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REVIEWS
Mystery Caller
HTC’s latest offering, the One (M8), has understandably caught Mystery Caller’s eye. However, she’s a bargain hunter and wants to know if it is worth paying more for an improved One.
All the SIM cards used in our network Mystery Caller are privately purchased from independent dealers and retail shops. This means the networks have no way of knowing it’s Mobile News calling them.
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‘We currently don’t have any HTC phones at all,’ came the response I had been dreading
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6th Orange 14
Time of call 16:10 Duration of call 5.5 minutes Length of queue 0 minutes Assistant introduced by name Yes
Neither the HTC One or HTC One (M8) were listed on Virgin’s website so I wasn’t too optimistic as I got through to a CSA there. “Let me just double check which phone is better,” Daniel said, which gave me some hope. “We currently don’t have any HTC phones at all,” came the response I had been dreading.
Thinking of the blank page before
me, I asked whether he could recom- mend a similar phone. This was met by a sigh before Dan- iel asked: “What are you looking for in a phone?” The CSA went for the Samsung Galaxy S4, because it has a five-inch
screen and quad-core processor. It also has a 13-megapixel camera and a long battery life. The CSA asked whether I am on a
contract before asking how many min- utes I would like.
From this he recommended Virgin’s
“Essential” package, which includes 500 megabytes of data plus unlimited calls and texts for £41 a month. That is steep for such a small amount of data. With nothing else to say, I ended the call. I had already asked whether Daniel thought Virgin would be stocking any HTC devices in the near future but he didn’t know. Not his fault. The CSA was fairly polite and loses
In other words, the CSA had made a recommendation based on no knowledge of the device
I began my call to EE by saying I wanted to hear about the Orange 3G plans only as I understood 4G was priced at a premium. Suzanne wasn’t having any of it. “We are finding EE gives people a lot more value for money,” she said. The CSA didn’t elaborate but I got the idea – I would be sold 4G plans. Unlike the other networks, Orange ap- peared quite keen to push the HTC One (M8). Suzanne asked about my require- ments (minutes, texts,data) and about my budget (£40).“That is a really good budget,” the CSA said. “I can do every- thing you need with that.” Reassuring. Indeed, I could get the HTC One (M8) with 1,000 minutes,unlimited texts and 2GB of data for £37.99 a month. The device would cost £19.99 upfront. This seemed
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like a brilliant deal compared to some of the others – especially the tiny one-off fee which sounds too good to be true – but I reminded Suzanne that I was after a com- parison between the two handsets before signing anything. The HTC One would still cost £37.99 per
month but I would only pay £9.99, only £10 less than the One (M8). “The One (M8) is definitely worth
going for,” Suzanne said. I asked why. “Let me get the details. The M8 is a new handset so I have to get myself familiar with it,” came the reply. In other words, the CSA had made a recommendation based on no knowledge of the device, and purely because it is a more recent release. I didn’t like this at all (hence the low overall score).
I’m not sure Danny fully understands the difference between ultrapixels and megapixels
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=3rd 17
Time of call 13:53 Duration of call 9 minutes Length of queue 0 minutes Assistant introduced by name Yes
“Bear with me, I will need to go into the website to get the differences be- cause I do not know them off the top of my head,” O2’s CSA Danny said before leaving me in silence for 30 seconds. While it is unreasonable to expect a CSA to memorise specifications, it would have been good to keep the con- versation going while the relevant web pages were loading. Danny ran through the main features of the HTC One (M8), which include 20-hours talk time, a five-inch screen, 2GB of RAM and the latest version of Android. The front camera is five megapixels, which Danny said “is not great”. I think he had confused front with rear. He paused and said he wanted to check the information was correct as
he didn’t think a new Android handset would have a five-megapixel camera. He left me on hold for two minutes and came back to explain that HTC is actually using “ultrapixels”, which, ac- cording to Danny, “basically means you can’t put a megapixel on them because they’re too good”.
He then ran through the specifica- tions of the HTC One. It has 18-hours talk time, a 4.7-inch screen, and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera. In terms of pricing, there is more of a difference between the cost of the HTC One and One (M8) on O2 than there was elsewhere, from what I could see. For example, the One is free on plans cost- ing £43 and above. With the One M8, all tariffs come with some sort of upfront
cost – with a £38 contract also involving a £49.99 one-off fee. That was it from O2. It was by no means a terrible performance, al- though I always see being left on hold as a bad sign. There was also confusion over the camera quality – I’m not sure Danny ful- ly understands the difference between ultrapixels and megapixels. To be fair on him, not many customers will either. And at least he didn’t make the mistake of insisting it was four megapixels. O2 has said it will continue to stock the HTC One alongside the HTC One (M8), which is perhaps why there is decent price differentiation between the two devices. EE and Three will not be taking new stock of the older handset.
The CSA also confused ultrapixels with megapixels and didn’t know whether Android 4.3 was the latest version or not (at first she said no, later changing this to a yes). She said the M8’s processor was “so much quicker” than the One’s, at 2.3GHz compared to 1.7GHz. But it had less internal memory – 16GB compared to 32GB (Suzanne didn’t point out this could be expanded). She then half-corrected herself and said the camera was five ultrapixels. The CSA was confused: the rear camera has four ultrapixels and the front five megapixels.
I ended the call with the impression that the CSA’s objective was to make me buy the more expensive device on 4G, rather than inform and help me.
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5th 15
Time of call 15:56 Duration of call 10 minutes Length of queue 0 minutes Assistant introduced by name Yes
almost by default. There wasn’t much he could do considering my require- ments – although the Galaxy S4 recom- mendation sounded like a safe bet rather than anything tailored. A little more enthusiasm wouldn’t
have gone amiss either; in this case a perfect manner score would have taken Virgin above Orange and away from last place.
The tariff offering 500 megabytes
of data wasn’t the right one to go for either as he should have checked to see how much data I wanted – two gigabytes. Having said that, this wasn’t really a fair test as Virgin does not offer either device.
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