HTC One mini and HTC One: What's changed?

The HTC One Mini has just been unveiled, and it looks great so far. As the names of the smartphone would imply, the One and One mini have quite a bit in common. However, there are some major differences that are worth taking a look at. Let’s get right to it, shall we?

Getting the most obvious things out of the way, the One mini is a bit smaller than the One. It measures 132 x 63.2 x 9.3 mm compared to the One’s 137.4 x 68.2 x 9.3 mm dimensions. It’s also much lighter, weighing in at 122 g over the One’s 143 g. This definitely helps the One mini to come out as a more portable device. The edges of the mini also appear to be different because of the thicker strip of polycarbonate plastic. The One also had a strip, but it wasn’t as thick as on the mini. This should make the mini drastically more durable than the One.

The smaller One mini

The second most obvious thing to notice is the display. The One mini has a smaller 4.3-inch display compared to the One’s 4.7 inches. It also has a lower (but still impressive) resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, giving it the quite impressive pixel density of 342 ppi. Of course, this is nowhere close to the 469 ppi on the One, but considering the difference in sizes, the One mini’s display is still crisp.

Moving on to less obvious things, the One mini’s display uses an older Super LCD2 panel compared to the S-LCD3 on the One. The difference, however, is hardly major and most people will be just fine using the older panel. A plus point for the mini is the newer Gorilla Glass 3 by Corning. The newer version of Gorilla Glass is said to be much stronger than the Gorilla Glass 2 used by the One.

While both the One and the One mini have the same rear camera—a 4 megapixel shooter with an Ultrapixel sensor and a separate Image2 chip for image processing—the mini’s front-facing shooter isn’t as good. It’s a 1.6 megapixel camera and lacks HDR capability. Storing all those pictures could also be a hassle, since the One mini only comes with 16GB of internal memory with no option to upgrade. The One, on the other hand, has two variants—32GB and 64GB.

Big brother One

Under the hood, the mini is a considerable downgrade from the One (understandably so, since it’s much less expensive). It is powered by a Snapdragon 400 dual-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz. Compared to the One’s quad-core 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600, it pales in comparison. However, considering the lower display resolution, the smartphone should still be quite snappy. Graphics are also handled by an older Adreno 305 chip compared to the One’s incredibly powerful Adreno 320.

With all of this comes the age old question: “How long will either of these phones last me on a single charge?” The mini is equipped with a 1800 mAh battery with a quoted standby time of 500 hours on 2G and 692 hours on 3G. The quoted talk time of the mini is up to 20 hours and 40 minutes on 2G and up to 13 hours and 20 minutes on 3G. The One, on the other hand, has a larger 2300 mAh battery with a quoted standby time of 500 hours on 2G and 480 hours on 3G. Talk time on the One is quoted to be 27 hours on 2G and 18 hours on 3G.