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Topic: Mobility

Get Started with the HTC One; easy phone setup from your computer

Summary: It is a real pain to setup a new phone and enter all of your account information, select wallpapers and ringtones, and more. HTC solved that problem with their HTC Get Started service.

Matthew Miller

By for Smartphones and Cell Phones |

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(Image: Screenshot by Matthew Miller/ZDNet)

HTC Get Started service

Setting up a new smartphone can take a couple of hours as you enter your username and password for various accounts, try to find all the apps you like and get them installed, choose a wallpaper, select a ringtone, and customize to your liking. HTC makes this process much easier with its new HTC Get Started service that is available for the new HTC One.

Due to an unfortunate carrier move, HTC had to scramble to get HTC One evaluation devices out to the press and completely lift the embargo on the device. Thus, those of us who were lucky enough to get one have been spending excessive time this weekend testing the device. I have an international HTC One that has near-final firmware and will be writing up some of my experiences.

The first thing I wanted to try was the out-of-box experience that a "normal" customer might go through, so I went through the web browser-based HTC Get Started service and have screenshots in this gallery.

When you start up the HTC One — watch out for the shock of the BoomSound — you are asked if you would like to use the HTC Get Started service. A website URL, start.htcsense.com/#pairing, is shown along with a passcode that you enter on the website.

You then select the device you want to set up and since I currently have a T-Mobile SIM in this evaluation HTC One, I selected the HTC One at T-Mobile.

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Topics: Mobility, Android, HTC, Reviews, Smartphones

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6 comments
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  • looking forward

    To your full review. I'm not a Android guy at all but it almost hurts me to admit, the more I see & read about that phone, the more I'm starting to like it
    gordongr
    Reply 2 Votes

  • HTC Get Started service

    This looks like an exciting new feature, but will it work with a Mac? Because I don't own a PC.
    rickyboyfloyd
    Reply Vote

    • Yes, it is all through a web browser

      This service is carried out through a web browser so works on any computer. It then sends the settings wireless to your HTC device.

      You will also be happy to know there are tools on the HTC One to transfer content from other phones, including the iPhone, and I will have screenshots of that in a future article.
      palmsolo (aka Matthew Miller)
      Reply Vote

  • Nice elegant setup

    I am so looking forward for your full review. This phone seems excellent so far.
    Marlon Milligan
    Reply Vote

  • HTC One

    Now all they have to do is to actually make the phone available - something they haven't as yet been able to accomplish. They do talk a good game about it, though.
    jeyges
    Reply Vote

  • Better than Samsung...

    Samsung KIES (Samsung's companion software) is an absolute nightmare (think iTunes, in 1 000 000 times worse). This crap nearly bricked my new Note II (splendid phone, by the way) by freezing in the midst of an update. I had to spend hours trying their "emergency recovery" procedure several times to get my phone back. Shame on Samsung (they think they can go without Google but they don't even master the basics of their phone's environment)... and shame on Google : by not offering a generic companion for Android (for installing updates, local calendar and contact sync, etc.) they leave the door open for the bogus, confusing, redundant, invasive, services from their "partners".
    (By the way, KIES sync with Outlook created duplicates by the dozens and Samsung's help pages advised to stop syncing with Google in order to avoid "conflicts" So they really seem to think of their crap Software as a troyan against Google's ecosystem (Nice try, Samsung: quess whose software I dumped... ).
    JB5645
    Reply Vote
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