HTC One X review

HTC's One X is the company's flagship device and the top model in its One range. At the beginning of 2012 HTC announced it was changing its strategy from producing a wide range of devices and would instead focus on a small number of high quality ‘hero' devices. The One range is apparently the culmination of that change.

First and foremost, this is a beautiful looking device. HTC's representatives described the bodywork at the One range's unveiling as having a ‘piano key' finish. We can see what they were driving at, while we think that analogy is slightly odd the feel of the materials used is very satisfying indeed.

It's a sort of matte plastic but it's incredibly solid. The handset is made with a unibody construction which adds to this well-made feel, the edges are a softened, faceted and chiselled shape with a slightly glossier finish than the front and back surfaces.

Being a unibody phone HTC has opted for micro SIM, which means there's also a pop-out tray - the handset comes with a special key to open this.

In profile it's perhaps not the thinnest phone in existence but it's plenty thin enough to keep things looking slick. The main body has a curved shape and from the front you can see a relatively narrow strip of bodywork around the outside of a flat, contoured slab of glossy black which houses the screen.

It's a very striking and appealing look with the white version of the One X which we had for review, we can imagine the black version still looks excellent but without the contrast it'll be more about smooth understatement and less about the ‘pop'.

The camera housing on the back panel is worth mentioning. It's not a deal-breaker but it is a little peculiar and perhaps not to everyone's tastes with its round almost ‘porthole' appearance which sticks out slightly from the handset like a cartoon moon crater. The lens is also not recessed which could cause dirt and fingerprint issues - not the best design but it'll do.

The screen is incredibly sharp and a joy to look at, HTC has fitted the One X with a sizable 4.7-inch Super IPS LCD 2 capacitive multi-touch display, reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass to protect against scratches.

The resolution clocks an impressive 1280x720 pixels giving a pixel density of 312 pixels-per-inch (ppi). This is one of the best screens we've seen on Android devices so far in terms of picture clarity.

The operating system is Google's Android platform and it's using the latest build, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) 4.0 and the One range is the first set of devices to sport version 4.0 of HTC's Sense user interface (UI) overlay. Ice Cream Sandwich is a much better optimised and much more stable build of Android with excellent performance capabilities.

On the One X's Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core 1.5GHz processor (with 1GB of RAM) navigating the homescreens and menus is seriously smooth. In fact, we can't put enough ‘o's' in the word smooth to sufficiently convey how good it is. This thing just flies through typical smartphone tasks with ease.

We also benchmarked the handset and as you can see the results are impressive, we've no doubt this handset will handle any current high-end game or app without breaking a sweat.



As might be expected of an Android phone it is excellent at multi-tasking, however, it's not just the performance which is noteworthy this time.

In Ice Cream Sandwich Google has introduced to phones the fast app-switcher menu from the Honeycomb tablet build. But there's a neat twist as it now has the handy ability to swipe running apps away to close them. It's great to have a faster and more intuitive way to manage your apps rather than being forced into fumbling around in the settings menus.

Settings menus are more thoughtfully planned out and it's easier to find exactly what you want. Integration is also quite deep, you can share pretty much anything via most popular social networks or through email and text with a few taps.

We also liked the additions to the App Drawer which allow you to sort, share and manage apps directly from this screen.



Overall HTC has decided to slim down the Sense experience and make it less intrusive, by the company's own admission previous builds were a bit on the noisy side.

Thankfully HTC has also carried on with its optimisation improvements from 3.0/3.5 and unlike earlier versions of Sense it doesn't cause any noticeable slowdown, though of course, this may be down to the One X's considerable processing capabilities.

In previous builds the Sense UI embedded certain system settings into the drop-down Android notification bar. It's now unadulterated, although those settings are still there if you wish to access them this way simply by pressing the ‘Settings' button in the top right corner.

The People Hub is a new addition and an attempt by Google to replicate Microsoft's excellent social networking aggregation on Windows Phone. It sits alongside HTC's Friend Stream app from the Sense package.

While the People Hub is certainly better than having no such functionality at all it's not quite on the same level as Microsoft's streamlined offering. It's a welcome addition nonetheless.

With some features it's difficult to tell what is Android and what is the Sense UI, for example, we previously noticed with other devices running Ice Cream Sandwich, specifically the Asus Transformer Prime in this case, that the customisation menu had reverted from Honeycomb's complex but satisfyingly thorough system of pages to a more conventional Gingerbread-style hold-press and drag-and-drop system.

However, the Honeycomb style system is back here - either Google has re-introduced it for phones or it's part of the Sense interface. Either way it's a welcome return as far as we're concerned.

Sense is most prominent when it comes to the lock screen, which features the signature ‘ring' unlock mechanism introduced in Sense 3.5. Some people aren't fans of this feature. On the plus side you can customise the lock screen to display certain widget information such as the weather or stock exchange stats - handy for getting the info you want at a glance.

Apart from this, the Sense interface isn't particularly visible, it comes down more to what kind of HTC apps and widgets are available to you on top of the default Android ones, and of course you don't have to use them.

Curiously, even though ICS supports button-less handsets thanks to the introduction of on-screen controls, HTC has opted to go with capacitive buttons instead. Not that this is a big deal.

The camera is worth talking about in some detail as HTC has gone to considerable lengths to put out a first-class camera experience on the One X.

This is a seriously high-end camera setup capable of producing some excellent photographs and 1080p video footage and it rivals the iPhone 4S's iSight setup in terms of picture and video quality.

But it goes one further than Apple's offering thanks to some neat extra functionality. You can capture up to 20 photographs in rapid succession simply by holding the shutter button down - if you want you can keep all of these, but the phone will also point out the best quality photo from the bunch and allow you to save just that one if you wish.

The interface is very minimal and has been made to allow the entire screen to be the viewfinder, with controls overlaid at the edges and it features touch focus.

You can add filters before snapping your pictures and set up a variety of options including the LED flash, digital zoom, image quality, timer, ISO, white balance, HDR, panoramic mode, stabilisation, audio for video and various capture modes.

Another feature allows you to start recording video and then tap the photo shutter at any point to capture still images simultaneously. The front-facing camera is also very good compared to most other smartphones and for video calling it's excellent quality.

We'll quickly mention that the internal storage is 32GB which should be more than adequate for most users, though sadly there's no micro SD slot so you're not going to be able to expand it if you need to.

HTC has struck a deal with DropBox which gives you 25GB of free cloud space and the app is already installed on the phone - all you have to do is create an account. Of course, this requires an internet connection to use.

So what do we think? Well a number of things.

The One X is easily HTC's overall best and most stylish smartphone to date. It's also, in our view, currently the best overall Android phone to date and has the best version of both Android and HTC's Sense user interface.

Not only that but it proves the viability of Nvidia's Tegra 3 chipset with some stunning performance and it has one of the better phone camera setups we've seen so far.

This is what Android fans have been waiting for, a device which runs Android as well as the iPhone runs iOS. It is simply that slick.

We suspect it'll be dethroned in short order by Samsung's Galaxy S III when it emerges, but Samsung isn't exactly quick out the door and until that handset hits this is the best Android phone on the current market, hands down.

Posted in: Android,Google,HTC,Reviews