My Crappy Life | Syed ™

HTC was at the forefront back in 2010, a time when HTC Desire and Nexus One was highly sought after models for Android smart phones. Last year, they faced a huge challenge from Samsung starting with its flagship Galaxy S II. Since then, Samsung has been releasing a model for almost every market segments imaginable. The last flagship device from HTC, the Sensation and Sensation XE didn’t manage to cut through the clutter and HTC has been struggling to keep up with the competition.

This year, HTC is set to make a comeback with its HTC One Series. Its current flagship model the HTC One X is powered by a 1.5GHz Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM with 32GB of onboard storage and runs on the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Acknowledging the trend of going bigger with display, the One X features a 4.7” Super LCD2 display that pushes 1280×720 pixels resolution.

Powering the device is a 1,800mAh battery which HTC claims to offer 60% improved performance over its predecessor models. Like most new smart phone models today, the One X comes with a unibody polycarbonate design which unfortunately means no user-replaceable battery and expandable microSD memory.

HTC One X Exterior Design Review
Over at the front there’s a 1.3MP front facing camera and there’s also a hidden notification LED underneath the micro holes of the earpiece. Although this makes the design cleaner, it is actually hard to notice in outdoor sunny conditions. It would probably be better if they have a dedicated LED under the glass for better visibility.

The overall polycarbonate body is rather solid and we like the design of its curved back. In the hands, it feels rather large, a little too big for our liking and it isn’t really practical for single handed operation. The 8MP camera stands out like a sore thumb with its protruding camera lens at the back. This makes it very vulnerable to damage or scratches when placed on the table, so we would recommend a case to offer some protection at the back.
While the back surface is predominately matte, the side uses a glossy white finish that looks rather cheap. The power button and volume rocker keys appear to be made by same materials as your plastic spoons and it lacks the desired tactile feel. This could be due to the colour and the sides would probably be better looking with the black version. You can check out our hands-on video of the HTC One X for a clear look at the design.

HTC One X Display Review
The display on the One X is probably the best we’ve seen so far. The first time we lay eyes on it, we can’t help to notice how the images tend to appear as if it’s on top, rather than being under the glass. At medium to full brightness, it just looks absolutely stunning with no signs of colour degradation when tilted sideways.

When showed among our peers, we’ve gotten a couple of comments on how the display looked like a dummy phone with sticker “display” instead of a typical live screen. It also features 3D gorilla glass that curves at edges which exaggerate the illusion further that the display is floating. It is hard to describe this in words but you’ve got to see it yourself to understand what we mean. In terms of colours, the HTC One X looks warm with strong saturation and brightness. As comparison, the typical Super AMOLED displays tend to have a blue-ish hue.


HTC One X Sense 4.0 UI Review
Running on Android 4.0.3, the HTC One X it is lightly skin with HTC Sense 4.0. It still retain our favourite unlock screen with shortcuts to camera and core apps. We also liked how you can customise your unlock screen to display additional info such as your friend social feeds, weather, stocks or notifications. Under the Android notifications bar, they have done away with the recent apps list which gives you more display space for actual notifications.

On top of the Ice Cream Sandwich interface, there is some additional customisation from HTC. With the default Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich task manager, normally you’ll see a vertical thumbnail carousel of recent apps. However on the One X, HTC has customised the look with a large horizontal thumbnail gallery of recent apps. To kill a task, you’ll need to swipe the app thumbnail upwards.

Although this looks impressive, we rather have the plain vanila ICS version. HTC’s task manager displays only one app at a time which makes it cumbersome to jump between apps quickly. We can foresee avid multi-taskers finding this frustrating. Unfortunately there’s no way to switch this off and it is interesting to note that the HTC One V uses the much preferred original ICS recent apps interface.

In terms of performance, the HTC One X is buttery smooth thanks to its quad core processor. There’s no major lag to report but somehow we felt that the home page interface could have been smoother if it doesn’t use a 3D flow transition between panels. The apps listing is now scrolled from left to right, instead of top to bottom fashion on earlier HTCs.

HTC One X Camera Review
The camera of the HTC One X is one of its key highlights with ImageSense. In terms of interface, this is one of the easiest we’ve seen to date and the ability to take a picture or video immediately on the same screen is nice touch. The HTC One X capable of shooting burst mode at 4 frames per second up to 99 continuous shots. Obviously in darker conditions where flash is required, the 4FPS burst mode won’t work.

The shutter button is incredibly responsive with no hesitation at all and the shutter sound really gives you the assured feeling that this is a snappy shooter. No doubt it puts the famed Galaxy Nexus Zero Shutter Lag to shame when it comes to sheer speed.

However in our sleep to snap test, the Sony Xperia S is still the fastest with its Fast Capture feature and dedicated hardware button. Since HTC is banging on its camera, they should have included a dedicated button for camera on the One X. In terms of quality, the One X photos are pretty good and most photos taken outdoors appear incredibly sharp, to some extent sharper than Xperia S. In low light conditions, the One X tends to be noisier than the Xperia S.






















HTC One X Video Review



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