preparing a personalization website like the Moto Maker, before Motorola announced theirs. It’s good to see more companies wanting to do this, and help customers customize their devices to truly make them their own.
I wonder what role the carriers will play in this, though. So far they’ve forced OEM’s to offer a certain color exclusively to them, because carriers would rather compete on the colors and shapes of someone else’s devices, than compete with their own services. This way they can get their customers to chase the next shiny product, instead of letting them evaluate their services. We’re seeing a tiny bit of progress with the Moto X, which at least promises to offer all colors to all carriers (eventually), and hopefully the whole situation will improve for all other OEM’s, in time.
The red version of HTC One is launching tomorrow on Sprint, exclusively, and will be bundled with NextRadio, an FM radio app. The phone will cost $199 on a 2 year contract, although you will be able to buy-one-get-one-free until August 30th.