I've been using an HTC One alongside my iPhone 5 for several months. When you first see it, you think "oh, this is great hardware, it's not far off from the iPhone." But then you live with it and use it and you realize it's a far cry from Apple hardware.

One example is with the hardware buttons. They are so flush against the body (both the sleep/wake and volume), that you almost always have to look to see what you're doing. I can't blindly turn down or up the volume nor can I wake up the phone in my pocket before I take it out like I do on my iPhone.

I think in the grand scheme of things that is a very minor complaint and a testament to how far android and in this case HTC have come.

Not yet. I believe the most recent (tablet or phone) was the Nexus 2. I did hear nice things about the One however.

EDIT: I was referring to the Nexus tablet that came out not long ago (though we do have a Nexus 7 at the company also)

Whats wrong with the Nexus 7 v2 ? (I havent used it myself).

It was a significant improvement. Hardware was much better all around. The biggest thing for me was that even as a recent device I still see a noticeable screen lag as I scroll on it.

Of course the rest of the problems are OS-related (even vanilla).