No it is not fair to call HTC One V, a sibling of HTC One X. Look wise they are very different. One look at the picture of the phone (see pics) and you’ll agree – HTC One V belongs more to the HTC Hero clan. It is far- far away from the beauty of One X. But why would HTC launch a phone that looks so old, with such a fabulous and new ‘One’ collection? HTC One V is the least priced phone to offer the latest version of Android 4.0, and HTC’s new sense – version 4.0.
Hardware
Let us go back to the hardware and see if we can find something interesting. Unibody hardware, (One X too has a unibody hardware. Can’t remove back cover to take out battery).
A 3.7-inch WVGA, 800 x 480 pixels display. There are three touch buttons at the bottom (just like One X). A protruding chin curve, thankfully not on One X.
A 5 MP camera with flash and beats audio branding along with the speaker grill below that.
For the SIM, there is a little window at the back bottom. In HTC One V you won’t have to perform a surgery on your sim to cut it short (unlike HTC One X that has a micro sim slot !). One V also houses a micro memory-card slot. (No memory slot in HTC one X that has inbuilt 32 GB!).
HTC could have added some aesthetics of the One X to V too. So what if it is the least priced in the series? A new phone deserves a new look, neh? That chin could have been replaced by more screen-real-estate!
Do note, HTC One V has NO Front camera for video chat!!
Side buttons are a volume rocker and a keypad lock button. Those are enough. The handset weighs 115 gms; light enough to not severely sack pocket holding it.
The Power button and the 3.5mm audio jack are at the top.
Software
User experience is as smooth as expected from an HTC Android phone. The home screen editing style has changed from what HTC phones with Gingerbread offered. There are different shortcut widgets available for each contacts, calendar and clock etc. This is an HTC sense 4.0 feature present in both HTC One X and V. One difference we noticed between HTC One X and HTX One V is that the number of widget options for X, are nearly double of those available in V.
The three touch buttons at the bottom include ‘back’, ‘home’ and ‘recent apps’ .The recent apps button opens up a better way of viewing all open apps. The recent app page is a translucent sheet, letting the user view the active page on phone, in the background.
Do note that the search shortcut button that was present in earlier HTC gingerbread phs is absent in its new Android 4.0 phs with HTC Sense 4. The search option is now available on top of every application.
HTC One series phones have a top bar integrated in almost all apps. This bar replaces the old google search bar present in earlier HTC android phs. Options in the top bar could vary from ‘search’, ‘play’ (new market palce),’help’ or ‘menu’.
The new market place, Play’s homepage, has become more attractive and cheerful…with homepage tiles similar to those of windows 7 OS…These tiles, are apps divided into different categories like games, editors choice, top app etc.
Phone calling
Not much has changed in the phone calling features from gingerbread to ice cream sandwich OS. The facebook status and all synced information appear on the screen, when the contact is selected. However the photograph of the contact gets hidden below all the information. Wonder if that would bother any user much?
Camera
Both the One X and One V are blessed with the new HTC ImageSense which allows taking still pictures even while recording a video. We tested how well this feature works.
The picture light and colours are not much of a concern, but quite often the stills are blurred and defocused. The 5 MP camera does a decent job with stills. Some pictures taken in normal room light condition, without flash are here for you to look at.
Here are the camera samples in burst mode while capturing video
Radio
The inbuilt radio app needs headsets to work as antenna. Some radio channels like the ‘Hit radio FFH service’ available from play market, will work even without the headsets.
Emails and Internet surfing
Gmail updating does not hang or lag despite the slow processor. Email page options are on top bar, just like every other app , on HTC Sense 4 powered phone. These options include – search, compose and menu.
The most crucial aspect of a phone, its battery and engine – This Android-4.0 and HTC sense-4 handset runs on a mere 1 GHz processor. It won’t be fair to compare HTC One V to its much more expensive sibling One X that is powered by quad core 1.5 GHz processor! But we must mention the difference.
HTC One V does have good battery strength of 1500 mAh Li-ion. HTC One X has an 1800 mAh battery. If a 1 GHz processor phone has 1500 mAh battery, shouldn’t a quad core processor (one x) get more fuel to power it?
HTC One V thankfully has an SD memory card slot, missing in One X. The latter already has 32 GB inbuilt memory. HTC One V has a total inbuilt memory of 4 GB only.
Do take a look at the benchmarks tests conducted on HTC One V.
Quadrant Benchmark
Verdict
Vellamo Score
HTC deserves good credit for at least making an effort to bring the latest Android OS, in a mid range phone, to India. Though it could have provided the phone with a newer look, and surely a faster engine to do justice and relish all the great features of Android 4.0 and HTC Sense 4.
The phone is priced around Rupees 17,500/- in the Indian market. Fetch it if you can’t wait longer to taste the ice cream sandwich, already!
Pros
- Design
- Runs on latest version of Android – Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box
- Reasonably priced
- Expandable Memory
Cons
- No front facing camera
- Only 4GB internal memory
- No dedicated Camera key
- In-built battery