With Christmas gift giving just around the corner, Maxis are currently offering a number of affordable smartphones from as low as RM0 with their Festive Sale. This includes the HTC One, Huawei Ascend Y511, Samsung Galaxy Ace 3 and Samsung Galaxy Y Neo provided you sign up for a 24-month contract with either the TalkMore28 or TalkMore48 plans packaged with a mobile internet plan. Both plans are also quite affordable and should make for a good value present come Christmas time except for perhaps the HTC One, the only premium smartphone in the bunch but the price is quite good considering the still rather high price it retails for. Check out the table or links in this article for more information:

Qualcomm often does many things because they can which results in some interesting setups like this slow-motion surround rig crafted from 130 HTC One smartphones. Qualcomm are calling it "The Ultimate Smartphone Photobooth" and have done a very interesting video showing how they made awesome 360-degree rotation slow-motion videos with just a Qualcomm powered smartphone, or in this case 130 of them. Qualcomm haven't said why they chose the HTC One but do check out the video in this article.

HTC has recently announced that it would make 5 limited edition gold plated HTC One smartphones. The phones would be gold plated with 18K gold and have "MOBO 18" laser engraving on the back for the 18th MOBO awards (for the UK's best urban music artists). The cost estimated for each gold HTC One is estimated at RM14199 each but it is very likely that they are not going to be available for sale. Instead, it could be the prizes or awards for the MOBO awards ceremony. Tech specs and features for the gold HTC One will likely remain the same though. If you must get the HTC One in gold it is already available from Goldgenie in 24K gold at a lower pricing.

In many ways, the HTC One is a pioneer, innovating upon features that most Android smartphones lack. It was the first premium Android smartphone to offer more than just a plastic casing and paid much more focus to design (almost like the Apple iPhone). It offers features like Full 1080p HD on a 4.7-inch screen, an UltraPixel camera and software features which you won't find on any other smartphone. Is this the smartphone for you though? Read on and find out.

Design / Appearance

Before the HTC One, most Android smartphones all looked the same, were basically made out of plastic and looked downright boring. The HTC One shook things up by taking the same design approach as the Apple iPhone, giving much thought and focus to a new tough metal unibody chassis with a rounded brushed metal back. In making the overall smartphone, HTC designers decided to stick to a zero-gap construction, which makes for a beautiful smartphone with no gaps in between the components. The result is a nearly sealed case apart from the earphone jack and micro-USB port. In short, the HTC One is one of the most beautiful smartphones in the market, even after so many other Android smartphones have followed or tried to follow what it did.

In what looks like an "if you can't beat them, join them" move, a bigger screen HTC One looks to be coming soon. With a cheaper and smaller screen version of the HTC One already in the works, we can't help but wonder if HTC One is following Samsung's current decision to make various versions of it's flagship smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, Active, Zoom, Mega). The only difference being that the HTC One versions will likely come packing ultrapixel rear cameras.

The HTC One looks great and works well with its 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. Quite a few smartphones are now sporting this same processor with some even going to 1.8GHz and 1.9Ghz. Not to be outdone, HTC One tech fans at Pocketnow decided to see what would happen if this same processor on the HTC One was overclocked to 2.0GHz and above.

Been waiting for Celcom and the HTC One to join forces? Well,  if you have then now is a good time as Celcom are now offering the HTC One for as low as RM1428. As befitting Celcom's flexibility, the telco is offering the 32GB version of the HTC One under 12 months, 18 months and 24 months contracts. For the full pricing details check out the table below:

Considering the HTC One's elegant aluminum unibody design it seems hard to put it through such punishment, but one user did just that, bringing a hammer, knife and key to it. As expected of the scratch resistant screen, it didn't really get damaged by any of the three, and the tough aluminum unibody chassis also didn't dent all that readily. However, this time the torture test was more thorough and exposed the weaknesses of the back and chamfered sides of the aluminum unibody design.

With the HTC One officially launching last week, it was only a matter of time before the telco bundles came out as well, which is what U Mobile had in mind with these HTC One bundles. Considering that the HTC One is probably higher priced than most other smartphones of its class at around RM2299 it is great that U Mobile is offering the smartphone from as low as RM1488. For more details, check out the table below:

Malaysia got its official HTC One launch recently and it saw the Aluminum unibody Android smartphone get both the 32GB and 64GB versions. Price-wise the HTC One 32GB version retails at RM2299 while the HTC One 64GB version retails at RM2499. According to HTC, both versions should be available for the 4 major telcos of Celcom, Maxis, DiGi and U Mobile by early May. SenQ may also get it around this time while other dealers may get it a bit later in mid-May.