Look, it’s no secret that HTC knows how to put together a nice phone. Despite the quality of its wares though, HTC spent most of 2012 releasing disappointing earnings statements and being outflanked by much larger rivals — what’s a company to do in a situation like that? The answer, according to CEO Peter Chou, was to double down on innovation and design in hopes of creating a device that would truly resonate with consumers that were already up to their necks in Android phones. That device was the HTC One.

Even so, plenty of questions remain. Is it really all that it’s cracked up to be? Does the One really have a chance at changing HTC’s fortunes?

To answer all of the above: yes. If you’re in a rush you can skip to my final thoughts here but make no mistake: the HTC One is the sort of device that deserves to be talked about.

• 4.7-inch, 1080p Super LCD3 display
• 1.7GHz Quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 chipset with 2GB of RAM
• “Ultrapixel” rear camera, 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera
• Available with either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, no memory card slot
• NFC
• Sealed 2,300 mAh battery
• 32GB model available for $199 with a two-year contract with AT&T and Sprint, while T-Mobile offers it sans contract for $579. The $299 64GB version is an AT&T exclusive.

Test notes: Sprint has provided me with a pre-release version of the One to review, and HTC has given me an unlocked international model to play with. They’re nearly identical, but I’ll point out any pertinent differences as they come up.

I was smitten with the One’s design from the moment I first manhandled the thing back in February, and that feeling has never really gone away — the One is a truly stunning device both to hold and to look at. Samsung could really learn a thing or two from these guys.

Before I get too effusive with my praise, let’s take a quick tour around the device itself. The One’s face is dominated by a 4.7-inch 1080p Super LCD3 display that’s flanked on all sides by a thin black bezel. Sitting directly above and below the display are the One’s unfortunately named Boomsound stereo speakers (a small notification LED will occasionally blink at from the top grille), and the 2-megapixel wide-angle front-facing camera rests on the top-right corner of the device’s visage.

The One’s sides and bottom are fairly nondescript — the volume rocker, microUSB port, and SIM slot are nestled along the right, bottom, and left edges respectively, while the top edge hosts a headphone jack and a sleep/wake button that doubles as an IR blaster for controlling your television.

Phew. Now that I’ve run through the laundry list, permit me to gush a bit about how the One looks.

To say that the One is understated in its design would be putting it mildly; the thing is terribly handsome in a stark, minimal sort of way. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the One isn’t actually that big a step forward from some of its predecessors when it comes to physical design. If anything, it represents the refinement of a design formula that HTC has been working on for the past 9 or 10 months with devices like the Butterfly and its American cousin the Droid DNA. Familiar elements like elongated speaker grilles, textured volume rockers, gently sloping backs, and highlighted camera pods seen in those earlier devices all make appearances on the One, but HTC has clearly upped the ante in terms of quality and construction this time around.

The first thing you notice as you pick it up is how light it is — at 143 grams it’s only a hair heavier than the Droid DNA, and (thankfully) the One’s minimal heft belies just how sturdy it feels. That’s all thanks to the device’s unibody aluminum chassis, which HTC says takes somewhere around 200 minutes for a CNC machine to carve out the One’s frame from a single block of aluminum.

That’s a considerable chunk of time for HTC to spend while some of its rivals spit out handsets like it’s nothing, but the end result is a device that feels as reassuring in your hand as HTC’s would-be savior should. That said, you still won’t want to toss the One around all willy-nilly. The white plastic polycarbonate that runs around the device is flanked on both sides by polished, chamfered aluminum edges that are prone to picking up scuffs and dings, though some people won’t care nearly as much about that as others.

Samsung could really learn a thing or two from these guys.

The One isn’t without its share of question marks, though. If you’ve used pretty much any popular Android device before spending some time with HTC One, then one little omission will probably stick out like a sore thumb. I’m talking of course about the lack of a third soft key — the company opted to stick solely with Back and Home keys separated by an HTC logo.

If you go by the company line, the choice was made in an attempt to simplify how users interact with the One. I’d actually argue that dropping that extra button is more counterintuitive than anything else since most current Android users are likely familiar with the three-button layout, but it doesn’t take too long to readjust to the two-button lifestyle.

And of course, HTC has once again seen fit to exclude a microSD card slot in its latest flagship handset. I can’t really be surprised at this point considering this is a recurring theme for HTC, and it’s not as big an issue as it was in other devices since HTC offers 32GB and 64GB versions of the One, but I’ve often looked to expandable memory as a hallmark feature of an Android device, and I’m sad to see HTC skipping them completely on its top-tier handsets.

Both versions of the One I’ve played with come loaded with Android 4.1.2, but as always, HTC has done its level best to paint over the stock UI with its custom Sense interface. The Taiwanese company has been diligently trying to trim the fat from Sense for months now with largely positive results; Sense isn’t the kludgy, overwrought beast it used to be, and Sense 5 represents HTC’s biggest leap forward to date.

Put very simply, Sense 5 looks great. Stock icons and the once-bubbly default keyboard and dialer have been designed to look flatter and less skeuomorphic, and HTC has dumped its usual font in favor of Roboto Condensed, which imbues the UI with a much cleaner vibe. The app launcher has gotten quite a facelift, too — a persistent time and weather widget lives at the top of the screen, and right out of the box you’re treated with a spacious 3