HTC One X Review

May 8, 2012

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The HTC One X received the much deserved attention during launch, and has continued to be in the eye of the smartphone buyer. With a price slightly above the rest, the device may not catch everyone’s fancy, but short of the only unavailable (yet) competitor, the Galaxy SIII, the One X may be the best choice.

Lets find out if its true.

Build Quality and Design

The polycarbonate shell and slim profile easily make it the most impressive device in the market. It looks great, personally better than any phone available. The back is almost bullet proof, but is easily prone to scratching. The white color looks exceptionally better than the gray cousin. The only downside to the build is the raised camera lens. The buttons are nice and tactile and the overall form factor of the device is simply, easy to use and pocketable.

Hardware

What happens when you take the best available mix of hardware and cram it into a beautiful looking device? The HTC One X is born! The Quad Core Tegra 3 along with a separate core for battery management, impressive graphics performance from the ULP GeForce GPU.

Pack that in with a large battery 1800mah, an enviable camera 8MP f/2.0, 32 GB storage and a stunning Gorilla Glass IPS 2 LCD with a 312 ppi resolution, you get a decked out performer.

Display

The most stunning display in its class!

On the front of the device is a stunningly beautiful 4.7 inch Gorilla glass laden, 720 x 1280 pixels resolution, Super IPS LCD2 capacitive touchscreen which has a 16 million color spectrum. Just the sound of that makes you want to look at it. The display is possibly the best display in this size to date, the colors just pop at you and the touchscreen is very responsive. The view-ability of the display is also impressive, as are the viewing angles and daylight visibility.

Short of the so called “retina resolution” the display banks in at 312 pixels per inch, the closest to the crisp iPhone 4/4s display we have seen to date.

Camera

8MP Sensor with the f/2.0 aperture fails to impress.

The camera is what the company is really selling with this device, and honestly it does fall short of expectations. Although the camera has impressive features including a burst mode – which delivers 99 shots at 4fps, but if you or your subject are moving, most of the images are blurry, It also has tons of effects and shooting modes. The camera is great, don’t get us wrong, but it requires a lot of tinkering and tweaking and adjusting to get a good shot. Its simply not as easy as turning it on and clicking a picture.

The lens on the back is however a f/2.0 which means that both images and video perform great in low light. Video capability is also impressive, with anti-shake and full hd resolutions along with in video image capture capability.

There is also a wonderfully good quality 1.3MP front shooter which does HD video calling.

Audio and Speakers

The inbuilt speaks are simply not loud enough, and honestly have never been on any HTC flagship device. We fail to understand why the company forgets to add an impressive speakerphone on their top of the line products. Volume aside the speaker has great sound reproduction and sounds great as long as ambient sounds are low. Ringers and alerts can be heard without issues so you can rest your doubts.

The earpiece and microphone are as crisp as a starched collar, with great detail on both the sending and receiving end.

The amazing beats audio profile is universally available

The best feature when it comes to audio has to be the 3.5mm audio jack- go ahead connect any headphones now to enable the beats audio profile on the phone. This profile massively improves audio playback on your headphones and increases bass by almost 2 folds.

Internet, Data and Cloud

This phone will eat your data plan up and how

This phone will eat your data plan and your life! The device is a hungry monster whose appetite is not satisfied even with the maximum data plan. You will be online emailing, IM-ing, facebook-ing and even Instagram-ing with this device almost 24 hours. The device syncs and sends you push notifications and updates like never before.

Each One X owner gets 25Gb of Free Dropbox upgrades, so all your images and video can be uploaded to your dropbox account to save on the 32 GB inbuilt (if you need to save on it). It will also sync your documents and files if you need it to do so.

You will still get the HTC find the phone features and locate phone features from your HTC Hub account once you setup your phone.

Cellular and Data Networks

Network is solid on the One X, with GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 on 2g and HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 on 3G you can be rest assured that this phone is a world phone. For data networks expect HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps speeds where available and the phone will not even stutter in the wake of performance. You will also get a bowl of Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct when network is not usable.

Connections to Wifi are strong and long ranged, although the data network battery glitch causes some problems – that are detailed in the battery section below.

Phone Calls and Messaging

The phone calling was as good as it always is on an HTC device, no dropped calls, and thanks to the new audio equipment it was actually a notch better. With crystal clear audio on both sending and receiving ends, it all matched up with solid network performance, you can’t go wrong with this phone.

Messaging is the best it can be on a touchscreen device, the impressive touchscreen paired with the Sense keyboard and the HTC version of swype called “Trace” make messaging a breeze, infact fun. You will find excuses to come back to the keyboard to get that one bit extra in there. Although if you don’t like the keyboard as much as we do you will always find replacements including SWYPE, if you are resourceful and an avid user of the Google Play Store.

HTC Sense 4.0

The best UI to put on Android 4.0.3 has to be the Sense 4.0. Although now Sammy has come out with their TouchWiz for ICS, the Sense 4.0 actually makes sense. The UI is as good as ever adding a lot more features and removing some unnecessary ones. With Scenes, skins and background customizations in the device + many more available from the HTC HUB you will find yourself, adorning a new look everyday and with it so will your One X. (detailed in the review video)

Battery

Battery woes have continued from day one on the One X, and we feel the separate 5th core may not be smart enough to manage battery, not as much as HTC though it would anyway. The battery life is very erratic, sometime lasting days on in and sometimes only a few hours.

We did however figure out, that, if you turn off HSDPA/3G /Data connections aswell as Wifi every time you are not using it, battery life is at its best. Now if that is a software bug or a hardware issue, we don’t know.

Battery Life:

Talk Time 3G network(data off): 5 Hours
Talk Time 2g (data off) : 6.5 hours
Internet : N/A
Music : 12 Hours
Video : 5 hours

Talk Time 3G network(data on): 3-4 Hours
Talk Time 2g (data on) : 5 hours
Internet : 5 Hours
Music : 7 Hours
Video : 3 hours

Talk Time 3G network(data off): 4.5 Hours
Talk Time 2g (data off) : 5.5 hours
Internet : 7 Hours
Music : 9 Hours
Video : 4 hours

Conclusion

The best phone your 37,000 hard earned rupees can buy? Possibly true! The device is a little overpriced, but certainly deserves it for being the first Tegra 3 device in most countries. The device is also well thought of – inside and out. Small UI elements like a brightness bar during video playback , tell you that HTC have considered user feedback and truly made a wonderful Smartphone. The camera may not be the best snapper, and also may not be close to what HTC wants you to expect , but it is good, better than many before it.

The best build for this form factor, coupled with the top of the line hardware and interestingly tweaked software put the ONE X in the top list. You will love the sleekness of the shell and responsive UI. It will also catch attention in the most social of events. If HTC can iron out the battery issues this device may as well be the best Android phone available as of today.