[2] It is the successor to the company's 2012 flagship model, the One X—which was critically acclaimed, but commercially unsuccessful due in part to insufficient marketing efforts.

To make the device stand out among its competition, HTC One was developed with a major emphasis on unique hardware and software features; which included a unibody aluminum frame, a 1080p full-HD display, dual front-facing stereo speakers, a camera with a custom image sensor and the ability to automatically generate montages of media, an updated version of HTC's Sense user experience, BlinkFeed—an aggregator of news and social network content, and an electronic program guide app with the ability to serve as a universal remote via an IR blaster located in the device's power button.

[5] The company's flagship phone in 2012, the One X, received critical acclaim from reviewers, but was commercially unsuccessful in the wake of Samsung Galaxy S III and iPhone 5.

HTC's CEO Peter Chou officially confirmed and briefly revealed a prototype for the new device during a company event on 1 February 2013.

However, due to high demand and supply issues (especially surrounding the components used by its camera), HTC announced on 22 March that the device would "roll out in the U.K., Germany and Taiwan next week and across Europe, North America and most of Asia-Pacific before the end of April."

[24] A special variant electroplated in 18 carat gold was unveiled by HTC in October 2013 as part of a collaboration with Goldgenie and the Music of Black Origin Awards.

Discussing the partnership, HTC's EMEA president Phil Blair explained that "the best artists have always been given gold discs to celebrate their success, but today most people listen to music on their phone.

HTC would still be able to use the remaining microphones it acquired in good faith; the offending component was replaced with an alternative version in future production runs.

The polycarbonate forms a band around the edge of the device, covers the top and bottom ends, and bisects the back with two lines, one of which flows around the camera below.

The unibody frame itself takes at least 200 minutes of precision CNC cutting to machine, and the final result is a solid slate of anodized aluminum, white polycarbonate, and tempered glass with chamfered, polished edges.

[38][39] HTC One is equipped with a 4.0-megapixel rear-facing camera module that contains a custom image sensor marketed as UltraPixel, which is composed of pixels that are 2.0 μm in size.

[35][41] In September 2013, HTC confirmed "isolated reports" of users experiencing a purple or red tint with the camera in low-light conditions.

[44] Among other features, the software allows users to maintain customized home screens which can contain shortcuts to applications and widgets for displaying information.

Other pre-installed apps on HTC One include a browser with Adobe Flash support, Calendar, Contacts, Dropbox, Facebook, FM Radio, Google Chrome for Android, Kid Mode, Music, Notes, Polaris Office, SoundHound, Tasks, TuneIn Radio, and Weather (data provided by AccuWeather).

In comparison to previous versions of the software, Sense 5 uses a flat, minimalist visual style with refreshed icons and the condensed variant of the Roboto font family.

Instead of a traditional home screen display with apps and widgets, Sense 5 defaults to a screen known as BlinkFeed, a news aggregator which displays a scrolling grid of news headlines from selected sources (as syndicated by Mobiles Republic) and social network content in a similar fashion to Flipboard and Windows Phone’s live tiles.

[30] The camera app includes a new shooting mode known as Zoe (alluding to the zoetrope), which captures a short video alongside each photo taken.

[47][48] In July 2013, HTC began rolling out an upgrade to Android 4.2.2 in selected regions; alongside internal changes, it added a quick settings panel to the notification area, Instagram support for BlinkFeed, auto focus/auto exposure lock to the camera, additional Highlights themes, and optimized how Zoes are saved (producing a static JPG and a MP4 video file, instead of saving each frame as a separate image file).

The update introduces a refreshed interface with updated versions of stock apps such as BlinkFeed, customizable color themes and fonts, along with a new "Extreme Power Saving Mode", which caps CPU usage and disables non-essential applications, multitasking services, and sensors to conserve battery life when running low; the mode only allows access to the phone, messaging, e-mail, calendar, and calculator apps.

Per this commitment, HTC planned to release Lollipop by the end of January 2015, but the company missed its deadline due to bugs in the operating system that needed to be addressed by Google.

[77] Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal favored the One over its closest rival, Samsung's Galaxy S4, considering the One to be "more polished-looking, and quite capable" in comparison.

Epstein cited differences in hardware construction and industrial design, as well as various features of Sense 5.0; one example included the higher-quality IR blaster and TV app on the One compared to the S4.

[79] The New York Times' technology columnist David Pogue praised the attention to detail in its design, along with its performance, camera, and display quality; and considered it to be "the most beautiful [Android phone] you’ve ever seen".

In conclusion, Pogue stated that "you could quibble with the software overlays, but it would be hard to imagine a more impressive piece of phone hardware.

In combination with its stereo speakers, the One was considered a good phone for viewing videos and playing games, while its call quality was judged as being sufficient.

With regard to performance, HTC One was considered to be "an impressively powerful phone across the board" due to its high scores on various benchmark tests.

[33] Wired’s Michael Calore praised HTC One’s "truly gorgeous" and "seamless" design, and considered the quality of its internal speakers to be the best of any smartphone thus far.

Some of HTC's changes to the Android UI were criticized, including its "cramped" on-screen keyboard, and its deviation from the common three-key button layout used by other manufacturers.

[81] The One's industrial design and camera were also praised by both CNET (who gave the phone a 4 out of 5) and PC Magazine (who gave the phone an Excellent rating); however, PC Magazine criticized the inability to properly perform digital cropping and zooming on images taken with the camera, along with the non-removable "bloatware" applications added by AT&T in its version.

Again, the "bloatware" added by Sprint and AT&T was criticized, but HTC's placement of carrier apps in their own separate folder in the application drawer was noted.