HTC One X Review

Many in the industry believe that HTC, which was once most beloved among Android fans, has fallen from grace. That the company has lost its way, its edge. I am here to tell you that those people are wrong. I offer as evidence the new HTC One X.

The One X, the company's new flagship Android smartphone, is the kind of phone that just leaves you breathless. Its single-piece polycarbonate body is unique in the Android world, and it is as comfortable to hold as it is drop dead gorgeous. The X's 720p resolution touchscreen display is just as attractive and functional as it is expansive, measuring 4.7 inches across the diagonal.

The One X's two marquee features, however, are likely its Android 4 OS with the new Sense 4 user interface and the phone's powerful NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, which has 4 processing cores that can run at speeds of up to 1.5GHz. The real world impact of a quad-core processor might be negligible for most tasks, but there's no denying that the marketing appeal it offers is great.

About the only thing that is missing is 4G connectivity, since that shiny new Tegra 3 processor lacked LTE support until very recently.

Apart from LTE, the HTC One appears to be everything that the Google Galaxy Nexus by Samsung is and should have been. Read on.

Hardware

The HTC One X is an exquisitely designed device. The white body of our evaluation handset is made from a single piece of polycarbonate that features a matte finish, save for the high-gloss edge of the phone. It is supremely attractive and comfortable, and it blends perfectly into the tapered edges of the Gorilla Glass front of the phone that protects its 720 x 1280 pixel Super LCD2 display.

Offering a dot pitch of 312dpi, the One X's 4.7-inch HD touchscreen is more than sharp enough to make even the smallest of fonts look entirely readable - assuming your eyes are up to the task. The X's display also shows significantly deeper black levels than previous HTC HD displays, such as the one seen on the HTC Vivid for AT&T. It still can't quite compete with Super AMOLED for black levels and color saturation, but it is getting quite close.

Since it is an Android 4.0 device, and was designed from the ground up as such, the HTC One X features only three touch sensitive controls under the display. Users will find a back button, a home button, and the task switcher button. Missing is the search button found on most older Android smartphones, and I am glad to bid it farewell since a three button arrangement is much easier to use without looking, as LG showed on its Nitro HD for AT&T.

Above the display on the front face of the phone is the secondary 1.3 megapixel camera for video chatting, which supports the primary 8 megapixel camera, with LED flash, that resides on the back of the phone. A power button sits on the top edge of the One X, where it is somewhat difficult to reach - even with large hands. A 3.5mm headphone jack resides there as well, as does the hidden tray for the phone's mandatory micro-SIM card, which requires a paper clip or something similar for removal. A micro-USB port for charging and data is located on the left edge of the phone, with the volume control sitting exactly on the opposite right hand edge.

With a weight of only 134g (4.7oz) and a svelte profile of 9.2mm (.36in), the One X fits easily into a pocket. Its 134.5mm x 70.8mm (5.3in x 2.8in) length and width can make it a bit unwieldy to use single-handedly for those with smaller hands, but it is no worse than Motorola's popular DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX smartphones in that regard, even though it offers users a much larger, higher resolution display.

Apart from the position of the power button and the micro-USB port, I find the industrial design and build quality of the HTC One X to be just about as good as it gets. It is a device worthy of both love and lust.

HTC Sense 4, Usability, Calling/Data

Usability

There was a time when HTC's Sense user interface was the belle of the smartphone ball, adored by all. In recent years, though, that has changed as Sense has gotten heavier and more intrusive, and once-hated systems like Samsung's TouchWiz have gained favor through iterative refinements. With Sense 4, HTC has started moving back in the direction of favored and refined, as some of the bulk in previous Sense versions has been removed, with the company even improving upon some of the base shortcomings in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich's stock user experience.

For starters, Sense still offers some of its key features, such as the shortcut icons on the lock screen and the ability to save multiple home screen configurations as "scenes" that can be quickly switched between. But gone is the waste of space at the bottom of the home screen for that oversized "phone" button we're used to seeing, having been replaced by 4 user configurable shortcuts.

The multi-paned, tabbed view of settings and shortcuts in the notification area has also been dropped in favor of a simple list. HTC's vertically scrolling main menu, which scrolled in one page increments, has been replaced with a horizontally scrolling paged menu that is similar to what Google offers as stock, but it comes with tabs for other views such as "downloaded" that makes it handier to use. On the other hand, HTC's new task switcher, with its paged view of apps, needs to be dropped. It is cooler looking than Google's stock switcher, but ultimately far less usable.

The new Sense on-screen keyboard is larger than before, due to the addition of dedicated arrow keys. It still supports a trace mode that emulates most of Swype's features, but is merely a pretender to the throne in that regard. I continue to dislike the keyboard's number mode key being located on the right hand side, as it has long been, but otherwise find the keyboard to perform quickly and accurately.

Some things that Google totally missed the mark on, such as widget management, have also been entirely replaced by far more usable HTC solutions. And while we still see cool Sense features like twitter and Facebook integration in the contacts app and a suite of beautiful clock and weather widgets, the UI as a whole now feels more like a benefit rather than a hindrance. There is still work to be done, but at least Sense is moving in the right direction once again.

Calling / Data

The HTC One X can be used on GSM and 3G networks around the world. I tested my European model on AT&T's network, where I still got ~HSPA data speeds - though not as fast (or stable) as I might have expected. In strong signal areas I managed to get data speeds of 3Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up. Reception on the phone appears to be somewhat weak, or at least inconsistent, but call audio quality was nice and crisp. The phone also supports Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n data connections as well as supports Bluetooth for headsets and other features and USB for connecting with a personal computer. A hotspot mode can be used for connection sharing with Wi-Fi capable devices, as well, and ~NFC support on the X can be used with functions like Android Beam.

Messaging

I absolutely love the email client that HTC includes on the One X. It's very attractive and offers functionality like a combined inbox view, gorgeous home screen widgets, and the ability to scroll through an inbox by date by using two fingers. You can use it with any mail server that supports IMAP, POP, or Exchange - which is just about everything. The messaging app is also well done, offering an clean interface as well as the ability to adjust the font size and configure the inbox to work as you like. The only instant messaging app pre-installed is Google's own Talk, but the One X comes with Facebook and Twitter loaded out of the box.

Apps / App Store

As an unlocked, carrier-free device, the HTC One X has very little bloatware. HTC loads a number of its own apps, like the HTC Watch streaming app, but mostly One X users will just find mostly Google branded apps (Maps, Gmail, Google+, etc). There are a few exceptions, though, such as HTC's Notes app, which is a slick front-end to Evernote that takes some of its inspiration from HTC's Flyer tablet. Polaris Office and a PDF reader handle Office document editing and viewing, and both are integrated with Dropbox (25GB for two years included) and Microsoft Skydrive support, which is truly useful. If you still need more, then the Google Play Store (formerly the Android Market) offers hundreds of thousands of apps (and books, songs) that you can browse through.

Browser

HTC has given the One X a fine new browser that is very fast and smooth in operating - with one exception. The browser exhibited some odd behavior during intelligent "double tap" zooming, often zooming in as desired, only to pan over unexpectedly to the wrong part of the screen. Apart from that, though, the Flash- and HTML5-capable browser worked very well. Still, for my money, you'd do even better by checking out the Chrome Beta browser from Google, which is just fantastic in most every way. Chrome doesn't yet support Flash, though, but it is expected to be the standard browser in future versions of Android.

Camera, Battery Life, Conclusion

Camera and Video Capture

Now on to one of my favorite parts of the One X, the 8 megapixel camera. Not only does the camera offer a truly magnificent user interface, with quick access to settings and controls of all sorts (even filters!), but it just takes great photos - both with and without flash. And it does so very quickly. In fact, you can shoot a burst of photos by simply holding down the on-screen shutter button.

  

On top of that, you can record full-resolution 8 megapixel still photos while you are recording a 1080p full HD video just by tapping the shutter button. Both buttons are on the screen at the same time, so you never have to switch modes. It's such a convenient feature to have. I also approve of HTC's fast and wide-angle lens, which makes the camera much more practical for real life situations.

It doesn't hurt that a decent video editor, with themed transitions, is pre-loaded on the phone, though I occasionally had problems with focus-hunting while recording videos outdoors. No other smartphone has been as much fun to use for photography as the HTC One X, though.

Music

HTC's music player on the One X is very attractive and capable. It features integration with the 7digital music store, SoundHound's music identification service, and Tunein Radio's service for streaming live, ground-based radio stations.

The music app makes good use of album art, and is organized well, but it lacks support for Google's own cloud based music service, which is now part of the company's Google Play properties. There's nothing to stop you from downloading and using Google's music app on the One X, though, so your bases are pretty much covered.

Battery

HTC's One X comes equipped with a reasonably large 1800mAh battery that is permanently embedded inside its one-piece body. There's no option to swap out the battery, just as is the case with the Nokia Lumia 800.

HTC does not provide any talk time or standby time ratings for the One X, but I've found the phone to be a pretty solid performer in terms of real world battery use. Getting a full 24 hours out of the battery is easily within reach, but you still won't get two full days out of it unless you use it ever so sparingly and have it configured with few apps updating in the background.

Final Thoughts

The HTC One X is easily my favorite phone on the market today. Even Samsung's Google Galaxy Nexus pales in comparison. The sexy hardware design, the updated Sense 4 user interface, and the amazing camera team up with blazing performance to make the One X an unstoppable force of nature that I simply must have in my hand.

I am quite certain that there are going to be quad-core Samsung-built Android devices with equal speed and camera performance in the near future, but I doubt that Samsung has the grapes to put out an industrial design as bold as that of the HTC One X.

Pros: Beautiful design, great display, speedy and easy to use camera, improved Sense UI, quad-core processing speed.

Cons: Non-swappable battery, no 4G data support, somewhat large.