If you like seeing movies and websites on a big screen (or have an inferiority complex), the gargantuan Ascend Mate 2 should be right up your alley. At a massive 6.3 x 3.3 x 0.37 inches, the Ascend Mate 2 makes Samsung's 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 3 (6.0 x 3.1 x 0.33 inches) look downright Lilliputian.That said, Samsung's ludicrously large 6.3-inch Galaxy Mega dwarfs the Ascend, at 6.6 x 3.5 x 0.31 inches. HTC's ginormous 5.9-inch One Max comes in at a similarly bulky 6.5 x 3.2 x 0.41 inches.

Not only is the Ascend Mate 2 among the biggest phablets out there, it's also one of the heaviest. At 7.1 ounces, the Mate 2 is a bit heavier than the 7-ounce Galaxy Mega. Both handsets, though, are considerably lighter than the metal 7.7-ounce One Max.

Beyond its considerable bulk, the Ascend Mate 2 is a relatively attractive handset. Its removable rear panel features a black, soft-touch material that provides a decent grip and sports a white Huawei logo. The handset's edges get a deep gray paint job, while its face is coated in a glossy black finish. Above the phone's huge display is its 5-megapixel selfie camera.

There are no physical buttons on the Ascend Mate 2's face, as the phablet instead uses on-screen navigation keys. The Ascend's power button and volume rocker are situated on its right edge, making them easier to reach with your thumb. The phone's 3.5mm phone jack sits on its top edge, while the microUSB port is on the bottom.

If you're going to strap a massive 6.1-inch display to a smartphone, you might expect it to sport full HD resolution. That's not the case here, however, as Huawei opted for a lower-res 720p panel to keep costs down.

Despite its relatively low resolution, the Ascend Mate 2's display offered clear, vibrant images and videos. The trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy" looked beautiful on the phablet's huge screen, as Rocket Raccoon's orange prison jumpsuit and green lasers from a massive aerial battle appeared to pop off the display. However, whites viewed on Ascend Mate 2's screen had a distinctly yellow tint when compared to the Galaxy Mega's display.

The Ascend Mate 2's screen displayed 98.9 percent of the sRGB color gamut. That's a hair better than the Galaxy Mega's 97 percent, and much better than the HTC One Max's 89.7 percent. All three phablets, however, fall below the smartphone category average of 118 percent.

The colors that the Ascend Mate 2 does display are fairly accurate. Using our colorimeter, the handset registered a Delta-E rating of 4.3 (0 is perfect). That's about even with the Galaxy Mega's 4.2, and better than the category average of 5.29. The HTC One M8 screen was far less accurate, with a Delta-E rating of 9.5.

Other than sheer size, the Ascend Mate 2's screen stands out because of its brightness. The display hit 420 nits on our light meter, which is well above the smartphone category average of 352 nits. The Galaxy Mega's display reached 365 nits, while the One Max's topped out at 402.

The Ascend Mate 2 features a single rear-mounted external speaker capable of pumping out 82 decibels of sound. That's better than the smartphone category average of 80 dB, and even with the Galaxy Mega's rating. The HTC One M8, however, was the loudest, registering 83 dB.

The Mate 2's audio quality was too tinny for our liking. Bass-heavy songs such as French Montana's "Pop That" sounded flat, while guitar riffs were a bit too harsh. The Galaxy Mega offered noticeably better audio performance, but it was the HTC One Max and its dual front-mounted speakers that sounded the best, producing deep bass hits and excellent highs.

The Ascend Mate 2 runs Google's previous generation Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and features Huawei's proprietary Emotion UI 2.0 Lite skin. The interface differs dramatically from pure Android in that it doesn't include a traditional apps drawer, but instead puts all of your apps on one of the Ascend's nine available home screens. You can put your apps into folders to help better organize them.

Unfortunately, the Ascend Mate 2's main home screen is far too cluttered for our liking. From top to bottom, there's a time and weather widget, music player, photo album widget, favorite contacts widgets, Google search bar, Play Store shortcut and Google apps folder. Below those options are five omnipresent shortcuts for the Phone, Contacts, Messages, Email and Browser apps. It's a jumble of icons and widgets you'll probably want to clean up.

The handset's quick settings drawer features nine customizable controls, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Brightness and Volume. Tapping the More button gives you the ability to switch out one of the original settings for seven additional options, ranging from Profiles and One-hand UI to Gloves Mode.

Huawei has also broken up the Ascend Mate 2's Settings menu into two sections, General and All. The General section provides access to 10 basic options, including Wi-Fi, Wallpaper, Font Size, Screen Lock and others. The Settings menu's All section provides users with a more comprehensive list of options.

If you're interested in a simpler version of the Emotion UI, you can change the handset's home screen style to Simple mode, which replaces the apps' icons with a series of large blocks with easier to read text. Huawei means for this mode to be used by first-time smartphone users and the elderly, though it can be useful for longtime users looking for a more simplified version of Android.

Befitting its mid-tier price, Huawei packed the Ascend Mate 2 with a 1.6-GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and 2GB of RAM. We did notice a hint of a slowdown while playing the resource-intensive "N.O.V.A. 3," but that was only during times when we were surrounded by hordes of enemies. Beyond that, the Ascend was relatively speedy and responsive.

Speaking of "N.O.V.A. 3," the Ascend Mate 2 loaded the game in 16 seconds, which is on a par with the smartphone category average, and about even with the dual-core Snapdragon 400-powered Galaxy Mega's 15 seconds.

The Ascend Mate 2 took a more leisurely 12 minutes and 48 seconds to complete our VidTrim test, which involves transcoding a 204MB, 1080p video to 480p. That's considerably slower than the Galaxy Mega's time of 9:15 and about 5 minutes longer than the category average.

Unsurprisingly, the Mate 2 offered similar results on various synthetic benchmarks. On the Geekbench 3 test, which measures a device's multicore CPU performance, the Huawei scored 1,486. That's better than the Galaxy Mega's 1,098, but lower than the smartphone category average of 1,806.

On the Quadrant benchmark, which tests a device's overall system performance, the Ascend Mate 2 notched 10,658, beating the Mega's score of 8,204, but falling behind the category average of 12,780.

The Ascend Mate 2 scored 4,844 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test, which was better than the Mega's 4,552.

The Ascend Mate 2's 13-megapixel rear camera captured fairly sharp, colorful photos outdoors. A shot of a flower pot was clean and colors were accurate. The Galaxy Mega's 8-megapixel camera shot equally clear photos, though colors had a bluer tint than we would have liked.

When we zoomed in 100 percent on photos, they began to lose their crispness, but chances are most users won't view their shots at full size. Images taken with the HTC One Max's Ultrapixel camera were dimmer than those taken with both the Huawei and Samsung.

Unfortunately, the Ascend Mate 2 fell flat on its face in low light. A photo of a young woman taken without the flash was far too dark, making our subject hard to see. We saw passable results with the flash on, but details looked soft around the subject's skin.

A 1080p video shot with the Mate 2's rear camera offered lush colors, though details were lacking. Portions of a nearby tree looked blurry, while buildings looked like they had a slight haze over them. The Galaxy Mega's video, on the other hand, made colors look flat, but details were crisp and clear.

The Ascend Mate's 5-MP front camera captured detailed and colorful photos of our subject, his red beard contrasting nicely with his blue eyes. For group selfies, Huawei offers a Groufie mode. (No, that's not a joke.) Groufie works like a panorama; you take a center picture, followed by shots to the left and right. Make a mistake, though, and your friend's arm may end up sticking out of someone's head.

Huawei has done well to keep the preloaded apps to a minimum on the Ascend Mate 2. Beyond the standard array of first-party Google apps, Huawei offers 20GB of free storage service via Bitcasa, as well as the aptly named navigation app, Navigate.

The Phone Manager app can help you better monitor the device's performance by showing you which apps are running and how much memory they're using. You can also block messages and phone calls from specific numbers and adjust the Ascend Mate 2's power plan.

One of the Ascend Mate 2's biggest draws is its massive 3,900 mAh battery. On the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which involves continuous Web surfing over 4G LTE with the display brightness set to 150 nits, the Ascend Mate 2 lasted a marathonlike 14 hours and 43 minutes on AT&T's LTE network. That makes this the longest-lasting smartphone we've ever tested.

To put that runtime in perspective, the Ascend Mate 2's battery lasted nearly twice as long as the smartphone category average of 7:30. The Galaxy S5 on AT&T endured for 9:42 and the HTC One M8 for Verizon lasted 10 minutes longer than that.

The Ascend Mate 2 lets you make the most of its extra juice by doubling as a charger for other mobile devices. To charge another smartphone, tablet or other gadget from the Mate 2, you'll need to spring for a $9.99 microUSB-to-microUSB cable.

First things first: To even order a One, you'll need an invite from the company or those who already have one. OnePlus says it is doing this because it is a new company and is looking to manage its early inventory. The company is currently selling the One only through its website, but says it is open to partnering with others.

You can get a 16GB version of the One for $299 and a 64GB model for $349, and both versions are available in silk white or sandstone black. To put that in perspective, the Galaxy S5 without a contract costs $650 from AT&T and $599 on Verizon.

It doesn't just look good, it feels good. The rectangular phone's slightly curved rear has a gritty, sandpaper-like texture that makes for an easy grip. Up front, the One's glossy 5.5-inch Corning Gorilla Glass 3 panel is framed by silver-gray edges and a thin bezel that you'll only notice when the screen is turned on.

Above the display sits a speaker and a 5-megapixel camera beside an LED indicator light. Soft keys for Menu, Home and Back reside beneath the display. By default, the keys' backlight turns off after 3 to 5 seconds of inactivity, which can make them somewhat difficult to find. Thankfully, you can set the backlight to always be on, but even then the light is dim.

We would have preferred that OnePlus swapped the Menu button for a Recent Apps key. You'll need to long-press the Menu key to switch between open apps by default, but you can set the home key to do this when long-pressed.

On the One's left edge is a volume rocker and a discrete microSIM card slot, while the right has a power button. A 3.5mm audio jack sits atop the device while a microUSB port anchors the bottom, flanked by two stereo speakers.

The One doesn't offer onboard memory expansion options such as a microSD card slot, which can be somewhat limiting for the 16GB base version, especially for those who want to shoot 4K video.

At 6.0 x 2.9 x 0.35 inches, the OnePlus One is larger than such leading flagship phones as Samsung's Galaxy S5 (5.3 x 2.9 x 0.25 inches), HTC's One M8 (5.8 x 2.8 x 0.37 inches) and LG's G3 (5.8 x 2.9 x 0.36 inches). The OnePlus has a 5.5-inch display, though, which is larger than the S5's 5.1-inch and the HTC One M8's 5-inch faces. The G3 has the same size screen as the OnePlus.

The 5.7-ounce OnePlus One feels sturdy, but is heavier than the Galaxy S5 (5.1 ounces), the HTC One M8 (5.6 ounces) and the LG G3 (5.3 ounces).

We loved the One's bright, beautiful and responsive 5.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 Gorilla Glass display. A 1080p trailer for "Guardians of the Galaxy" looked tantalizingly clear and colorful. Gamora's green skin popped against her raven black locks. Details, such as individual strands of hair on Rocket Raccoon's face, were tack sharp. The OnePlus One offers wide viewing angles, too, with images retaining their color and quality as we tilted the phone's screen from side to side.

Competing smartphones, such as the Galaxy S5 (5.1-inches; 1920 x 1080) and the HTC One M8 (5-inches; 1920 x 1080) have equally sharp screens on smaller faces. The LG G3, however, boasts a super-sharp 2560 x 1440 resolution on a 5.5-inch panel.

Measuring 432 nits on our light meter, the One's display is the brightest in its class. The average smartphone comes in at a dimmer 352 nits, while the Galaxy S5 (373 nits), One M8 (402 nits) and G3 (272 nits) also lagged behind the One.

Unfortunately, the One fell behind the competition on our sRGB Gamut test, displaying 92.7 percent of the color spectrum. That's less than the average smartphone (118 percent), the One M8's 116.1 percent, the Galaxy S5's 158.4 percent and the LG G3's 98.2 percent. We like to see closer to 100 percent, if not beyond.

The One's color accuracy could also be better. The screen registered a Delta-E score of 8.6 (closer to 0 is best), which is worse than the average smartphone (5.29). The One M8 (5.9), LG G3 (1.5) and the Galaxy S5 (0.1) all deliver more accurate colors (numbers between 1 and 0 are better).

The One's dual bottom-facing JBL speakers won't blow you away, but they're good enough to fill a medium-size room with decent sound. While Christina Aguilera sounded slightly canned in "Feel This Moment," guitars, pianos and vocals were crisp in "If I Had $1,000,000" by the Barenaked Ladies.

Notching 86 dB on Laptop Mag's audio test, which involves playing a tone and measuring it from 13 inches, the One is louder than the average smartphone (80 dB), the S5 (70 dB) and the 85-dB G3. It fared the same as the One M8 (86 dB), but that phone has more robust sound.

An onboard Audio FX app offers an equalizer with 13 preset profiles, such as Dance, Pop, Classical, Electronic and Custom, along with bass boost and surround sound toggles to let you adjust the level of each setting. You can also choose a reverb mode such as Small Room, Medium Room, Large Room, Small Hall or Medium Hall. These settings can be applied to inserted headphones, the device's own speakers or paired outputs via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

During our testing, we saw no difference at all across all the profiles and settings in headphone mode and heard a difference only when we switched between Small Speakers and Electronic profiles when using the device's own speakers. OnePlus said CyanogenMod is aware of the issue and that Audio FX isn't working perfectly with every app, but that the OS team is working on fixing the issue.

What's the big deal about CyanogenMod? It's basically Android but with more personalization and security options built in so you don't have to install separate apps to get the same features. The operating system is also free of bloatware.

Running CyanogenMod 11S, which is built upon Android 4.4 KitKat, the OnePlus One's system looks almost identical to the stock OS but with some noticeable differences. You'll see this first in the lock screen. Instead of a clock widget in the center of the display, you get a page split in half -- an empty pink top and baby blue bottom. A digital clock is on the top of the blue section, which you pull down to unlock the device. This lock screen can be changed depending on the theme you choose.

The home screen looks identical to Android KitKat's, except you get different icons for apps such as Dialer, Messaging, Camera, Downloads, File Manager and Email. These are CyanogenMod's own versions of what Android normally offers, and they're often more feature-rich than stock versions (more below).

You'll also find the notification drawer and quick settings panel familiar. A row at the top lets you quickly toggle connectivity, volume and brightness modes, and you can arrange these however you like.

Having CyanogenMod also means you have access to the latest version of Android, since the team behind the system provides updates more frequently than carriers, who can take months to update devices on their network.

OnePlus is also working on implementing a Siri-like voice wake/search feature that will let you activate the One by saying "OK, OnePlus."

CyanogenMod packs a nifty feature that makes it easier to trigger commonly used tasks. When the setting is activated, you can use unique CyanogenMod gestures on your lock screen to quickly trigger functions.

For instance, drawing a V on the One's face turns on the LED flashlight feature, while a circle opens the camera app. You can also control your music playback by drawing vertical lines with two fingers to play or pause, and left or right arrows for previous or next tracks, respectively. While these gestures can be individually enabled or disabled, you can't create any custom gestures for now.

We loved starting the camera app quickly and easily just by drawing a circle on the screen, even when the device is asleep. The V to start the torchlight did not work as well, lagging from time to time. When it worked, though, it was a handy feature to use when stumbling about in a dark apartment.

You can also set the device's soft keys to perform different tasks when the One is locked, such as toggling sound on/off, going to sleep, turning on the torch or skipping songs.

Not only do you get to define what your OS looks like on the OnePlus One by downloading and installing themes, you can also configure such layouts as the specific tiles in your quick settings panel. The power menu that launches when you hold the power button down also offers more options than stock Android. You can reboot, switch profiles and change sound modes, in addition to the usual toggling of airplane mode and powering off.

CyanogenMod also gives you finer control over your phone. For instance, instead of just being able to adjust the general volume for your keypad and ringer, the One lets you specifically toggle how loud your alarms, ringtones and music and games are.

You can also define what the buttons on the One do when tapped or long-pressed. By default, long-pressing the home button pulls up the Google Now search assistant, but you can change this to open the recent apps switcher, voice search, in-app search, camera app or the layout menu.

The One also comes with a whole bunch more notification and ringtone options out of the box than Android devices. An expanded desktop mode hides your navigation and status bar to give you more of your screen, and you can swipe from the top or bottom of the screen to pull up the bars for a few seconds.

Worried about the NSA (or anyone else) snooping on you? If you text your friends who also run CyanogenMod on their phones, your messages will be encrypted as you send them, so even if they are intercepted the hacker will just see gibberish. Since there aren't too many people using CyanogenMod phones, we aren't sure how useful this feature is yet.

A Privacy Guard tool lets you better manage your app permissions by showing you all the apps in your phone and letting you choose whether to grant each title access. Tapping advanced options in the Privacy Guard menu gives you finer control over the exact type of data -- location, personal, messaging, media, device and bootup -- each app is allowed.

We opened the permissions for Songza and were able to allow or deny the app access to such settings as volume, Media Buttons, Notifications and Keep Awake. You won't get such a la carte settings on mainstream Android devices.

In this directory, you also see how many times each app has accessed the relevant data. For instance, under the Personal category, we saw that the Google+ app had read our contacts 137 times, and modified entries 75 times.

The One uses the SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) security module, which was first developed by the NSA, and fine-tunes which processes can do what on Linux-based devices.

CyanogenMod packs in a few nifty apps that make your phone more useful out of the box. A Torch app lets you turn on the camera's dual LED flash to use as a flashlight, and a Screencast app lets you record what's going on your screen. Themes Showcase makes it easy to find and install new theme packs.

In place of the regular Android versions of Camera, Downloads, Gallery, Messaging and People apps are CyanogenMod's tweaked versions. These apps are often more feature-rich than Google's. For instance, the File Manager lets you lock your device storage so no one can write to it, and offers different views and arrangements of your documents.

You also get some standard Android fare such as Google+, Chrome, Gmail, Hangouts, YouTube, Play Music, Play Games, Play Store, Maps, Drive and Calendar.

Equipped with a 2.5-GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, the One is quite the performance powerhouse. We played three rounds of "Riptide GP 2" with no lag despite apps such as Camera, Phone, People, Settings and Play Store open in the background.

Taxing games such as the first-person shooter "N.O.V.A. 3" ran smoothly, and opened in 15 seconds, a second faster than the average smartphone. The Galaxy S5 was slower (19 seconds) but the LG G3 took the same time. The HTC One M8 was faster, taking just 12 seconds.

All three competing smartphones use the same quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU, with the LG packing 3GB of RAM and the Samsung and HTC offering 2GB.

The One did well on our video-editing test, taking 5 minutes and 58 seconds to transcode a 204MB 1080p video clip to 480p. The average smartphone (7:59) and the LG G3 (6:37) were slower, but the One M8 (5:00) and Galaxy S5 (4:42) were faster.

On general performance benchmark Geekbench 3, the OnePlus's score of 2,504 puts it ahead of the average smartphone (1,806), the G3 (2,217) and the One M8 (2,324). However, the Galaxy S5 scored a higher 2,897.

You'll find the One quite capable of delivering good graphics performance. Notching 18,399 on 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited, the One beat the average smartphone (12,036) and the LG G4 (15,395), although the latter's lower score may be due to its higher display resolution. The One lagged the Galaxy S4 (18,547) and the HTC One M8 (20,640).

You'll love the shots you take with the One's 13-megapixel Sony camera. It packs six lenses to avoid distortion and color aberration. Our pictures of the Flatiron District looked vibrant and sharp, with individual windows in buildings clearly delineated even at 100 percent zoom on a desktop monitor. Colors--such as red buildings, yellow cabs and blue awnings--looked accurate and vivid.

Running over AT&T's 4G LTE network (we inserted our own SIM), the OnePlus One runs circles around other smartphones when it comes to battery life. On the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which consists of continuous Web surfing at 150 nits of screen brightness, this device's 3,100 mAh battery lasted a whopping 13 hours and 16 minutes. The Galaxy S4 (9:42), the HTC (8:42) and the LG G4 (7:56) all delivered much shorter runtimes.

As middle-grade phones go, the Ascend A7 is quite large: 5.5 inches with a full HD display. The device sports a 720p 5-megapixel front camera and a 13-megapixel rear one. One feature Huawei stressed was its ability to take both horizontal and vertical panoramic shots: perfect for capturing large monuments like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Users can also use the all-focus feature to adjust a photo’s focus after taking it.

Customization is also a potential selling point for the Ascend G7. Users can download 30 different themes right off the bat, and more are on the way. They can also change the transparency color for each window, making a phone that’s uniquely their own.

The Ascend G7 will launch in late 2014, and cost €299 ($387) without a contract. Huawei did not reveal whether the product will come to the U.S. specifically, but it will be compatible with American mobile carriers for those who want to import it.

No matter the operating system, the One M8 is still a gorgeous phone. The brushed aluminum rear panel, painted a sleek gunmetal gray, wraps around the phone like a warm embrace. There's not one, but two cameras situated along the top of the rear panel, flanked by an LED flash.HTC etched the Verizon and 4G LTE emblems into the phone's rear panel, which looks sleek and classy. Like its Android brethren, the M8's 5-inch display sits between two gray plastic panels housing the BoomSound speakers. The company ditched the physical buttons from the M7 in favor of touch-screen icons, leaving a gleaming chrome HTC emblem in their place.

A glossy, black IR blaster occupies the majority of the top of the phone, with the power button integrated into the right corner. The microSD card is located directly above the volume rocker, while the micro SIM slot is found on the left. Both the micro USB and the headphone jack sit at the bottom of the device.

Just like the Android version, the Windows Phone M8 measures 5.8 x 2.8 x 0.37 inches and weighs 5.64 ounces. It's heavier than the Samsung Galaxy S5 (5.1 ounces, 5.6 x 2.9 x 0.3 inches) and the Apple iPhone 5s (3.95 ounces, 4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 inches).

The display is just as gorgeous on the Windows edition of the One M8 as it is on Android. Live Tiles were a symphony of vivid color on the 5-inch 1920 x 1080-pixel panel. Chadwick Boseman's mahogany skin tone in the 1080p Get On Up trailer looked warm and inviting against his royal-blue sateen suit. Details were sharp enough to make out some of the inscription on his huge gold ring and the folds and creases in the suit.

When we measured the phone's color reproduction capabilities, the Windows Phone displayed 114 percent of the sRGB gamut, which is just a hair behind the Android model (115 percent), but enough to beat the iPhone 5s' 98 percent. The Samsung GS5 owned the competition, at 156 percent.

As far as color accuracy, the Windows One M8 didn't perform as well as I expected on the Delta-E test, scoring 5.1 (0 is best). It beat the GS5's 5.9, but the Android One M8 and the iPhone had much better results of 4.1 and 0.09.

Still, the Windows One M8 outshone most of the competition, measuring 420 nits on our light meter -- much brighter than the 350-nit smartphone average, the Android version (368 nits) and the Galaxy S5 (347 nits). However, the iPhone delivered an even-brighter 470 nits.

Like the Android model, HTC's impressive front-facing BoomSound speakers effortlessly filled my small test space with loud, clear audio. When I listened to it in my empty office, the audio quality was on a par with some of the lower-end Bluetooth speakers on the market.

There was no lack of bass when I listened to Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda." The speakers faithfully reproduced the artist's frenetic delivery as she switched between high-pitched staccato and drawn-out drawl.

However, I noticed that the accompanying horns on the track sounded scratchy at max volume, signaling that the speakers can't handle highs as well as mids and lows. The problem persisted when I switched to Anita Baker's rendition of "Lately." While Baker's scintillating alto was rich and full, there were some points throughout the song where I found myself distracted by overly brassy cymbals and strings.

The Windows One M8 measured 88 decibels on the Laptop Mag Audio Test, topping the 80 dB smartphone average. The Android edition hit 83 dB, while the GS5 notched 73 dB.

A gorgeous phone with a good-looking operating system -- what could possibly go wrong? Thankfully, not much. As the name suggests, this version of the HTC One M8 runs Windows 8.1, which adds some of the features Android and iPhone owners have been enjoying for some time.

For example, a swipe down reveals the notifications shade that the folks over at Microsoft have helpfully renamed the Action Center. From there, you can check out your latest updates and access the quick settings menu. It allows only four settings at a time, but you can swap them out in the full settings menu. It's nice, but I wish I could access more than four at a time.

A long press of the back button shows all your currently opened apps. Instead of making you repeatedly hit the back button to exit everything, you can now hit the X in the corner of the app to close out a program.

My favorite Windows Phone 8.1 feature is the ability to dismiss the capacitive home, back and search at the bottom of the screen. A small arrow button in the far left corner will hide the black bar beneath the display, restoring about a quarter inch of the display. If you swipe up from the bottom of the display, the bar will resurface.

With Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has finally added trace-typing technology to its virtual keyboard. When I traced my finger along the slim, gray keys, it produced a thick blue line that kept pace with my frantic swivels. The color of the line changes according to the Live Tile palette theme selected in the Settings menu.

Psst, don't tell Master Chief, but somebody put Cortana in my phone! Hoping to draw in fans of the Halo series, Microsoft has created a digital assistant voiced by the beloved smart artificial intelligence construct Cortana.

Like Siri and digital assistants such as Samsung's S Voice and Google Now, Cortana is there to help schedule meetings, look up restaurants and answer a few questions along the way. Microsoft made sure to infuse Cortana with a sense of humor. When I asked if she would be appearing in Halo 5, she responded sounding somewhat amused, "Of all the questions you could have asked."

When I wasn't asking about Master Chief or the Covenant, Cortana handled regular inquiries fairly quickly, informing me about the next day's weather, when the new season of "Scandal" is scheduled to start and what's going on in Ferguson, Missouri. Some questions, such as those about the weather, got a voice response, while others, like "Scandal" one, just pulled up Web results.

One of the signature features of HTC's smartphones is BlinkFeed, a Flipboard-esque interface that pulls in content from news sources and your social networks. I was glad to see that it made its way to the HTC One 8 for Windows, but it's missing a few features found on the Android version.

For starters, you can't swipe right from the home screen to launch BlinkFeed. Instead, it's presented as a Live Tile. It's a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. I was disappointed to discover that the restaurant-suggestion feature was absent. Also missing is the Fitbit integration that HTC has been promising to roll out. To be fair, it's not yet on the Android HTC One M8, either.

Similar to the Motorola Moto X and LG's KnockON feature, Motion Launch lets you double tap the HTC One's display to wake up the phone. But other features found on the Android version, such as swiping up to launch a recently used app or swiping down to place a voice call, are noticeably missing.

In order to take advantage of that large IR blaster at the top of the phone, HTC has added the HTC Sense TV app. Sense TV allows you to control your television, cable box and home theater using the One M8. Once you get the app set up, you can change channels and output settings, as well as adjust the volume, without having to hunt down a dozen remote controls.

It took me about 5 minutes to pair my ViewSonic TV and Scientific Atlanta Explorer cable box to the remote. Once it was set up, I went into full couch-potato mode, channel surfing at my leisure. HTC also added a streaming feature so I could switch over to my Hulu Plus account if I couldn't find anything on the regular boob tube.

Despite all the new OS additions, Microsoft remains at a disadvantage compared to Android and iOS, thanks to its relatively small app store. The Windows Phone store recently passed the 300,000-app mark, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the 1 million-plus apps featured in the Google Play and the Apple App stores.

Microsoft has been working to bring some of the more popular apps on Android and iOS over to Windows. Instagram has finally arrived on Windows, but it's still in beta. You'll also find Vine, Spotify, Netflix, LinkedIn, Uber and Hulu Plus. However, Snapchat, YouTube, Google Maps and Secret are still MIA.

HTC employed a rather light touch when it came to preinstalled apps on the Android version of the One M8. Other than Sense TV and BlinkFeed and several camera apps, HTC-branded apps on the Windows One M8 are few and far between.

Verizon added several of its mainstay apps, including NFL Mobile, VZ Navigator, Verizon Messages and MyVerizonMobile.

Facebook and Slacker Radio are the only two third-party apps preloaded onto the device.

Using Qualcomm's powerful 2.3-GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 CPU with 2GB of RAM, the HTC One M8 for Windows can stand toe-to-toe with just about any rival flagship phones currently on the market. The phone also has 32GB of onboard storage, and accepts microSD cards up to 64GB.

I unleashed my inner speed demon on Asphalt 8: Airborne, tearing past other drivers and drifting through turns. Graphics were gorgeous on the One M8 and showed no signs of slowing down or jaggies, even as I engaged maximum nitrous to secure the lead. Navigating and opening apps were both swift experiences, and it took just half a second to launch the camera.

The One M8 scored 535.59 on the WP Bench test, which measures CPU, memory, storage and GPU performance. The Nokia Lumia Icon and its 2.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU notched 464.18.

On the SunSpider JavaScript test, the One M8 hit 527.9 milliseconds, which is noticeably faster than the Icon, which finished in 542.9 ms.

When I ran the Peacekeeper Browser test, the One M8 scored 508, which is better than the Nokia Lumia Icon's 322, but falls slightly behind the Icon's 520.

You want fast? Verizon's got fast. The HTC One M8 for Windows delivered blistering Web speeds over Verizon's 4G LTE AWS network. I saw an average download speed of 57.8 Mbps at the Laptop Mag office in the Flatiron District of New York City. Upload speeds were equally impressive, at 14.16 Mbps.

While it's not the first smartphone to sport two rear-facing cameras, the HTC One M8 might make the best use of them. Not only can the Duo Camera capture 3D-like images, but it also lets you alter the focus of your photo after you've taken it.

The larger of the two cameras employs a 4-MP Ultrapixel sensor, which serves as the primary shooter. The One M8 snaps a beautiful picture. When I took a test shot of some sunflowers at my favorite bodega, the camera delivered bright, golden petals with a warm, chocolate-colored core. The pink carnations at the bottom of the shot were vibrant and rich, even if they were out of focus. Details were sharp enough to see the delicate fuzz on the back of the light-green petals.

The One M8's camera takes quality low-light photos both with and without the flash. Despite the dim setting, the camera accurately captured my test subject's skin tone and some of the tiny polka dots on his shirt.

The One M8 captures video just as well as it takes stills. In my 1080p test video on a busy New York City street, taxis whizzed past in a pleasant shade of gold. I easily read the text on the H&M awning across the street, as well as the ads on top of the cabs and the side of a bus. However, I wish HTC had added an optical image stabilization feature, as I found videos were relatively jumpy.

Selfie fanatics will appreciate the 5-megapixel front-facing camera. A test image of Anna, Laptop Mag's Managing Editor, yielded fairly accurate colors, such as my olive-and-black dress and her blond locks. While there was some fuzziness in the 2460 x 1440p image, I could still make out the individual strands of Anna's hair.

It just kept going and going and going ... The HTC One M8 for Windows lasted 10 hours and 28 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Verizon's 4G LTE network at 150 nits). That's more than 2 hours longer than the 8:07 smartphone average.

The Android version of the One M8 isn't a slouch, clocking in at 9:52, while the Samsung Galaxy S5 tapped out at 9:42. The Apple iPhone 5s went down for the count after 5:46.