HTC One X - A short review

I will begin by apologizing. In a blog post that I wrote some time ago, I claimed that the phones are getting to large to handle, literally. I claimed that a phone shouldn't be wider than 65mm, thicker than 10mm and heavier than 130g. I still hold that these are the perfect dimensions for a phone, so if I were a man of my word, I shouldn't have bought the HTC One X. Therefore I apologize for betraying you, but at the end, I did get a phone that's considerably wider, at 69mm. But seriously, there's a good reason for this choice.

I could have bought the HTC One S, which is lighter, slimmer and smaller. However, when it came to specifications, it looked a little like yesterday's news. The CPU is a very modern dual-core, and the metal finish is said to be very luxurious, but the screen is pentile, no NFC and no 5GHz WiFi. I was actually willing to compromise on these, but it also has just 10GB of accessible storage space with no possibility to upgrade, and to a music lover like me it's very limiting.

So if I was willing to compromise on size and somewhat on build-quality, why not the Samsung Galaxy S III? After all it has better hardware, it's upgradeable and it is "the superphone of the moment". I did consider it and waited for the Galaxy's release until I made my final decision. I was eager to see it being revealed, expecting the new messiah, but all I got was just a very naughty boy. The design is uninspiring - for a phone that costs so much, it doesn't look like a luxury product. It looks as if they said to themselves "we had a good run with former S-series phones, why should we bother with an actual design?".

The One X is beautifully designed though. It's a big phone but it's very fun to hold, because it's slim and has a matte finish on the back. It's being made of plastic (they call it polycarbonate, but it is the same material your Legos were made of), but it's machined to look like a much more expensive material. The Gorilla-glass covered screen is slightly sloping on the sides, and the phone's sides have glossy finish in the shape of arc, so it looks slightly curved. There are only 3 physical buttons: 2 for volume an one for power. There are 3 touch buttons on the front: back, home and task manager, which is the new Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) configuration.

The screen is fantastic: it's an IPS panel (they call it SuperLCD2). It's bright, contrasty and saturated and fairly easy to read even in the Israeli summer sun. It's even brighter and more contrasty than what I considered the best phone screen until now, the one you can find in the iPhone 4/4s. The viewing angles are perfect, and they managed to make the image "float", in a way that it looks as if it was printed on the screen.

Using the phone is very easy: the new HTC Sense UI is very smooth and as always, but now more elegant and restrained. HTC was criticized for not sticking to the stock task manager, but it's a good thing: they sort-of borrowed Windows Vista's task manager design, but did it much better. The phone itself is very responsive, especially if you install one of the beta Android 4.04 ROMs. It's also rock solid: I did not need to reboot it for 3 weeks now. The only bad thing about this UI is the keyboard, which is not accurate enough and not elegant. Unlike the rest of the UI, it looks like an afterthought.

The camera is a mixed bug though. I like the low-light performance and the responsiveness, but I don't like the final picture quality. True, it's unfair to compare it to a DSLR, butthe final quality is worse than one-year old Galaxy S2 or iPhone 4s. Seriously, I expected more from a phone that claims to have BSI sensor, f/2 lense and a dedicated image processor.

The audio quality is good, but again for a media phone it could have been better. Still, it's very good and the Beats enhancements do make some things at least louder. Anyway, as always, invest in good earphone. Obviously I can recommend the Shure SE215.

My biggest concern was the battery life: a quad-cored, huge-screened phone cannot last long on a charge. I admit that I was pleasantly surprised: HTC claimed they worked hard on optimizing the phone's power management, and it shows: when I don't play with it and just listen to music and o the occasional twitting or Facebooking, it will easily last me the whole day. Only if I do a lot of surfing and video playback I will feel some "range anxiety", but even then it will most likely last the whole day, with about 20% charge left. So all in all, the battery life is not amazing, but quite okay for these specifications.

So all in all, I like this phone, a lot. It does everything I need it to do very well, it's fast, it's very nice too look at, it's very stable and it's comfortable. I would like a better photo quality and battery life, as well as less easily-pressed physical buttons and narrower frame around the screen. But I am glad that I got this phone, because while it seems that the S3 was created to amaze you, the One X was created to serve you - and looking great while doing so.

HTC One X
Year of purchase: 2012
Wireless technologies: GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA+, Bluetooth 4, WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, NFC
RAM and Storage: 1GB of RAM, 2GB of ROM, 25GB user accessible storage.
Cameras: 8MP main camera, 1.3MP secondary. HD video recording.
Other stuff: GPS, microUSB, upgradable OS, Android 4.0.3-4.0.4, accelometer, digital compass, micro HDMI
Battery life: about 1 day
Display:: capacitive multi-touch display, 4.7" IPS screen, HD 720
What I liked: Looks great, amazing screen, light, easy to use, up-to-date specifications, rock-solid and usable software.
What I didn't like:Slightly too big, non-upgradeable memory, the battery cannot be replaced, so-so battery life, audio quality is not amazing and the camera does not deliver up to its promises
Conclusion: Not perfect but it's very good.