HTC One X Review

by Paul Wilks Apr 9, 2012 7:44 AM – 2 Comments

The HTC One X is the new flagship device by the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. Announced at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona on the 26th February 2012, the device features: a 1.5Ghz 4+1 quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 4.7″ touchscreen with Corning gorilla glass, HTC Sense™ 4, 8mp rear camera with a single LED flash, 1.3mp front-facing camera, 1080p HD video recording, Beats Audio™, Bluetooth, WiFi, DLNA and GPS connectivity. All-in-all it’s quite the beast.

Price: Starting ~$729

AndroidTapp.com Android Phone Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

Super-fast quad core processor
4.7″ HD 720p Super LCD2 screen
8mp Camera with ImageSense™
Beats Audio
Slim design
Lightweight
Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense™ 4 UI
Additional 23GB Dropbox storage

Cons

Enclosed battery
Non-expandable memory

Design:

The HTX One X is a slim 8.9mm thin and while the length (134.36mm) and width (69.9) make it feel like quite a large device in your hand, it fits in the pocket really nicely. The Corning glass is subtly curved and the matte finish rear looks very impressive. The corners are gently curved which make the device feel even slimmer. It is also noticeably lightweight and, at 130 grams, I think it’s the right balance of not feeling too flimsy yet maintaining a qualitative feel.

HTC have clearly put a lot of thought into the design. So much so in fact they dedicated quite a few minutes to in their announcement. Check out the video below which is an abridged version of their official announcement. The latter part shows HTC’s Vice-President of Design Scott Croyle going into more detail.

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Features:

Amazing camera

When HTC boasts about the One X’s camera, they do so with good reason. While it doesn’t come with the Goliath 41 megapixels of Nokia’s Lumia PureView, it does come with a pleasing 8mp and features HTC ImageSense™ technology. This includes: auto-focus, smart LED flash, BSI sensor and dedicated imaging chip. Add to this the speedy F2.0 aperture and 28mm lense and you have the beginnings of something quite special. HTC takes the camera capabilities a step further by allowing you to shoot video while simultaneously taking camera shots. The cherry on the cake is the continuous shooting mode. This lets you take multiple pictures in quick succession, giving you a great chance of capturing the perfect moment.

After using the camera for a while I’ve been blown away by the image quality. Colours are incredibly life-like and vibrant, using the camera is very straightforward and the F2.0 aperture is practically as responsive as a dedicated camera. The BSI sensor is especially good in lower lighting conditions and helps pictures look natural.

I’m in no way a great photographer, but check out some of the snaps I took in the picture section below.

The screen

I have yet to see one video that actually does the screen justice. The best description I have heard is that images seem to be floating on top of the screen. They really do. The Super LCD2 1280 x 720 display is arguably one of the best in the smartphone market and, combined with the smooth Corning gorilla glass both looks and feels out of this world.

Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense™ 4

The much maligned HTC Sense UI has received quite an overhaul in Sense 4. Gone are the heavy transitions, the bloated integration and sluggish navigation. Version 4 feels light, speedy and incredibly responsive. I have admittedly spotted an almost unnoticeable lag when you first leave the homescreen, but once this is out of the way so-to-speak, you can push and push and push the UI and you’ll never get any slow down. This lag, I imagine, can surely be ironed out with an update.

The thing about Sense 4 is that it compliments ICS rather than sullies it. Manufacturer overlays can really hinder Android; just check out the likes of Sense 3.5, which just smothers Gingerbread to death. Obviously there will be purists who demand a vanilla Android experience but given time I’m sure the developer community will come up with some truly belting ROMs.

Some ICS elements have tweaked; most noticeably with the task manager. HTC have given this function a dedicated soft-key and pressing it brings up a lush 3D line of running applications that can be casually flicked away. Other aspects, such as face recognition are faithfully included and, unlike in Google’s first demonstration, worked well for me! Overall, ICS is of course a huge leap forward from Gingerbread. Design and menus are slicker, more beautiful and contain loads more features and tweaks.

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Storage

Now, the HTC One X comes with 32GB of onboard storage, of which about 26GB is purely for the users pleasure. The device does not feature the ability to expand this memory, opting for a sleeker device than include access points to increase memory. This has divided many prospective users who prefer to upgrade where possible. Personally, I was used to having a 16GB card on my previous phone, so the extra 10GB is great. Perhaps HTC have tried to allay fears by striking a deal with Dropbox to include an extra 23GB of storage with their cloud service, meaning you essentially can have 51GB of storage with the device.

I know this still annoys some people, but seriously- how much storage do you need? If you want even more, get a Box.net account which comes with 50GB of free space to compliment the 51GB you have here. I just can’t see the problem- sure it’s not flexible, but I think it must have more than enough room for 99.9% of smartphone users.

: HTC One X – With screen cover

: HTC One X – Rear camera

: HTC One X – Box

: HTC One X – Box contents

: HTC one X – Embossed box

: HTC One X, in grey

: HTC One X, in white

: HTC One X – Sample picture 1, muffins

: HTC One X – Sample picture 2, cakes

: HTC One X – Sample picture 3, Huxley

: HTC One X – Sample picture 4, books

: HTC One X – Homescreen

: HTC One X – Music player in lockscreen

: HTC One X – Music player

: HTC One X – Benchmark 1

: HTC One X – Benchmark 2

Performance and Battery life:

The international version (reviewed here) has a 1.5Ghz 4+1 quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. The +1 is a hidden stealth processor which handles a number of basic tasks and helps preserve battery. The cores are incredibly powerful. While these clearly don’t always count for everything the benchmark tests I performed (included above) destroyed practically every other device listed, even rivalling the mighty Transformer Prime tablet.

I’ve heard a few people suggest the quadcore is a overkill. I couldn’t disagree more. Do they really think we should just stop making faster chips now? I’ve spotted certain so-called ‘brand neutral’ websites try to level this against Android and HTC as a negative, but I guess they won’t be doing so when Apple make a quadcore device. More powerful devices can only mean more possibilities for gaming and app developers, so I’m sure software will soon be created that really makes the most of the power. In everyday usage, the cores handle everything you throw at them, nothing is slow, it’s a real speed King. I did notice the device gets a little warm sometimes, but not uncomfortably so.

I usually spend most of my time with easy access to charging points, but I recently had to make a long trip to really test out the battery. I played games, listened to music, made numerous phone calls, replied to emails, sent several texts and MMS. I used GPS often and had my display brightness on 50%. While I could have gone for conservation, I wanted to give the device fairly typical daily usage. From this I got approximately 11 hours of usage. Now, this isn’t perfect but I thought pretty reasonable. There is a rumoured software update on its way which will allegedly boost this more.

Pictures:

HTC One X, in grey

HTC One X, in white

Video:

We’ve included a couple of videos already, but here is the recent HTC One advertising video which kind of highlights the philosophy behind the One series.

http://youtu.be/OqwQTESDObU

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Also, as published recently, here is the official AndroidTapp unboxing footage:

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Specs:

These apply to the international version of the HTC One X. The US version is practically identical in all but one factor; instead of the quadcore processor it will instead feature a dualcore S4 processor.

Size: 134.36 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm
Weight: 130 grams with battery
Display: HD 720p touch
Screen: 4.7-inch (1280 x 720 resolution)
CPU Speed: 1.5 GHz, quad-core (global version), 1.5 GHz, dual-core LTE version (USA and select countries)
Platform: Android™ 4.0 with HTC Sense™ 4
Memory: Total storage 32 GB, RAM 1 GB
Sound enhancement: Beats Audio™
Battery: Capacity: 1800 mAh
Sensors: Gyro sensor, G-Sensor, Digital compass, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor
Network: HSPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 850/900/1900//2100 MHz. GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

Camera with HTC ImageSense™

8 megapixel camera with auto focus, smart LED flash, and BSI sensor (for better low-light captures)
F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens
1080p HD video recording
1.3 megapixel front camera (720p for video chat)
Dedicated imaging chip
Capture a photo in the midst of recording HD video
Continuous shooting mode captures multiple snapshots
Auto flash smartly determined by distance from your subject
Video stabilization feature removes annoying, shaky motion
High quality slow motion video capture and playback

AndroidTapp.com Rating

AndroidTapp.com Rating! (4.9 out of 5)

Should you buy the HTC One X? At the time of writing, the HTC One X is the most powerful smartphone available bar none. It’s a big, brash and thunderously specced device that looks incredible, feels gorgeous to use and performs superbly. If you have the opportunity, definitely consider buying this device without hesitation. For more subtle tastes, but with many of the included features, it’s perhaps worth considering the smaller HTC One V and the slimline HTC One S. The HTC One X however is the superphone of the moment. With Samsung anticipated to soon show their hand with the rumoured Galaxy S3 and a Motorola device (currently codenamed ‘RAZR X’) being mooted, it will not be long before the One X has company at the very top of the Android tree.

Developer: HTC

Tags: Android 4.0, Android App, Android Apps, AndroidTapp.com App Review, HTC, HTC One, HTC One S, HTC One V, HTC One X, HTC One X Android Apps, HTC One X Apps, HTC One X Review, Ice Cream Sandwich, ICS, Nvidia

Categorised in: Android Devices, Android Phones, Featured, Featured Device

2 Comments

By Graham Parkes on April 16, 2012 at 1:54 am:

A non-removable battery is a deal breaker for me. I’m an extremely heavy user and while commuting, typically go through 50% of my Galaxy S2′s 1,650mAh battery in 2 hours while listening to music and playing games, websurfing, Facebook, text chatting etc.

When I’m out of the office and away from my charger, I carry spare batteries for my Galaxy S2. The spares are slim and light and fit in the pocket easily and it only takes a minute to switch batteries. I would never choose a smartphone where you can’t change the battery.

Same with lack of MicroSD support, that is a deal breaker for me. I’m not sold on the idea of cloud storage. Free wifi is extremely rare where I live and I prefer to keep my music and movies on my phone for instant access rather than have the hassle of downloading them over the air.

I prefer as much memory as possible on my phone. My S2 has 16GB internal + 32GB MicroSD and they are already nearly full already with music, movies, TV series, photos, apps etc. And yes, I have 50GB Box and 50GB Dropbox cloud storage, but prefer memory on the phone.

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By Sarah@PingsAndNeedles on May 20, 2012 at 2:47 am:

This is a richly useful review. Thank you. I’ve just ordered one of these on contract so will be interested to see how we get along!

What I am really looking forward to, with this strength of processor AND screen resolution, are some serious apps developed to extened the camera side of things. There’s no reason why we can’t have really super focus/antishake/depth of field with that much oomph in the system.

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