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Review – HTC ONE: Blinkfeed

By Sami Mughal
htc one

What is it?
As HTC define it on their HTC ONE page:

The pulse of your world is in the palm of your hand.

This is essentially a one stop information hub for everything that is happening. Blinkfeed not only connects to social media services like Twitter and Facebook, it also tells you when your favourite shows are on, what appointments you have in your calendar, and feed from other apps that you will configure on this.

It also arranges it in a beautiful collage, so it looks beautiful. If it features photos, you’ll see photos behind the text. Responding to these is also instant, as a single click on any item of news takes you to the appropriate app, and while you may think there could be a delay, there was none.

I like it… where can I find it?
By default, this is your home screen. So every time you press the Home button on your phone, you will automatically be taken to this.

How does it work?
It just connects to all of your apps which you configure, and pulls data from them. It updates itself regularly, but you can also force it to update by pulling the screen down, much like most Android apps.

Data… did you say data?
Yes. To get all that information, it will download all that data. You can either keep your data off and only use this on Wifi, or look at it less, as it only seems to update when you look at it.

Home screen? What if I don’t like this?
You can always change your Home Screen from this to another empty panel on your home screen. Swipe to the left and you’ll get an empty panel.

Keep your finger on that panel till you go the options page where you may add widgets/panels.
On that hold down the panel you want as HOME.

Once you get the option ‘SET AS HOME’, drag that panel to it and it will become your new home screen.

No… you don’t get me. I want to remove this!
There is no ‘kosher’ way of removing Blinkfeed from your HTC ONE. At least not at the moment. Your one way out is to not configure it so it never picks up any data, and hence doesn’t show you anything. It will waste a panel effectively, but what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you. Quite literally in this case.

Phew… but is it really that good?
Yes. Yes it is. It is another one of those ‘needs to grow on you’ kind of features they pack into phones these days, and while I had my doubts about it originally, I do like to look at it when I am in a hurry and don’t want to look at all the apps individually. And as I said, you can configure it.

So, you like it. Should it be on all Androids?
Yes, and no. The beauty of Androids is the ability to customize. I don’t think Blinkfeed (or an equivalent) should take over Androids, but it would be nice to see it as an app you can install on your HTC devices, and have it as an option you can turn on or off. The key word here is control.

So… what are the conclusions?
Blinkfeed. Good. Instant access to news. Does use data to function, so may be caught unawares. Easier to read than any other equivalent effort by anybody else.

I like this… where do I get it?
You get it on the HTC ONE, which is available from Vodafone at the following link:
http://www.vodafone.co.uk/htc/
We, of course, thank Vodafone for sending us this review sample of HTC ONE.

Read our First Impressions/Quick Review of the HTC ONE:
https://www.oxgadgets.com/2013/04/review-htc-one-first-impressions-and.html

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