We see how the budget-end HTC One V fares against the mid-range Sony Xperia P.
Form
HTC One V - 120.3x59.7x9.2mm, 115g
Sony Xperia P - 122x59.5x10.5mm, 120g
The HTC One V is not the most attractive member of the One range as, rather than sporting a brand new and slickly designed body shell like the One X and One S, it’s instead recycling the HTC Hero design.
This means it's much blockier than its stable-mates and has a sort of ‘chin’ at the bottom. Build-quality quality, however, is very much in-line with the rest of the One range, making it a very solid and well made piece of kit.
Sony’s Xperia P follows the same visual design as the company’s current flagship, the Xperia S. Like the Xperia S, it’s a more substantial device than previous Xperia 2011 models under the Sony Ericsson brand.
Instead of thin, curved edges it has broad, flat surfaces which means it sits in the hand firmly. Build quality and materials are really good giving a more premium feel to this mid-range model.
The back panel is smooth, curving along both its length and width, whilst other lines on the handset are straight and angular like its sharp 90 degree corners.
As with the other models in the 2012 Xperia range, the Xperia P features a transparent bar below the capacitive touch controls at the bottom of the device.
This is a fairly easy win for the Xperia P, which is a much better looking smartphone in our view.
Winner – Sony Xperia P
Display
HTC’s One V is equipped with a 3.7-inch capacitive LCD touchscreen with an 800x480 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 252 pixels-per-inch (ppi).
This is one of the real strengths of the handset as the display delivers a similarly sharp experience as the other devices in the One range. Colours are suitably punchy and it features good contrast with deep blacks.
The Xperia P is also highly competent when it comes to pushing out the visuals from its 4-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive screen. It features a 960x540 pixel resolution and a pixel density at 275ppi and is powered by Sony’s Bravia Mobile engine, which enhances the visual quality considerably. This is a very clear and crisp display setup with excellent colour reproduction and contrast.
It’s a tough choice to make, we think many people would be satisfied with either display here, but ultimately we have to side with the higher pixel density screen and that belongs to the Xperia P. The use of the Bravia engine makes it even better.
Winner – Sony Xperia P
Storage
The Xperia P is at a major advantage when it comes to onboard storage capacity, having 16GB compared to the HTC One V’s 4GB. Also on RAM the Sony wins out right as well with a whole 1GB – the One V uses 512MB. Having more RAM is always preferable as it ensures improved read/write performance when running apps and system tasks.
The Xperia P falls over on additional storage, however, as the absence of a card slot means it’s stuck with just the onboard stuff. The One V supports micro SD up to 32GB.
Processor
The HTC One V has a 1GHz Qualcomm single core processor on the MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset, which also features an Adreno 205 graphics processing unit (GPU).
This delivers surprisingly snappy results owing to the fact that HTC is now pretty good at optimising hardware for the Android platform and because it’s running the latest – and most stable – build, Ice Cream Sandwich.
Sony’s Xperia P is a dual core device running ARM’s Cortex-A9 architecture clocked at 1GHz and using the ST Ericsson NovaThor U8500 with a Mali-400MP GPU.
Sony is also one of the better manufacturers with regards to optimisation and it’s done a very good job on the whole Xperia line. It may be running Gingerbread but the performance on the Xperia P is great.
The hardware might be vastly different but the end user experience is quite similar for general system use, browsing and multi-tasking. That said, we’re sure the Xperia P is going to easily handle some higher-end apps and games that the One V might struggle with thanks to its extra core and top grade GPU.
Winner – Sony Xperia P
Operating System
Both handsets are Android powered. The Xperia P uses version 2.3 Gingerbread with Sony’s Timescape interface (UI) on top while the One V has the latest build, 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, with HTC’s Sense 4.0 UI.
This is a pretty stark contrast in the sense that Timescape is quite an intrusive and noisy overlay while this new version of HTC Sense has been reeled in considerably and, on the whole, is barely noticeable.
That said, both platforms run incredibly smoothly. Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) has some added functionality which makes it more appealing, including a re-structured menu layout and a fast multi-tasking tool that allows you to switch between and close apps quickly and easily from any screen.
Generally, ICS is more stable and faster than Gingerbread, but in this case Sony has done an admirable job of bringing Gingerbread up to speed in these areas.
Despite all this, we much prefer the additional features of Ice Cream Sandwich and it’d be our preference every time.
Winner – HTC One V
Final Thoughts
Considering its overall low spec line-up the HTC One V delivers impressive performance for its level and is a relatively low-cost way of getting onto Ice Cream Sandwich.
However, the Sony Xperia P is just as competitive and has a lot more going for it in terms of the onboard hardware. It’s also worth noting that the Xperia P will be updated to ICS some time this year and with that in mind it’d be our choice of these two devices.
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6:55 AM
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