HTC made it clear to us that there was a conscious effort to turn down the volume a couple notches , to integrate Sense more tightly with the platform and to make it less of a bright, overdesigned, in-your-face experience than it's been in the past. There are places where this effort has succeeded, and will be pretty obvious to users upgrading from Sense 3.
And of course, with Android 4. Another major improvement is the redesigned home screen dock, which dispenses of the silly immovable Personalize and Phone buttons — clearly, most users are going to want a Phone shortcut somewhere on their home screen, but not a giant one taking up three-quarters of the dock, especially when voice calling is a secondary smartphone function for many users these days.
The new dock functions more like stock Android 4. Conveniently, the icons you place here also automatically become the four app shortcuts on your lock screen. But there are places where Sense 4. Android 4.
And let me be clear, there isn't any single glaring deficiency in Sense 4. The fact that anyone feels this is a necessary inclusion perhaps speaks to a deeper issue on HTC's or Google's part, because under no circumstances should an average phone user ever need to actively manage the apps that are occupying RAM — especially on a device with 1GB of it.
The obvious response is, "that's fine, just don't use it then," but that's a bad answer. Any app in ROM out of the box that isn't necessary and adds no practical value to the average user's experience is, by definition, either bloatware or crapware. Other annoyances include Sense's odd checkboxes, which are considerably more difficult to read than stock Android's; they're light green on white by default, so they've got very little contrast.
The One X's task switcher — which takes up the full screen of the phone and only lets you see one app thumbnail at a time — is a marked downgrade from stock Android's. As in older Sense versions, the Messaging and Gallery apps among others are restyled with no apparent benefit.
HTC's customized browser hides the status bar not a particularly big deal, since I'd recommend all users download the superior Chrome for Android beta as soon as they crack open the box. And strangely, other apps — Downloads, for instance — are virtually untouched and totally break with the design aesthetic HTC's trying to achieve. In fact, Downloads even uses Google's stock checkbox design, not Sense's. Sense 4. For some odd reason, HTC has decided to include a row of directional keys at the bottom, which makes the keyboard take up very nearly half of the One X's p display when open.
The inclusion of Swype-like T9 Trace input is nice and works quite well, but unless you intend on making it your primary input method, you're better off grabbing a third-party option from the Play Store like SwiftKey or one of the several stock ICS keyboards available.
The One X, like many Android 4. But throughout the platform, I get the vague sense that Google didn't anticipate that manufacturers would continue to go with hard buttons on native Android 4. Many apps still require access to a menu button; it's a behavior that Google is trying to nudge developers away from, but it seems it'll be a while yet before it's totally dead. In the meantime, devices with soft buttons solve this by neatly showing a menu icon three vertical dots in the right corner of the soft button row; press it and you get the menu pop-up.
Easy, no mess. On the One X, though, the need for a menu button necessitates that it add an entire black row to the bottom of the screen simply to accommodate it, since there is no soft button row otherwise and there's really no other place in the UI to put it.
In practice, that means that many apps —Twitter and YouTube come immediately to mind, among countless others — lose maybe a hundred or so pixels of screen real estate, never mind the fact that it simply looks bad. Getting 25GB of Dropbox storage with your One purchase is a nice perk — I'd personally started using Dropbox on a daily basis long before this phone ever hit my doorstep. It's a great service, and it's the kind of thing where you really can't get enough storage.
HTC advertises that Dropbox is "integrated" with Sense, but don't be fooled — the extent of the integration is very light, and you can get all of the same functionality on any other Android device. Apart from being able to sign into your Dropbox account immediately when you turn on the One X for the first time as part of the setup wizard, Sense 4.
And confusingly, even on the One X, you need to set this up from the Dropbox app even though automatic upload to Facebook and Flickr are managed from the Camera app. I can't lodge a single complaint about the One X's performance, though — this phone screams, and it has the benchmark scores to back it up.
I used the phone as my primary device for a full week and can't recall a single incidence of lag or stutter anywhere in the user interface. That's saying something, because Android phones that initially appear to be fast have a tendency to "bog down" over time and during certain operations like app updates and account syncs, but not the One X — it was smooth sailing at all times.
Looking at the raw data from the benchmarks we've run, it seems to do a little better than the Snapdragon S4-powered One S in gaming no surprise, considering Nvidia's graphics roots and a little worse in browser performance. In typical use, though, you're simply going to notice that this phone is fast regardless of what you're doing.
I'd expected that HTC would probably include a higher-capacity battery in this version to accommodate the LTE radio and the thicker shell would seem to back that up , but that's not the case; both are rated at 1,mAh.
And is battery life a concern without a higher capacity? Absolutely not. With two and a half hours of hotspot use in LTE coverage, about 40 minutes of heavy-duty benchmarking, and a minute phone call, I still managed some seven hours and 14 minutes before it gave up the ghost. With less abuse — something more akin to my average usage pattern — I was able to go a full day and into the next morning before getting a low-battery warning note, though, that this was while connected to a 3G MicroCell most of the time, so LTE was disengaged and the HSPA radio was likely in a relatively low power state.
The result is that the One X makes other devices look average. Set alongside something like the Sensation XE, which is impressive in its own right, the One X looks like a real step forward. It might seem a small point, but in a world where the slightest delay in updating draws criticism from customers, it gets HTC off to the right start.
This is the latest version of Sense, incorporating much of what has rolled into Sense 3. The aim, HTC maintains, is to make sure that it doesn't take anything away from native Android with the changes it makes. Landing on the home page, that much is obvious. It is a cleaner, more dynamic, arrangement than previous HTC devices, washing away the restrictive launcher and obsession with "personalising" everything. Ironically, the new Sense can be personalised to a greater degree than previously, thanks to the new layout.
A central apps tray icon is flanked by spaces on each side into which you can drop shortcuts. These also accept folders, so rather than dropping icons on your home screen you can just create a folder in the launch bar. It's nice, tidy, convenient, but also common across most new Android devices. But behind this upfront easing of HTC Sense, you'll find that it tinkers on just about every level as it always has.
Visually, much of Android 4's character has gone. You rarely catch a glance of the blue Tron-esque look of native Ice Cream Sandwich, so although this is a lighter touch, it's instantly recognisable as HTC Sense, with all its widgets and features.
The first startup of the device invites you to sign in to a huge number of preinstalled and linked services - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Dropbox, SkyDrive and so on. HTC has done a deal with Dropbox giving you an additional 23GB of storage when you sign in, although this lasts only for 24 months, presumably until you get your next HTC device.
With all this signing in, you'll find these services ready to roll on the device, along with a fair amount more. One of the nice features is being able to search for apps within the apps tray, returning instant results as you type.
If you love apps, you'll love this feature for routing out that obscure program you can't find. The lock screen offers a wide range of features, with the convenient unlock options. Instead it takes the launch bar shortcuts and offers you those. So if you have a folder, you unlock directly to that folder. You also get music controls from the lock screen, as well access to the notification bar.
As previously, the notification bar is richly populated, although you don't get recent apps offered here any more, because Ice Cream Sandwich brings with it the recent apps button and a new approach to multitasking.
HTC Sense 4 tweaks this too. In Honeycomb and native Ice Cream Sandwich, the recent apps view presents thumbnails that will scroll up and down the page vertically. HTC Sense 4 turns this into larger screen grabs that scroll horizontally. It's six of one and half a dozen of the other: the HTC approach perhaps looks better, but the native Android approach fits more on the display, so is arguably faster to use. Returning to notifications, Sense 4 still gives you a rich notifications area.
This is also accessible from the lock screen, so you can instantly see missed calls or messages and unlock the phone to take direct action.
You get a convenient Settings button, so you can quickly access the menu. Gone is the slightly fiddly dual-tabbed notifications area of previous versions of Sense, making things not only tidier, but faster to access.
Sense 4 generally sticks to Android 4 app-control conventions. Obviously the menu button has now gone, so settings are accessed via the in-app button, usually depicted with three dots. HTC has put in the effort to conform to this, so you'll find the menu in the top right-hand corner in Sense's modified apps, giving a nice level of consistency across the experience. There is still one thing we really don't like though, and that's HTC's insistence on pushing its "Locations" over Google Maps.
Once you have addresses in your contacts or calendars, this will link through to maps, but the default is HTC's own service, which is lacklustre, to say the least. Fortunately there is an app to fix that for you and a quick download of Select Other Map for HTC will fix the problem.
With all the screen space available, it might come as a surprise that in general use you don't get more space on the screen. One thing you'll quickly notice is that the homepage will take only as many icons as previous devices like the Sensation XE, and that's This is because the screen is divided into spaces and these spaces are now larger, as are the app icons.
The other thing you'll notice is that the keyboard is now massive, with an added run of cursor keys across the bottom. As a result, you get to see less of the webpage or message you're writing than you might expect. Install a third-party keyboard, like SwiftKey X pictured above , and you'll get a little more space back again.
Taken in a pitch black room with cupboards around 2. Taken in a pitch black room with cupboards from around 50cm away — Come closer and the LED is plenty powerful enough, and allows for sharp focussing. Changes in lighting at around 20seconds demonstrate the ability to touch the screen during filming to adjust the focus and exposure point. We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly.
We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy. Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct. We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. Founded in , Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have 9 million users a month around the world, and assess more than 1, products a year. In this article… 1. Verdict 2. Pros and Cons 3. Key Specifications 4. How we tested 5. Trusted Score Share:. How we test phones We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. Used as our main phone for the review period. Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing. Always has a SIM card installed. Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps.
Trusted Score. Score in detail Performance 9. Screen Size inches Inch 4. Bluetooth Yes, v4. CPU Quad-core 1. The frequency of the processor describes its clock rate in cycles per second. They handle the computation of graphics in various applications. Data in the RAM is lost after the device is turned off or restarted. More channels mean higher data transfer rates. Information about the capacity of the built-in storage of the device. Sometimes one and the same model may is offered in variants with different internal storage capacity.
The display resolution shows the number of pixels on the horizontal and vertical side of the screen. The higher the resolution is, the greater the detail of the displayed content.
Information about the number of pixels per centimeter ppcm or per inch ppi of the display. The higher the pixel density, the more detailed and clearer is the information displayed on the screen. The color depth of the display is also known as bit depth.
It shows the number of bits used for the color components of one pixel. Information about the maximum number of colors the screen can display. Sensors vary in type and purpose. They increase the overall functionality of the device, in which they are integrated.
Information about the sensor type of the camera. The aperture f-stop number indicates the size of the lens diaphragm opening, which controls the amount of light reaching the image sensor. The lower the f-stop number, the larger the diaphragm opening is, hence, the more light reaches the sensor. Usually, the f-stop number specified is the one that corresponds to the maximum possible diaphragm opening.
Focal length is the distance in millimeters from the focal point of the image sensor to the optical center of the lens. The 35 mm equivalent indicates the focal length at which a full-frame camera will achieve an angle of view that's the same as the one of the camera of the mobile device.
It is measured by multiplying the native focal length of the camera by the crop factor of the sensor. The crop factor itself can be determined as the ratio between the diagonal distances of the image sensor in the 35 mm camera and a given sensor. The rear cameras of mobile devices use mainly a LED flash. It may arrive in a single, dual- or multi-light setup and in different arrangements.
One of the main characteristics of the cameras is their image resolution. It states the number of pixels on the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the image, which can also be shown in megapixels that indicate the approximate number of pixels in millions. Information about the maximum number of frames per second fps supported by the rear camera while recording video at the maximum resolution.
Some of the main standard frame rates for recording and playing video are 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, 60 fps. Information about additional software and hardware features of the rear camera which improve its overall performance. The loudspeaker is a device, which reproduces various sounds such as ring tones, alarms, music, voice calls, etc. Information about the type of speakers the device uses.
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