HTC Desire Eye: The Android superior selfie shooter

Any Port in a Storm

"The power and volume buttons have been thoughtfully positioned. The same goes for the 3.5mm audio jack and micro USB port"

Where though? Yours and my ideas of "thoughtfull" might be very different and none of the images used show any of the ports - just what looks like either the SIM Card tray cover or the MicroSD Card slot cover on the side.

Bezel balance

It's not easy to see with the pictures provided but it looks as if the top bezel which needs to house all the front facing optical gubbins is noticeably larger than the bottom bezel which is a shame as it makes the phone look unbalanced to me, in the same way as the M8 (and M7) is pleasingly symmetric.

Is that the case? Does it actually look top-heavy in the, er, plastic?

Tittles are for toffs

And idea how this functions as a phone ie making telphone calls?

Why has HTC’s flagship M8 One not been more popular?

I think HTC have previously burned some of their reputation with some so-so phones in the past; I think of them as a bit hit-and-miss now, and I don't want to gamble on accidentally getting one of the misses.

I've yet to find any decent real-world use for NFC...

KFC, maybe.

Optional

It is another 'one of those phones'. If it was half the price, I'd probably have it in a heartbeat (plus or minus delivery times) and if more sympathetic colours were available.

As it is, however, it doesn't, to me, seem to offer value. Against, eg, the Motorolas (G, E), the Ace 4, the Desires of various sorts, the Ascends, the Sony Experia 3, it probably is better, but is it twice-the-price better? I can't convince myself that it is, and while the phones that I listed aren't perfect, for me, one of those will have to do.

Just to take a simple example, a Moto G (with 4g/LTE, while we are there) with an SD card slot (Moto seems to have made their designations sufficiently confusing that I can't work out which do and which don't) and a better camera would be fine; user replaceable battery would add icing, and a bit of a bump of ram wouldn't go amiss. But add all of that, and you wouldn't add that much to the cost, but where are the phones that are that small step up? It seems to me - and to the product pricing experts at the 'phone manufacturers, seemingly - it is a big step up, or nothing.