Review: HTC One X

The best Android phone on the NZ market....for now

“I’m the One you’ve waited for” it says on the removable sticker attached to the phone, and after using it for the last two weeks I can’t help but think it‘s true.

The HTC One X is the Android phone you’ve always wanted.

It’s the culmination of HTC’s long pedigree with Android OS, a relationship which began more than three years ago with the first ever Android phone on the market: the HTC Dream.

The Taiwanese manufacturer has come a long way since then, and it shows in the design of this phone.

The look of the One X is unique, and it’s good to see an Android device that isn’t trying to imitate the iPhone aesthetic (I’m looking at you Samsung Galaxy S II).

The body is made of a matt-white unibody polycarbonate. The back is slightly curved and tapers off towards the top and bottom, while the front has two slivers of white around the edges of the phone.

The tapered shape makes it easy for this large phone (134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm) to slide in and out of your pocket and, despite its size, the phone only weighs 130g.

The largeness of the One X is to accommodate its 4.7-inch LCD screen. With a 720 x 1280 pixel display it has almost the same pixel density as the iPhone 4S but with a higher resolution. The image quality on the screen is comparable to the iPhone and side-by-side it’s hard to discern a clear winner.

The screen makes a great companion to the 8 MP camera sported by the One X. Under daylight the camera takes some of the best images I’ve seen on an Android device. The images are clear, the colours are vibrant, and the natural shaking of the hands is well compensated for by the camera software. Sadly the low-light images doesn’t match up to the images you’d get from an iPhone or Galaxy S II, but the quality is in no way a deal breaker.

A camera feature I’ve come to rely on is the Continuous Shooting function, which when you hold your finger over the camera button takes a burst of images for as long as you hold your finger down. Afterwards you can see the images you’ve taken and choose which ones to keep or delete. This is useful for taking photos of people while they are moving without getting motion blur.

Video playback is smooth, and with 1080p, Flash support, and numerous codecs - this phone can play just about any type of video.

The HTC One X comes with 32 GB of built in storage. This is plenty for me, but others might find the lack of an external memory option limiting.



HTC has partnered with Dropbox to provide buyers of the One X 25 GB of free storage space (23 GB plus the 2 GB that comes with a free Dropbox account) for two years. Dropbox is a popular cloud storage app available for desktop and smartphones. It’s integrated with several popular productivity and image applications available in the Android Play Store, so this is a great move on HTC’s part.

The One X comes loaded with Ice Cream Sandwhich (ICS), which is the latest version of the Android OS. HTC has also put its Sense user interface on top of the core OS. I’m not a fan of the Sense UI design, but it’s always been snappy and clean — and in the One X this is no different.

With a quad-core 1.5 GHz Tegra 3 processor, the phone is great for running graphically intensive apps or playing games, but is definitely overkill for most day to day use.

I would gladly sacrifice some of the horsepower of the CPU for more battery life.

The powerful processor combined with the large display has taken a heavy toll on the One X’s battery. Moderate use would see the battery last around six hours, while using 3G for web browsing would significantly cut that figure down. Because of its unibody design, there’s no option to carry a spare battery, which means you’ll most likely need to keep it on charge at work.

The HTC One X is a beautiful phone, with exceptional processing power. Its screen and camera make it a powerhouse device, almost making up for the poor battery performance. I’d recommend this to anyone buying a new Android phone, or for iPhone users looking to see life through a larger screen.

Specs:

Dimensions: 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm
OS: Android OS, v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
CPU: Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-core 1.5 GHz
Screen: 720 x 1280 pixels, 4.7 inches
Storage: 32 GB, no expansion
Camera: 8 MP with flash
RRP: $999 | PriceSpy price: $839

4/5 Stars