NOTE: This is my first review so please don't be hard, also I had hard time finding how to embed thumbnails, so I'm posting only one pic per section, rest can be found in photobucket album at the bottom. I hope you will enjoy this review.
Overview:
HTC has been always co-related with quality and innovation, it was the first company to bring Android handset to the market, and it was the first one to revolutionize the UI with its sense interface when Android’s native UI was in a nascent state. But lately HTC has been facing lots of criticism from the users mainly due the fact that it has failed to keep at pace with its competitors in terms of camera quality, looks, and its UI had become overly bloated and sluggish! It was time that HTC got back to their drawing boards and build something which would again revolutionize the mobile market and would have the wow factor for Geeks as well as non-Geek community. It was time for a product like HTC One X.
Hardware
The phone’s shell is made up of polycarbonate material which exudes quality. The One X which I have is white in color. Like Galaxy Nexus, HTC One X is slightly curved like an arc which as they say is more ergonomic, but IMO it’s more of a design thing than ergonomics. The edges of the phone are sharp, so if you grasp the phone very tightly you will feel uncomfortable. The phone is very light for its size, but doesn’t feel fragile at all. The front is covered with glorious 4.7†display (with Gorilla glass 2 protecting it), and a 1.3MP camera. There are 3 shortcuts etched on the screen, yes HTC went the traditional way by providing capacitive buttons for Home, Back and Task Manager rather than doing Galaxy Nexus’s way. Well this has its advantages and disadvantages. On the good side, you get the entire 4.7†real estate at your disposal, but on the down side, with older apps you will be left with 3 dots on the bottom of the screen (which is quiet frustrating at times), and well IMO capacitive buttons are too old tech White color is a dirt magnet, so beware! Dirty hands = you will be cleaning your phone a lot. The power menu is located on the top right side, along with 3.5mm audio jack on the left and SIM holder and secondary mic at the right. I feel power button is hard to reach since the phone comparatively larger than other phones. I prefer the placement of power button on Samsung devices. Volume rocker is on right side, and is sufficiently large and offers good feedback. On the rear protrudes (roughly 2mm from the base) 8MP camera with single LED flash, and on the bottom you have beats audio branding along with machine drilled holes for the speaker.
Display
The display is a 4.7†SLCD-2 (Super LCD2, which is a name proposed by HTC for IPS display ) 1280x720 Non-Pentile display which has amazing viewing angles. It’s one of the parts which I love the most about the phone. Once you get hooked to the display you will have hard time getting back to your S-II’s or 4S’s (I hope you got that!) Compared to Galaxy Nexus which I had owned, this display is on a different league! I’ll explain why, in Galaxy nexus if you turn down the brightness to 50% or less, you will observe small grains on the screen. This is because GNex has pentile display, also AMOLED screen’s look best when the brightness is turned to 50% or more. One X uses more contemporary IPS display, which unlike AMOLED uses backlights to lighten up the screen, and hence is more power hungry. The up side of this technology is that, you get richer colors, but contrast ratio goes for a toss. I assume that AMOLED is the future of displays, but as of now I can blindly say that One X’s display is the best one I have ever seen!
Camera
There are 2 cameras on this device. The front is a 1.3MP camera, and on the rear is an 8MP camera with single LED flash. HTC has incorporated image sense technology which takes care of all the processing required while snapping pictures. Front camera is an average shooter, good enough for video calling, but if you expect some great quality from it, then you will be extremely disappointed. Under average to low light condition, there are signs of grains in the pictures, we will see sample pictures after this section. Rear camera on the other head shines, and is one of the best cameras in Android eco system. Photo’s came out exceptionally well under medium-normal lightning conditions, and with minimum grains in low light conditions.
Camera software has provides several filter options, like- Depth of field, vignette, mono, distortion, dots etc. I especially liked the Depth of field filter as it allows you to adjust the focus point. Then there are 9 shooting modes, which are- Auto, HDR, Panorama, Portrait, Group Portrait, Landscape, Whiteboard, Close Up and low light.
The most unique feature about the camera is that you can click snaps while recording as well as watching videos later in the gallery!
Below are the pictures which I shot from Front and Back camera, all of them is shot without using Flash.
Performance and battery Life
Now coming to the performance of this device, as of now you will see In several reviews that One S beats One X in most of the benchmarks, this is well due to the fact that One S’s snapdragon S4 chip is faster than Tegra 3 when we compare core to core performance, also most of the benchmarks don’t utilize 2+1 extra cores efficiently and finally because One S has qHD resolution whereas One X has HD resolution (do the math, more pixels= less performance) Leaving benchmarks aside, performance in real world is pretty impressive, pinch to zoom in browser is lag-free, HD movies doesn’t bother this device, and Sense 4.0 which is a RAM killer runs fluidly. Just for the enthusiasts around there I’ll post the benchmarks score below.
Battery performance is very subjective to how you use the device. Since this phone has a large screen and 4+1 cores, so don’t expect wonders in battery department. On moderate use, viz. 1-2 hours talking, Always ON Data connection, around 30 minutes gaming (Shadow gun, world of goo), and a bit of web browsing, the phone was left with 20% battery when I reached home from office, so expect around 12-14 hours of backup on moderate use. But I have read somewhere that Software update 1.28 will sort battery issue, so let’s wait and watch.
Software
HTC has incorporated their latest sense 4.0 In the One series. Sense 4 is relatively lighter than previous iterations in terms of resources, but its first version is still like a beta! There are loads of bugs; I encountered several force close dialogues, the only solution for which was a reboot. The Sense is there from camera to gallery to even the tiniest aspect of the entire ICS experience. There are few things which Sense improves over Stock ICS. Take widget management for instance. Managing widgets is lot easier in Sense, also apart from boring Google widgets you get plethora of widgets for controlling your data connection to managing facebook/twitter updates. Another great feature of Sense is the smart dialer, where you can search for people on the dialer by typing their name like in T9 mode. The Indian version of One X comes with Savn radio, which lets you listen to latest Bollywood numbers over internet, and Bollywood Hungama, which is a android version of their website, pretty good apps if you like Bollywood stuff. There is also FM Radio app, Mirror App, Voice recorder, Task Manager, Polaris Office, Sound Hound, PDF Viewer, HTC Hub, eBuddy XMS, 7Digital, Teeter, Weather, Stocks, Dropbox and Flashlight installed apart from standard google apps. With all the apps killed, RAM utilization is close to 720MB! Which is insane considering the device has 1GB RAM. The App drawer is partitioned into 3 parts- All, Frequent and Downloads. There is a 3D cube like transition when you scroll through.
The UI is extremely fluid; there is no sign of lag anywhere. Bloated sense no where feels one due to the raw processing power this device has. All in all Sense is good in some parts but it has to improve in memory management.
Call Quality and GPS
There are 2 microphones on the device, one at bottom and other near to 3.5mm jack. Now I’m not a sound engineer, but call quality was very good, and the person on the other side could hear me clearly. The loudspeaker is not very loud, but does the job done.
While going to Camp area Pune, my position on Gmap was locked within 10-12 seconds, and when the device was resumed from standby, satellites were locked in less than 5 seconds, which is pretty impressive as per my standards.
Conclusion
Every new phone has its fair share of flaws and One X is no exception. Sense 4 still needs to improve and I wish battery life could have been better, but then most of the flaws are in software which will hopefully get ironed out in the future. Hardware wise until the arrival of Samsung Galaxy SIII, this is the most powerful phone money can buy, also the design is fresh and fit/finish is top-notch. Camera is great and Beats audio is just a gimmick You can get similar experience by adjusting the graphic equalizer) Now comes the main question, is the phone worth your money?
I would say- “Yes and Noâ€, Yes if you have the mullah and are upgrading from a phone which is 2 or more years old (read single core). No, if you have a current crop of phone, as extra 2+1 cores looks good on paper, but real life performance improvement is not very significant as current gen apps use of maximum 2 cores. So you will be left with excellent benchmark scores but no practical application. The phone has a great camera, great music capability, amazing processor and a sleek/beautiful exterior, this can be a significant upgrade for any phone, but if you are more of an email/sms guy then your old phone will serve the purpose.
Direct Album link (for all the pictures)
http://s1149.photobu...590/prankiegr8/
Pros:
+Great Camera
+Great Music capability
+Quad Core
+Excellent Build and design
+Mind Blowing Screen
Cons:
-Overheats when using resource heavy app
-Sense has to improve further
Overall Score: 9/10
Overview:
HTC has been always co-related with quality and innovation, it was the first company to bring Android handset to the market, and it was the first one to revolutionize the UI with its sense interface when Android’s native UI was in a nascent state. But lately HTC has been facing lots of criticism from the users mainly due the fact that it has failed to keep at pace with its competitors in terms of camera quality, looks, and its UI had become overly bloated and sluggish! It was time that HTC got back to their drawing boards and build something which would again revolutionize the mobile market and would have the wow factor for Geeks as well as non-Geek community. It was time for a product like HTC One X.
Hardware
The phone’s shell is made up of polycarbonate material which exudes quality. The One X which I have is white in color. Like Galaxy Nexus, HTC One X is slightly curved like an arc which as they say is more ergonomic, but IMO it’s more of a design thing than ergonomics. The edges of the phone are sharp, so if you grasp the phone very tightly you will feel uncomfortable. The phone is very light for its size, but doesn’t feel fragile at all. The front is covered with glorious 4.7†display (with Gorilla glass 2 protecting it), and a 1.3MP camera. There are 3 shortcuts etched on the screen, yes HTC went the traditional way by providing capacitive buttons for Home, Back and Task Manager rather than doing Galaxy Nexus’s way. Well this has its advantages and disadvantages. On the good side, you get the entire 4.7†real estate at your disposal, but on the down side, with older apps you will be left with 3 dots on the bottom of the screen (which is quiet frustrating at times), and well IMO capacitive buttons are too old tech White color is a dirt magnet, so beware! Dirty hands = you will be cleaning your phone a lot. The power menu is located on the top right side, along with 3.5mm audio jack on the left and SIM holder and secondary mic at the right. I feel power button is hard to reach since the phone comparatively larger than other phones. I prefer the placement of power button on Samsung devices. Volume rocker is on right side, and is sufficiently large and offers good feedback. On the rear protrudes (roughly 2mm from the base) 8MP camera with single LED flash, and on the bottom you have beats audio branding along with machine drilled holes for the speaker.
Display
The display is a 4.7†SLCD-2 (Super LCD2, which is a name proposed by HTC for IPS display ) 1280x720 Non-Pentile display which has amazing viewing angles. It’s one of the parts which I love the most about the phone. Once you get hooked to the display you will have hard time getting back to your S-II’s or 4S’s (I hope you got that!) Compared to Galaxy Nexus which I had owned, this display is on a different league! I’ll explain why, in Galaxy nexus if you turn down the brightness to 50% or less, you will observe small grains on the screen. This is because GNex has pentile display, also AMOLED screen’s look best when the brightness is turned to 50% or more. One X uses more contemporary IPS display, which unlike AMOLED uses backlights to lighten up the screen, and hence is more power hungry. The up side of this technology is that, you get richer colors, but contrast ratio goes for a toss. I assume that AMOLED is the future of displays, but as of now I can blindly say that One X’s display is the best one I have ever seen!
Camera
There are 2 cameras on this device. The front is a 1.3MP camera, and on the rear is an 8MP camera with single LED flash. HTC has incorporated image sense technology which takes care of all the processing required while snapping pictures. Front camera is an average shooter, good enough for video calling, but if you expect some great quality from it, then you will be extremely disappointed. Under average to low light condition, there are signs of grains in the pictures, we will see sample pictures after this section. Rear camera on the other head shines, and is one of the best cameras in Android eco system. Photo’s came out exceptionally well under medium-normal lightning conditions, and with minimum grains in low light conditions.
Camera software has provides several filter options, like- Depth of field, vignette, mono, distortion, dots etc. I especially liked the Depth of field filter as it allows you to adjust the focus point. Then there are 9 shooting modes, which are- Auto, HDR, Panorama, Portrait, Group Portrait, Landscape, Whiteboard, Close Up and low light.
The most unique feature about the camera is that you can click snaps while recording as well as watching videos later in the gallery!
Below are the pictures which I shot from Front and Back camera, all of them is shot without using Flash.
Performance and battery Life
Now coming to the performance of this device, as of now you will see In several reviews that One S beats One X in most of the benchmarks, this is well due to the fact that One S’s snapdragon S4 chip is faster than Tegra 3 when we compare core to core performance, also most of the benchmarks don’t utilize 2+1 extra cores efficiently and finally because One S has qHD resolution whereas One X has HD resolution (do the math, more pixels= less performance) Leaving benchmarks aside, performance in real world is pretty impressive, pinch to zoom in browser is lag-free, HD movies doesn’t bother this device, and Sense 4.0 which is a RAM killer runs fluidly. Just for the enthusiasts around there I’ll post the benchmarks score below.
Battery performance is very subjective to how you use the device. Since this phone has a large screen and 4+1 cores, so don’t expect wonders in battery department. On moderate use, viz. 1-2 hours talking, Always ON Data connection, around 30 minutes gaming (Shadow gun, world of goo), and a bit of web browsing, the phone was left with 20% battery when I reached home from office, so expect around 12-14 hours of backup on moderate use. But I have read somewhere that Software update 1.28 will sort battery issue, so let’s wait and watch.
Software
HTC has incorporated their latest sense 4.0 In the One series. Sense 4 is relatively lighter than previous iterations in terms of resources, but its first version is still like a beta! There are loads of bugs; I encountered several force close dialogues, the only solution for which was a reboot. The Sense is there from camera to gallery to even the tiniest aspect of the entire ICS experience. There are few things which Sense improves over Stock ICS. Take widget management for instance. Managing widgets is lot easier in Sense, also apart from boring Google widgets you get plethora of widgets for controlling your data connection to managing facebook/twitter updates. Another great feature of Sense is the smart dialer, where you can search for people on the dialer by typing their name like in T9 mode. The Indian version of One X comes with Savn radio, which lets you listen to latest Bollywood numbers over internet, and Bollywood Hungama, which is a android version of their website, pretty good apps if you like Bollywood stuff. There is also FM Radio app, Mirror App, Voice recorder, Task Manager, Polaris Office, Sound Hound, PDF Viewer, HTC Hub, eBuddy XMS, 7Digital, Teeter, Weather, Stocks, Dropbox and Flashlight installed apart from standard google apps. With all the apps killed, RAM utilization is close to 720MB! Which is insane considering the device has 1GB RAM. The App drawer is partitioned into 3 parts- All, Frequent and Downloads. There is a 3D cube like transition when you scroll through.
The UI is extremely fluid; there is no sign of lag anywhere. Bloated sense no where feels one due to the raw processing power this device has. All in all Sense is good in some parts but it has to improve in memory management.
Call Quality and GPS
There are 2 microphones on the device, one at bottom and other near to 3.5mm jack. Now I’m not a sound engineer, but call quality was very good, and the person on the other side could hear me clearly. The loudspeaker is not very loud, but does the job done.
While going to Camp area Pune, my position on Gmap was locked within 10-12 seconds, and when the device was resumed from standby, satellites were locked in less than 5 seconds, which is pretty impressive as per my standards.
Conclusion
Every new phone has its fair share of flaws and One X is no exception. Sense 4 still needs to improve and I wish battery life could have been better, but then most of the flaws are in software which will hopefully get ironed out in the future. Hardware wise until the arrival of Samsung Galaxy SIII, this is the most powerful phone money can buy, also the design is fresh and fit/finish is top-notch. Camera is great and Beats audio is just a gimmick You can get similar experience by adjusting the graphic equalizer) Now comes the main question, is the phone worth your money?
I would say- “Yes and Noâ€, Yes if you have the mullah and are upgrading from a phone which is 2 or more years old (read single core). No, if you have a current crop of phone, as extra 2+1 cores looks good on paper, but real life performance improvement is not very significant as current gen apps use of maximum 2 cores. So you will be left with excellent benchmark scores but no practical application. The phone has a great camera, great music capability, amazing processor and a sleek/beautiful exterior, this can be a significant upgrade for any phone, but if you are more of an email/sms guy then your old phone will serve the purpose.
Direct Album link (for all the pictures)
http://s1149.photobu...590/prankiegr8/
Pros:
+Great Camera
+Great Music capability
+Quad Core
+Excellent Build and design
+Mind Blowing Screen
Cons:
-Overheats when using resource heavy app
-Sense has to improve further
Overall Score: 9/10
