The HTC One X is part of HTC’s new One series of phones along with the HTC One S and HTC One V. The HTC One X is HTC’s current flagship phone coupling a high quality polycarbonate industrial design along with a NVIDIA Tegra Quad Core processor which reminds us of the age old tale of the Beauty and the Beast. Can the One X bring back HTC to its former glory? Find out in our review below.
Unboxing
Box
HTC is using a new kind of box which although we’re not sure what its made of resembles a mixture between foam and recyclable paper which makes it very easy to recycle. Tearing off the paper with all of the phone’s specification and other information gets you to the two piece box, removing the top of which presents you the phone sitting in the middle.
Below the phone you can find the charger, earphones which unfortunately are not of the Beats by Dr. Dre variant, instruction guide, SIM removal tool with a guide on how to cut down your normal SIM to microSIM specifications, all the relevant warranty information and instruction manuals.
Specification
- Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
- 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- 4.7″ 16M-color Super LCD 2 capacitive touchscreen of HD resolution (720 x 1280 pixels) with Gorilla glass “Infinity Display”
- Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4.0
- 1.5 GHz quad-core + 1 Cortex-A9 CPUs, ULP GeForce 2 GPU, Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset
- 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage (26GB usable)
- 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; face detection and geotagging
- 1080p and 720p video recording at 30fps with stereo sound
- 720p front-facing camera for video-chat
- Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- Accelerometer, proximity sensor and auto-brightness sensor
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- microUSB MHL port
- Stereo Bluetooth v4.0
Hardware
The HTC One X measures in at 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm and weighs in at 130g which is very light for a phone this big, for comparison the Galaxy Nexus weights in close at 135g.
The HTC One X is a GSM only phone supporting quadband UMTS (850/900/1900/2100) which helps it support AT&T’s network in the US among others all over the world. AT&T’s One X sports a Snapdragon S4 processor instead of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 variant we have here, the prior supports LTE but our only goes up to HSPA.
The One X features a beautiful 4.7-inch Super LCD 2 720p screen with Gorilla Glass which HTC likes to call an “Infinity display”, also note that the One X’s display is a RGB pixel arrangement offering better viewing angles and image reproduction as compared to Pentile displays. One X’s display is THE best screen you can get on a smartphone. There’s also the 1.5-Ghz Quad Core processor +1 companion core which help improve battery life when extra performance is not needed.
We also have 1GB of RAM, 32GB of non-expandable on-board storage, WiFi b/g/n, DLNA, FM Radio with RDS, Bluetooth 4.0 and a whole set of sensors including an accelerometer, proximity sensor and auto-brightness sensor. The phone’s 1800 mAh battery is charged through the phone microUSB MHL port. The battery lasted us just over a day with heavy usage.
The camera on the back of the One X is a f2.0 8MP 1080p sensor while the one on the front is a 1.3MP shooter mainly intended for video calls. The image quality is pretty g00d but certainly not the best; the colors can be a bit bland, the autofocus has problems focusing in at the right spot and the images have a lot of noise in low light. This is a shame since the One X’s camera application is really good.
Design
The HTC One X is one bea-u-ti-ful device and easily one of the best looking devices on the market. The One X is a much needed refreshment to HTC’s last year’s design portfolio.
The phone is available in two colors, white and the black one which we have here. The front of the phone features the huge 4.7-inch “Infinity Display” which is basically the glass wrapping around the edges of the body of the phone, do note its just the glass that wraps around not the screen itself.
The earpiece is built right into the phone’s unibody design instead of the standard metal grill, and it looks much better this way. Right to the speaker grill we have the 1.3MP front facing camera with all the front sensors just below it. The HTC One X brings with it many firsts from the Taiwanese company including a three button layout instead of the four they’ve used previously. Although we would have preferred no buttons at all, the three button combo is certainly not bad, although Ice Cream Sandwich requires a menu button so older apps will have a software menu button at the bottom of the screen taking around 80 pixels which can be a hindrance for some.
On the top of the phone we have the power button to the right and removable SIM card tray and 3.5mm headphone jack to the left. On the left hand side of the One X we have the microUSB port while on the right side we have the volume rocker. On the back of the phone we have the 8MP shooter on the top along with the single LED flash, the speaker grill is at the very bottom just below the Beats Audio branding and finally to the top right is the five pin dock connector.
Overall the phone feels really nice in the hands but the smooth backing doesn’t really allow you to get a firm grip on the phone. The polycarbonate backing might also pick up stains very easily although cleaning it isn’t too hard.
Software
Like previous HTC phones, the HTC One X too comes with HTC Sense albeit a new and improved version called HTC Sense 4.0. Although Sense has been known for being a bloated mess and always offering eye candy while sacrificing performance. Luckily Sense 4.0 is a much need improvement and has been toned down a lot.
The widgets have been improved a bit but they still consume a lot of battery life and have problems updating at the right time, hence its better to manually update them. A new function in HTC Sense 4.0 which should’ve been added way back is the ability to add or remove homescreens unlike the previous versions which limited you to having seven screens. The notification has also been revamped and resembles stock ICS a lot as now it only displays notifications instead of a list of previously used apps.
HTC has greatly improved its Email client which is much better than the stock ICS client. You can have threaded conversations and even use Smartsync to improve battery life. HTC has also revamped the multitasking in Sense 4.0 making it much similar to WP7 Mango offering an over the top view allowing you to choose between multiple windows at once.
Although HTC didn’t pack in any Beats by Dr Dre headphones in the box the HTC One X does have the in-built Beats audio enhancer but to use it you’ll have to buy separate Beats audio hardware. You also get 25GB of Dropbox storage free with the phone so that’s definitely worth a mention.
Camera Samples
Video Samples
Performance
The HTC One X is the first Android phone to come with NVIDIA’s quad core Tegra 3 processor and we expected huge performance improvements over dual core processor, unfortunately that wasn’t the case. The One X can lag quite a bit in daily use, especially when opening folders and navigating through menus. Casual users won’t notice that much though.
Benchmark performance was really good, the One X scored 4413 in Quadrant, 12834 in CF Bench and 48.571 MFLOPs (1.73 secs) in Linpack.
Overall
The HTC One X is a brilliant phone but still has room for improvement. The Quad core Tegra 3 processor is pretty new and powerful but fails to offer lagless performance we all want from Android, we hope HTC fixes that with the S4 version of this phone.
TechDeville awards the HTC One X 4.5/5 stars.