One day the HTC One will be available (well, not on Verizon) and people will buy it because it’s a good phone. On that same day those same people will be greeted by the One’s setup process, which is a painless procedure that will walk them through their new smartphone’s software.
HTC’s setup procedure is basically what you always wanted from all those “installation wizards” you’ve encountered over the past 20 or so years of personal computing. It’s quick, easy, visual, and pretty smart too. Best of all, the process is handled on the web, so you can breeze through each step from the place where all your bookmarks and passwords live — your computer.
Once you turn on a factory-fresh HTC One the process is simple: setup WiFi on the smartphone and then point your computer atstart.htcsense.com. The next step is to verify your handset, which is what allows the web page to issue commands to the phone. After that you can go ahead and start customizing.
The process looks like this:
You start by choosing a personalized theme and then adding in your feeds, apps, sounds, bookmarks, wallpaper, and lock screen setup. It might not seem like a much to offer but once you think about a) how much of a pain this all is when on a small screen b) how most people will never change their feeds or background and c) this stuff actually matters on the One with HTC Blink, you’ll get a better idea of why HTC went through the trouble of setting this up. After all, it’s one thing to put in lots of cool features, it’s altogether another to get people to use them. And, have no doubt about it, people understanding and using a smartphone’s cooler features is a win for the manufacturer in both the short term (as far as user happiness) and the long term (growing brand loyalty).
After choosing my Blink interests (predictably technology, trending news, and internet), adding in a topic categories, I was able to get popular apps on my phone instantly. These includes typical must-haves, like Pocket, the Kindle app, Instagram, Yelp, and Gate Guru, as opposed to the sponsored crap that you might expect to see in a situation like this. I hit 100MB and the site warned me that the download would take a few minutes, but I was fine with that.
Then I chose my ringtone, notification, and alarm sounds. Again, these are easy to do right on the device, but why not get it done in a simple, streamlined form? Bookmarks, wallpaper, and the lock screen setup went smoothly as well.
After personalization you can add accounts to your smartphone. Interestingly, the only options here are Yahoo, Dropbox (for that free 25GB account), Hotmail, MS Exchange, and “other email”. The obvious omission from this is the ability to add your Google account, though that likely has more to do with how Android is setup than HTC missing a step.
When the setup is done your phone will beep and you’ll have an alert verifying that you’d like to process these changes. After that, the apps will start downloading and soon your new HTC One will be just how you want it to be. You’ll also get an email confirming that your phone was personalized and you need to sign into your HTC Sense account.
With this done, your new Android phone will be well on the way to being setup just how you want it. There will be some more apps you need to get from the Play store, you’ll have to set the alarm clock, and also choose a funny text message sound for your significant other, but you’ll have a properly customized Android phone. Plus you’ll be fully utilizing Blink, which means you are taking advantage of the One’s coolest piece of software.
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