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HTC One X review
Love
- Strong design
- Very solid build
- Immaculate display
Hate
- Too big for some
HTC One X: Ice Cream Sandwich
It’s also one of the first to market with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android.
As ever with HTC, its overlaid with the company’s Sense skin. Sense is far better than similar overlays from LG, Sony and Motorola.
HTC Sense is all-encompassing, with really well thought out apps and features.
Take the lock screen. There, you drag a ring up the screen to wake the phone, but you can also drag one of four, user-selected icons – defaults are phone, mail, messages and camera – into the ring, to launch that app or function.
Lists and menus on Android phones used to have an elastic spring to them as you scrolled.
Now when you reach the top of a menu, contacts or missed call list, say, a blue light seeps out to tell you you’re at the end. On the One X, the list’s entries separate like carefully arranged slips of paper sliding apart. It’s really rather satisfying.
HTC One X: Battery Life
Battery life hasn’t always been HTC’s strongest suit, the One X rights that. It gives a good 12 hours of power usage, making it to its nightly recharges with few alarms. The good stuff really is laid on thick, here.
HTC One X: Browsing
The web browser works well, including a well-executed, Apple-style Read button that strips out images to leave just text. Zoom in on this and the words reformat to fit the screen.
The menu button offers neat extras like a tab option that makes incognito browsing easy and one-press access to Flash player or desktop versions of sites.
HTC One X: Beats
The sound is all processed via Dr Dre Beats Audio software and hardware, giving improved sonics on everything from the The Byrds to Angry Birds. It’s actually difficult to find things to criticise here.
Some might balk at the lack of a microSD slot, but 32GB of built-in storage is plenty, and you also get access to bonus Dropbox storage for two years.
Similarly, some don’t like non-removable batteries but if the result, as here, is greater longevity, it’s pretty hard to complain.
HTC One X: Apps
Furthermore, older caveats about range and quality of apps and functionality compared to iPhones barely apply anymore. Okay, the App Store and iTunes Store are better than Google Play and Amazon MP3, but really not by much.
Similarly, while the experience of iOS could be described as a little slicker, what was a gulf in quality is now more like a narrow alleyway.
HTC One X: Verdict
The HTC One X is a handsome, speedy handset with power and versatility. You can see that a lot of thought has been applied to key features – the OS, the camera, the Beats Audio – but also to details such as the carefully milled holes that form the earpiece and rear speakers.
If you can live with the size, this is currently the best Android smartphone around.
HTC One availability: TBC
HTC One price: £480
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