to explain these tools, at 5:09 this app executes "USSD" codes from a gui, you would normally run those from the dialer via a # number command, 4:43 is a settings database editor/explorer and the package app is also just another file explorer that is able to show .apk files, 3:52 at the bottom is a PVS analyzer that logs things like inefficient code, apps that keep triggering recurring errors etc.. and also likely an old version of ODPM/Power profiler to monitor power draw. All of this could be added/accessed on commercial phones with a little bit of tinkering, an example for use would be the settings database where you can "unlock" more brightness on many phones. Especially OLED panels do not go to full hardware capability brightness to prevent burn in and excessive power draw, so your brightness slider at max will not actually write a value of 100 to the table that controls screen backlight voltage, but you could do this in there. Same with the volume, the ui maximum shown to the user is not the technical limit where the speakers will sound fuzzy and bad.
I actually was a former HTC public tester and I remember every couple of weeks testing new devices for HTC. What you have right there is genuine and it's always fun to see what a device will eventually become especially from the early stages to the final build. I loved my work at HTC - made us really passionate about smartphones overall.
Just got a new battery for my old Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime. I'm no longer using that phone as my main phone, but it felt so good to bring life back to that device. It was my most complete smartphone experience ever: compact size, big battery, headphone jack, microSD slot, notification LED, metal unibody, rear fingerprint sensor, no camera bump, no display cutout, easy to unlock bootloader. Bought it in 2017 and used it for 3 years. And the phone still works. Phones back in the day weren't so boring.
I'm loving this little niche you've found of revisiting old phones; I think it's fascinating. I hope you get around to reviewing the OnePlus X sometime. I remember really liking that phone.
I booted up my first smartphone last night -- the 2015 Moto X Force/Droid Turbo 2 and the two things that struck me was how every icon shape was so distinct for each app and how much I miss the quick-access sidebar in Settings 😢
@@handlemonium I had Android 6 Lineage OS then Android 7 Viper OS on my Samsung J2 Pro. That phone had terrible battery but beautiful screen even after being so old. The Display size was perfect for reading manga which I did a lot on it. Sadly it broke last year.
To this day the HTC M8/M9 besides the newer OnePlus 8 Pro and the iPhone 5S are some of the most beautiful phones I had the pleasure to use. Just stunning.
I like the normal one best but I think it wouldve been cool if the black one was like a "special edition" type. Maybe having more ram and storage springled on with special lil apps. I miss the feeling of smart phones being so new and exciting where every year was a huge jump in performance and design. What a time to be alive
Man I miss the good ol days we still had audio headphone jack, microSD expansion slot, beautiful metal builds, experimental cameras, front firing speakers, Infrared remote control. the HTC Sense skin was always one of my favorites it worked so well and it has its own charm unlike Sony's near vanilla UI and Samsung's too damn heavy TouchWiz. Oh what I would give to get some of those things back in the current era, I am totally missing microSD support for newer phones, sure there's more onboard storage but having 256gb- more than 1tb instantly is so convenient. I can just chuck stuff into the card and swap them out put into a pc or other device its so good.
People can reminise all they want, but the fact is people didn't buy the HTC 10, which is probably the best phone they ever made. Same goes for LG, people just don't put their money where their mouths are.
It’s because the M9 is wasn’t a great upgrade on the M8 and the 10 was more of HTC not listening to feedback. Samsung dropped a stinker with the S5 and S6 but bounced back with the S7 and beyond, even recovering from the Note 7 fiasco. HTC didn’t market well after the M9 and they weren’t willing to be ambitious anymore probably due to low funds.
@@Kofi_Mensahs_BurnerAccount all you've said is about marketing, nothing else about how they didn't listen to feedback or how the phone was worse than the competition
I loved the HTC phones before the One models, the ones that had Beats Audio built in & the red Beats logo somewhere on the backs. Let me tell you every Galaxy & iPhone I've had the last decade NOTHING had better sounding audio than my HTC droid dna back in highschool around 2015. You could custom maximize the potential of any earbuds or headphones on that phone you could literally even blow any pair if you wanted to (I learned the hard way several times) That was the every day music listener's dream phone. Ever since iPhone bought beats from them I swear they haven't sounded any better and of course, no true sound equalizer on iPhones, and downloading equalizer apps all sound like shit or don't work.
@@ShreN_ the Focus Pixels probably wasn’t the move. 4 mega pixel cameras definitely weren’t good especially on the M7. They improved on the M8 but honestly I can’t remember a USP for the M9 or the 10. During that time I had an Xperia Z and while the processor was slower than the M7/M8/S4, in my opinion it was the phone that had it all.
This is a EVT prototype ( Engineering Verification Test) that they used to test hardware and software, thats why the cheap plastic casing. Main function was to hide the design while everyone tested the above-mentioned in public while they nail in the design on the DVT protitypes. You should have no issue connecting it to internet, the only internal tools used are SSD Tool and Smart Recorder Only identifiable and trackable information is the IMEI you showed in the back but its aight, dlubt they care about a EVT from 11 years ago.
Fun fact: The HTC M8's prototypes were in plastic to test internals and display, the finish design wasn't decided until 2 months prior release. Lastly, the HTC M8 was so successful that halfway through its life, they were supposed to release it in red and green finishes. I don't know why they didn't, but they sure looked nice!
I'm pretty sure I saw this when it was up for sale, glad it's getting to be shown off, very cool. I did pickup a prototype of what likely seems to be an unreleased (?) HTC Mini 2, a bluetooth companion handset for your smartphone. Very interesting thing, I've dug into the firmware and it's actually the guts of a generic GSM phone, without the phone. Prototypes can let you in on some weird development processes and unreleased designs, very fun to play with and preserve!
Circa 2012, spring of my 6th grade year. I still remember a friend of a friend who had been gifted an HTC One V, the one with the chin on it. Classic ticker style clock and all. I was amazed, even compared to my iPod touch 4th gen. I remember watching every video on it I could find because I wanted one so bad. Every time my mom would go to the grocery store I would ask to go with her just to look at the electronics. Alas, my folks had flip phones and didn’t think their son needed a phone just yet as I had an iPod that didn’t cost them money monthly. Even explaining it didn’t have to be activated, they didn’t budge. Fast forward a few years later, I found buying and selling classmates phones was a pretty effective way of getting money for gas and Applebees on Friday night. Through my trading around, I found myself in possession of a One M8 and felt like I was at the top of the food chain compared to a few years prior, probably 2016-ish, sophomore year. Good times.
My fave phone of all time. I loved the M8, I wish I could still take 3D photos as well The UI was beautiful, it handled my headphones without needing to use an AMP... Great phone
I'd love a hybrid of the prototype and the real thing. The tighter corners and darker color of the prototype and the aluminum, speaker grills, and lack of camera bump from the actual product. RIP HTC.
Great work Ryan. Am enjoying this series of revisting Android phones from yesteryear. It makes for a refreshing change from the monotonous dirge of other content creators. Keep up the great work.
I wanted to buy that Nexus 5 you showed at the beginning a while ago but forgot about it when I was lucky enough to find and buy a prototype Essential Gem phone (the cancelled long thing) on there. These protoypes can be super interesting for sure.
YOu should make a video on Redmi Note 4 and how it stands now. One of the best phones ever made . I had it for more than 6 years and ultimately I lost it to the ocean
I absolutely loved my HTC One M8 back in the day so it's cool seeing the development prototype of it. I think I may have preferred the squared off design without the depth sensor while maintaining that gunmetal gray color. I agree it's a shame where HTC ended up. With the momentum of the M7 and M8, I was so hyped for the M9 and that was disappointing. And once they lost their footing, they never recovered sadly. LG were similar with the G4 bootloops. They lost the trust of the public and never regained it.
I purchased & used a prototype for a short time. The LG Genesis for Verizon. Verizon never got this phone but other carriers did. My sister & I got into a fight & she broke it. Speaking of the devil it's in my pile of things to burn as I speak. Never got to fully utilize it. Wish it wasn't broken 😒
I have a prototype S24 Ultra and it's great. The only difference is the housing. It's got a glossy black back and fully flat brushed aluminum sides. It's like a brick lol. Oh and it has 8gb ram rather than 12. Uses the normal OneUI software and when I ran 3DMark it scored higher than 80% of the S24 Ultras. I payed 550 buck for it.
I miss this period of smartphones. The year later Qualcomm singlehandedly tanked the whole android landscape with their absolutely horrible SoCs. At that point I begrudgingly switched to iOS. Anyway the slowness of a "well used" unit is also possibly due to the more degraded storage.
to explain these tools, at 5:09 this app executes "USSD" codes from a gui, you would normally run those from the dialer via a # number command, 4:43 is a settings database editor/explorer and the package app is also just another file explorer that is able to show .apk files, 3:52 at the bottom is a PVS analyzer that logs things like inefficient code, apps that keep triggering recurring errors etc.. and also likely an old version of ODPM/Power profiler to monitor power draw.
All of this could be added/accessed on commercial phones with a little bit of tinkering, an example for use would be the settings database where you can "unlock" more brightness on many phones. Especially OLED panels do not go to full hardware capability brightness to prevent burn in and excessive power draw, so your brightness slider at max will not actually write a value of 100 to the table that controls screen backlight voltage, but you could do this in there. Same with the volume, the ui maximum shown to the user is not the technical limit where the speakers will sound fuzzy and bad.
Thank you so much for the insight. It's really interesting stuff
I actually was a former HTC public tester and I remember every couple of weeks testing new devices for HTC. What you have right there is genuine and it's always fun to see what a device will eventually become especially from the early stages to the final build.
I loved my work at HTC - made us really passionate about smartphones overall.
The M8, Xperia Z5, LeEco, Redmi 3, etc with all metal build. Miss those days man 😭
There's a new OnePlus phone with a metal back can't remember the name though could be ace series
3, 3t, 5 and 5t@@keshanwaidyanayake2056
omg i had forgotten about LeEco, it looked fantastic
Z5 didn't have an all metal build? You mean X/XZ/XZ1?
@@keshanwaidyanayake2056 it's the new OnePlus Nord 4 .....saw it in person. Brings back a lot of memories with how it feels in the hands
Oh, the nostalgia. It seems that HTC was THE goat not so long ago, but it has almost been a decade now that it doesn't exist...
Just got a new battery for my old Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime. I'm no longer using that phone as my main phone, but it felt so good to bring life back to that device. It was my most complete smartphone experience ever: compact size, big battery, headphone jack, microSD slot, notification LED, metal unibody, rear fingerprint sensor, no camera bump, no display cutout, easy to unlock bootloader. Bought it in 2017 and used it for 3 years. And the phone still works.
Phones back in the day weren't so boring.
Man, I really miss 16:9 phones
Hate zooming to fill screen on RUclips and having to crop out 40% of the image
same here
Glad I'm not the only one. They should at least keep them at 18:9, a nice middle ground
6 inch at 16:9 was much wider than the 6.7 inch at 20:9
Yeah but the taller aspect ratio favours social media apps, messaging apps and newsletter websites@@batmanatkinson1188
I'm loving this little niche you've found of revisiting old phones; I think it's fascinating. I hope you get around to reviewing the OnePlus X sometime. I remember really liking that phone.
Man I teared up when I saw the og HTC 4.4 kitkat.. with their iconic wallpapers.. It's still one of my fav ui
Android automotive dev here, dev apps are only used on development builds and never make it to the production build.
For some reason, I am loving that UI.
Heck I'd daily drive an Android Skin like that.
I booted up my first smartphone last night -- the 2015 Moto X Force/Droid Turbo 2 and the two things that struck me was how every icon shape was so distinct for each app and how much I miss the quick-access sidebar in Settings 😢
@@handlemonium I had Android 6 Lineage OS then Android 7 Viper OS on my Samsung J2 Pro. That phone had terrible battery but beautiful screen even after being so old. The Display size was perfect for reading manga which I did a lot on it. Sadly it broke last year.
Had this back in the day, it was top notch.
To this day the HTC M8/M9 besides the newer OnePlus 8 Pro and the iPhone 5S are some of the most beautiful phones I had the pleasure to use. Just stunning.
I like the normal one best but I think it wouldve been cool if the black one was like a "special edition" type. Maybe having more ram and storage springled on with special lil apps. I miss the feeling of smart phones being so new and exciting where every year was a huge jump in performance and design. What a time to be alive
Do you think you can flash a custom ROM on it and make it usable?
Less tha 4k subs to go Ryan. We are almost there.
Man I miss the good ol days we still had audio headphone jack, microSD expansion slot, beautiful metal builds, experimental cameras, front firing speakers, Infrared remote control. the HTC Sense skin was always one of my favorites it worked so well and it has its own charm unlike Sony's near vanilla UI and Samsung's too damn heavy TouchWiz.
Oh what I would give to get some of those things back in the current era, I am totally missing microSD support for newer phones, sure there's more onboard storage but having 256gb- more than 1tb instantly is so convenient. I can just chuck stuff into the card and swap them out put into a pc or other device its so good.
People can reminise all they want, but the fact is people didn't buy the HTC 10, which is probably the best phone they ever made.
Same goes for LG, people just don't put their money where their mouths are.
I have a 10 in my collection and it's a much, much better and sturdier piece of hardware than the M8 (which I also own)
It’s because the M9 is wasn’t a great upgrade on the M8 and the 10 was more of HTC not listening to feedback. Samsung dropped a stinker with the S5 and S6 but bounced back with the S7 and beyond, even recovering from the Note 7 fiasco. HTC didn’t market well after the M9 and they weren’t willing to be ambitious anymore probably due to low funds.
@@Kofi_Mensahs_BurnerAccount all you've said is about marketing, nothing else about how they didn't listen to feedback or how the phone was worse than the competition
I loved the HTC phones before the One models, the ones that had Beats Audio built in & the red Beats logo somewhere on the backs. Let me tell you every Galaxy & iPhone I've had the last decade NOTHING had better sounding audio than my HTC droid dna back in highschool around 2015. You could custom maximize the potential of any earbuds or headphones on that phone you could literally even blow any pair if you wanted to (I learned the hard way several times)
That was the every day music listener's dream phone. Ever since iPhone bought beats from them I swear they haven't sounded any better and of course, no true sound equalizer on iPhones, and downloading equalizer apps all sound like shit or don't work.
@@ShreN_ the Focus Pixels probably wasn’t the move. 4 mega pixel cameras definitely weren’t good especially on the M7. They improved on the M8 but honestly I can’t remember a USP for the M9 or the 10. During that time I had an Xperia Z and while the processor was slower than the M7/M8/S4, in my opinion it was the phone that had it all.
HTC made some great smartphones that were even beyind their time.
I wish some brand just have an all metal version of their flagship, sacrificing the wireless charger or work around it.
This is a EVT prototype ( Engineering Verification Test) that they used to test hardware and software, thats why the cheap plastic casing. Main function was to hide the design while everyone tested the above-mentioned in public while they nail in the design on the DVT protitypes.
You should have no issue connecting it to internet, the only internal tools used are SSD Tool and Smart Recorder
Only identifiable and trackable information is the IMEI you showed in the back but its aight, dlubt they care about a EVT from 11 years ago.
Both the prototype and the m8 look glorious. I miss HTC
Fun fact: The HTC M8's prototypes were in plastic to test internals and display, the finish design wasn't decided until 2 months prior release.
Lastly, the HTC M8 was so successful that halfway through its life, they were supposed to release it in red and green finishes. I don't know why they didn't, but they sure looked nice!
I think it's because new colours are usually used to add more interest and sales to a device, and there was still enough interest anyway.
Congratulations on a 100k Subscribers. Road to 1 million!
The prototype looks kinda nice ngl .I miss the sense UI 3.6 with all the 3d features,icons,live wallpapers and widgets and the windows vista look .
I'm pretty sure I saw this when it was up for sale, glad it's getting to be shown off, very cool.
I did pickup a prototype of what likely seems to be an unreleased (?) HTC Mini 2, a bluetooth companion handset for your smartphone. Very interesting thing, I've dug into the firmware and it's actually the guts of a generic GSM phone, without the phone. Prototypes can let you in on some weird development processes and unreleased designs, very fun to play with and preserve!
To this day HTC One M8 is the most luxurious feeling phone I've ever owned, based on my memories. I haven't seen or held one in ages though.
The prototype looks almost identical to the HTC Butterfly (the lesser known plastic-finished HTC One back then)
I missed the m8 due to basically being an early adopter and already having an m7, then not neeeing a phone until the m9 had released. Loved the video
Circa 2012, spring of my 6th grade year. I still remember a friend of a friend who had been gifted an HTC One V, the one with the chin on it. Classic ticker style clock and all. I was amazed, even compared to my iPod touch 4th gen. I remember watching every video on it I could find because I wanted one so bad. Every time my mom would go to the grocery store I would ask to go with her just to look at the electronics. Alas, my folks had flip phones and didn’t think their son needed a phone just yet as I had an iPod that didn’t cost them money monthly. Even explaining it didn’t have to be activated, they didn’t budge.
Fast forward a few years later, I found buying and selling classmates phones was a pretty effective way of getting money for gas and Applebees on Friday night. Through my trading around, I found myself in possession of a One M8 and felt like I was at the top of the food chain compared to a few years prior, probably 2016-ish, sophomore year. Good times.
My fave phone of all time. I loved the M8, I wish I could still take 3D photos as well
The UI was beautiful, it handled my headphones without needing to use an AMP... Great phone
I'd love a hybrid of the prototype and the real thing. The tighter corners and darker color of the prototype and the aluminum, speaker grills, and lack of camera bump from the actual product. RIP HTC.
Based on the back camera design & material i'm pretty sure this is one ME minus fingerprint scanner
I still want to have that phone over 10 years later. Good video btw!
Great work Ryan. Am enjoying this series of revisting Android phones from yesteryear. It makes for a refreshing change from the monotonous dirge of other content creators. Keep up the great work.
I do wish they kept the M8 more square like this. It's the main reason I actually prefer the M7
The back of this phone looks very similar to the Nexus 6.
The squared black corners with large front-facing speakers being housed in the top/bottom bezels immediately reminds me if the Razer Phone
@@handlemonium I heard that HTC's design engineer went to Razor before them made the Razor phone 1 and 2
The prototype looks more like a desire model from around that time
i remember stealing a song which is preloaded in htc one back in the day. really loved the desgn.
I wanted to buy that Nexus 5 you showed at the beginning a while ago but forgot about it when I was lucky enough to find and buy a prototype Essential Gem phone (the cancelled long thing) on there. These protoypes can be super interesting for sure.
Brother we're getting you to 100k.
Congratulation on 100k
YOu should make a video on Redmi Note 4 and how it stands now. One of the best phones ever made . I had it for more than 6 years and ultimately I lost it to the ocean
This looks so much better good god what did they do
I absolutely loved my HTC One M8 back in the day so it's cool seeing the development prototype of it. I think I may have preferred the squared off design without the depth sensor while maintaining that gunmetal gray color.
I agree it's a shame where HTC ended up. With the momentum of the M7 and M8, I was so hyped for the M9 and that was disappointing. And once they lost their footing, they never recovered sadly. LG were similar with the G4 bootloops. They lost the trust of the public and never regained it.
Thats a really nice lookimg phone. Very different vibe to the M8
Looked so good, I miss bezels
You're nearing 96,242 subscribers! 🥳
SSD in programming speak is System Software Development if I can remember the term correctly during college years. If that is at least related. 😅
never had it, but somehow it feels like home
Watching this on my brand new HTC U24 Pro. But no, the old HTC phones with HTC Sense is ahead of its time.
I always wonder what main phone are you using
OP12
I purchased & used a prototype for a short time. The LG Genesis for Verizon. Verizon never got this phone but other carriers did. My sister & I got into a fight & she broke it. Speaking of the devil it's in my pile of things to burn as I speak. Never got to fully utilize it. Wish it wasn't broken 😒
I was going to buy the one M8 but eventually decided on the Z2 from Sony
I have a prototype S24 Ultra and it's great. The only difference is the housing. It's got a glossy black back and fully flat brushed aluminum sides. It's like a brick lol. Oh and it has 8gb ram rather than 12. Uses the normal OneUI software and when I ran 3DMark it scored higher than 80% of the S24 Ultras. I payed 550 buck for it.
htc sense UI i always liked
AAAhhhhh so you're the one who bought that! I was watching that eBay listing😅😂😂
It was between that and a few other ones haha
I would love a new M8. The design was perfect! It was my favorit Smartphone! Today i am using the ROG Phone 5s Pro but still miss my HTC M8.
I prefer the front end but the plastic back is definitely something I’m glad they didn’t do lol.
Plastic is very practical
I like the prototype more
I wish I'd got this phone instead of a Nexus
I miss my htc m8 it was a awesome phone
El prototipo está mejor que la versión final . Para mí
I like the background
This is 🔥. I borderline hate you right now, but it's all envy.. LoL.
I had the choice of this or a Nexus 5 proto. But I think this one was cooler 😛
Htc M8 GREATEST PHONE OF ALL TIME
But the prototype looks so GOOD!!!
i kinda hate glass build, man the old day full metals phone. . . even gaming phone got wireless charging now, lol
I miss this period of smartphones. The year later Qualcomm singlehandedly tanked the whole android landscape with their absolutely horrible SoCs. At that point I begrudgingly switched to iOS.
Anyway the slowness of a "well used" unit is also possibly due to the more degraded storage.
HTC
dame i knew just by the pixelated pics 😅
What red Mouse is that?
Pulsar X2
6:35 thats not custom os what you have there is a Google Play Edition M8
It's not a play m8. It has custom software on it (perhaps it's the play edition software).
yey.. 100k..
Please make a video on Xiaomi 11T pro, would love it
i like the older ui designs better. f these rounded ahh minimalist nonsense
Start a gaming channel Ryan.
Closest thing I have is Flat4K 😛
Man if there's a hands on showcase for these ancient phones, I'd probably take a visit
In my country of course 😅
Loooking at these comments is funny because you can buy one and still use it , if “love it” so much😂😂😂 stop finding excuses
please do something about your nose it's really distracting
If i will hit the button it will get unsubscribe i don't wanna loose you bro
watching from my HTC M8,it's still running 🫠
I loved my HTC M7-9 phones. They were just 🤌