HTC One X review

HTC’s One X is a collection of firsts. It’s the first HTC handset with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the first with a 720×1,280-pixel screen, and the first with a quad-core processor; its Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset even includes a GeForce graphics core and a “companion core” – a fifth processor core that takes over essential functions when the phone is idle to save power.

The huge 4.7in screen’s IPS panel is bright and colourful, if not quite as punchy as the OLED screens on the Motorola RAZR or Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The screen’s contrast also can’t match that of its rivals. Blacks weren’t as deep and whites not as bright in our side-by-side tests with those phones. Colours were on the vibrant rather than accurate side, although you may prefer this for gaming and reading websites. The 720p resolution is ideal for web browsing; we could easily read headline and summary text on the BBC News homepage in landscape mode, and then double-tap to zoom in to individual stories.

The One X’s screen is rounded at the edges and sits proud of its white surround. There’s very little space around the screen, except at the bottom where three touch-sensitive buttons handle Back, Home and the new Open Tasks function, which shows which apps are currently running. The handset is light and comfortable to hold, with the matt-white plastic providing adequate grip.

The phone’s 1.5GHz quad-core processor makes it run smoothly, although we still noticed some jerkiness and lag when under heavy load – swiping through the home screens still isn’t as buttery smooth as on the iPhone. We tested a few games and they all played smoothly, although the phone can get hot at the rear. In the JavaScript Sunspider benchmark it scored 1,746ms, that’s around 100ms quicker than the Tegra 3-equipped Asus Transformer Prime, probably due to a higher clock speed.

With the Android 4.0 operating system comes HTC’s own Sense 4.0, a collection of apps, widgets and customisations designed to improve on Android’s own interface. We’ve mentioned previously how manufacturers and network operators often load phones with software that can’t be uninstalled, and which duplicates or even removes Android’s own functions, but Sense has always been one of the less intrusive examples. Sense 4.0 adds features that complement Android’s own software.

For a start, Sense beefs up the camera app, adding plenty of extra features that take advantage of the One X’s dedicated imaging chip. There’s a fast multi-capture mode which you access by holding down the shutter button, and it saves these pictures as a collection so you can browse for the best one. Pictures can be snapped in 0.7 seconds, with a 0.2 second auto-focus, and you can go straight to the camera from the lock screen to speed things up.

This may be the first phone that gives compact digital cameras a run for their money. It’s got more options that we’re used to seeing on a smartphone camera: face detection, auto smile capture (which works quite quickly), manual ISO settings and continuous shooting. You can adjust exposure, contrast, saturation and sharpness using sliders from the options menu, and you can even snap a quick shot while recording video.

Our test shots were some of the best we’ve seen from a smartphone camera. There was bit of noise in our outdoor shots but details are reasonably smooth, without the smudged look you can get from heavy noise reduction. The fairly large-aperture f/2.0 lens helps indoors, and low-light shots without the flash were astoundingly good, with sensibly chosen settings (1/15s at ISO 1250) and noise kept reasonably in check for such a fast ISO speed. It’s on par with a decent mid-price compact camera.

The sample image above is scaled down from the original and is a good example of the natural colours and decent sharpness across the frame. Below you can see a 1:1 pixel crop with decent detail for such a wide shot – click on either to enlarge

Sense also beefs up the music player, although here we’re not so keen on its changes. It adds HTC’s own Beats Audio processing and changes the default music player, adding links to the 7digital music store, the Soundhound music recognition service and the TuneIn internet radio app. You can click the Soundhound icon while listening to a song in TuneIn Radio to identify it, which is useful.

Beats is less impressive: sound quality was good enough without it, and we found it made the bass too boomy, although it also did a good job of brightening up mid-range sounds. As well as Beats, you can choose from a list of more traditional effects, such as Bass Boost or Live, and unlike on previous Beats-branded phones, you can use non-Beats headphones and still take advantage of the Beats effects. However we would have preferred more fine control over the effects rather than this all-or-nothing approach.

Another Sense addition is the Car app. This interface shows the functions you might want while driving – phone, music player, internet radio and navigation – in a large format that’s easy to access whilst keeping your eyes on the road. All menus and text are in a larger font for visibility, and there are larger icons and buttons too. The phone interface is designed for ease of use, with a large photo of the caller that you can swipe either left to decline the call, or right to answer. You can even customise which navigation app and music player to use.

HTC Watch competes with Google’s own Play Store – it’s a movie store that offers movies to buy for £10 and to rent for £3.49. It’s a similar choice to that available in the Play Store, but neither store had any of the slightly obscure films we could think of (Drunken Master, The Beyond, and Cube). Sense doesn’t include an ebook store, so you’ll have to either use the Play Store or download a separate app for the store you prefer. You get a huge 32GB of storage on the phone, which is useful as there’s no Micro SD card slot for added space.

Android 4.0 brings some changes that take some getting used to, such as having the menu button at the top-right of apps rather than the bottom-right. Even then, some apps defy this convention and place the menu at the bottom of the screen, taking up a strip about 7mm high just for these three dots.

It’s not all smooth sailing. We noticed a bug whereby the phone switches itself to USB storage mode when plugged in via USB, even when we’d selected Charge Only – and it did this multiple times, which was annoying when we were trying to download a large app update. Battery life in our video playback test is also disappointing at under six and a half hours. You also can’t remove the battery, so you can’t carry a spare.

The One X is in many ways an impressive phone, and we particularly like the way the latest version of Sense ties in with Android 4.0’s changes. The handset can be found for less than £30 a month on a 24-month contract, but if you want a shorter contract or to buy it SIM-free, be prepared to pay flagship prices. It’s a quad-core phone with a brilliant camera and the latest version of Android, and if you can afford it, it’s the best Android phone you can get. It’s an Ultimate award winner.