This one is a head turner. We’re talking about the legally ‘White’ HTC ONE X. There are very few gadgets that look great and perform to live up to the first good impression. This one has all the right ingredients, a quad processor, the latest Android software – The Ice cream Sandwich OS. Can the HTC ONE X live up to its positive first impression? Let’s find out …
Short Review
Pros
- Jaw dropping design
- Excellent build quality
- Above average Camera performance in daylight
- HTC Sense 4.0 makes a lot of Sense
- Insanely fast
- First phone to ship with Android 4.0 ICS in India
- First Quad core phone to be available in India
Cons
- Mediocre Camera performance in low-light
- Mediocre Battery Life of inbuilt battery , non-removable
- No memory expansion, you are stuck with the inbuilt memory
- No beats headphones in the box , just software tweaks
- Pricey
Long Review
Hardware
HTC serves the Ice Cream Sandwich in the most beautiful white gadget, this summer. But, here’s a worry, how long do our lovely white gadgets REMAIN WHITE? The design and aesthetics of One X will help retain the new look of the phone longer. It’s a Unibody structure – there are no corner spines for dust to gather. The Gorilla Glass on the AMOLED screen cleverly curves with the corners
The chassis has been given a polycarbonate finish that makes the back cover fingerprint resistant. IT WILL LET THE WHITE LAST LONGER.
An 8 MP snapper is placed smoothly with a flash beside it.
Bottom side is the speaker with Beats audio branding above it.
Micro USB is on the right.
An unnecessarily long volume rocker that almost always comes in the way sits on one side. It interrupts by activating, when using single hand to operate the lock button that is placed above it.
To get cracking on the phone, we move up to the sim slot placed near the camera. Pin out the tray, and what do we see? A Micro SIM slot!! Users will have no option but amputate sim card, because HTC perhaps forgot to alter its unibody hardware for the crucial Indian market where operators (still) don’t provide Micro SIMs unless you fight with them !!
3.5mm audio jack is at the top next to the Micro SIM slot.
What’s even more disappointing about this unibody phone is that, it has NO external memory slot. If you are not storing your data through cloud apps provided by HTC, then inbuilt 32 GB memory is all you have. Now wouldn’t we want to download more when there is a massive 1.5 Ghz quad-core CPU (Nvidia’s Tegra 3)?
This slim giant has an 1800 mAh Li-ion battery pumping in the energy. But is that enough for a quad-core processor ? Our extensive review shall reveal.
Flip it over and the gorgeous, huge 4.7 inch screen takes your attention away from the vices of the hardware for a while. Screen is framed – on top – with a speaker and a 1.3 MP front camera that has a deserving 720p for video chat. Below are three essential keys, back, home and recent apps (indicated by double square icon).
You will notice that a fellow search button, present in earlier android phones bottom tab, is missing in this one. That’s cause every page on the screen will offer a search button of its own and a menu option besides it.
Software
First gesture on the phone itself introduces the user to the new features of the fresh Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS – A new method of editing home screens. Long press on the home screen and there comes the array of options. The top part of the screen shows the homepages , followed by options to add-on the homescreen. There are also options on looks of the widget. Better than the application launcher that was a part of the earlier android OS.
The most admirable feature of any Android OS is its flexibility; the availability of options to change the look of the phone and edit its content. Ice cream sandwich makes that flexibility, more fluid. For example, Tabs (at the bottom) too can be edited.
Android market place has changed for good. It is now called ‘Play Store’. Homepage of ‘Play Store’ offers options in TILE ICONS, very similar to windows 7 look! Android has revamped its app store to look more bright, attractive and has totally obviated the white colour that was prominent earlier in most of its backgrounds.
All application menu has its own search button. App or Play store, and menu option on top. New OS addition. Every page has its own search button. even the app store has its own search and Menu icons on top. A new addition in Ice Cream Sandwich OS
One of the favourite Android feature, the top pull down menu remains unaltered.
The volume rocker on the corner always comes in the way while locking the phone with the top key!
The last touch button, at the bottom of the screen takes you to recent apps. You can swipe the apps up to close them. Wise addition HTC!
Camera
The phone has 8 MP camera with Full HD 1080p video recording capability. The camera has average performance in low light. Many pictures taken in natural light somehow didn’t come out as sharp as other 8 MP camera phones with or without light. (comparing to Sony Ericson arc).
Colours are fine, but the picture is not as clear, sharp as expected from an 8 MP camera. Extreme close up picture appears to be grained. Check for sample images below.
Benchmarks
Here are some benchmarks to show the performance of the quad-core device.
Quadrant
Linpack single and multi-thread
Vellamo score
Smartbench 2012
Battery
The best way to test a battery is to run a radio channel. Streaming, buffering constantly utilises battery and engine. After using phone for about 4 hours, with wifi on, atleast an hour of continuous radio, half the battery is already exhausted. Do Note; Phone was kept on extremely low brightness and screen switched off when not in use.
Inference on battery performance – It might last for a day, if all possible precautions are taken to ensure no wastage of power.
It’s time phone makers concentrate on better power supply to handsets. None of the super fast engines or bigger screens is worth the buck, if the battery gets exhausted way before we can relish all these great features to contentment.
Multimedia
Watching videos on the large display of the One X is such a treat. The inbuilt speaker is a bit low in terms of volume. There are no Beats earphones in the box and you get only a pair of entry level earphones. You get an option in the software for turning on Beats Audio.
The number of free radio options is a joy. Radio can work without headset. But there is no single storage place where one can combine downloaded music from different sources.
Web surfing is smooth as expected, with all necessary options to share material. Pinch to Zoom, Multiple Tabs , Flash support etc. We still prefer the Chrome app from the Play Store which is just a click away.
Connectivity
Phone calls went through pretty fine , only problem was getting the dealing with a microSIM slot which will open up only with the HTC pin. You can turn your 3G connection into a WiFi Hotspot thanks to Android and HTC’s implementation. There is NFC and WiFi Direct -2 technologies which might go mainstream in the next couple of years. It features Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi n channel support.
Wrap Up
Ice Cream Sandwich can be best described as a thin layer of Honeycomb over Gingerbread. Google has combined the recipe of its Tablet OS to gel with the mobile OS to form Ice Cream sandwich. It is a smooth initial attempt to mix the two and has worked well.
As for HTC ONE X. Most smartphones are great till their battery lasts! Does it live upto its first great impression? Well, Nearly. It will be a favorite among the current reigning top-end smartphones in the market, and will retain that position for a while.
But how much does it cost? Rs,40,000 market price and you can find it for around Rs.36500 in retail stores. Too much you think? Some would say this Glorious White phone is only worth window shopping but HTC fans and Android users alike will love this device.
Thanks to Star Mobitel , DLF Promenade , Delhi for the device
Gaurav Hasabnis and Varun Krishnan contributed to the review
