Hey guys, this is Austin and today I’m here with a review of
the HTC One X for AT&T.
With a massive screen, LTE and Android
4.0 with Sense 4 this is easily the new flagship for HTC but
is it actually any good?
Let’s start with the hardware.
The
first thing that jumps out at you is the gorgeous 4.7” Super
LCD display.
With a resolution of 1280x720 I can safely say
this is one of the best mobile displays I’ve ever used, right
up there with the Retina Display on the iPad 3.
Colors are much
better than normal LCD panels and the viewing angles are top
notch.
Perfect isn’t a word I ever use in my reviews but the
screen on the One X is very, very close.
The rest of the design
on the One X is also quite good.
Up top you’ll see the speaker
grille with hidden notification LEDs, the front facing camera which
I’ll take a closer look at a bit later along with the nearly
hidden proximity and light sensors.
Below you’ll see the
capacitive Back, Home and Multitasking buttons which light up
in dark areas and work just fine.
Unlike most high-end smartphones
the One X is made entirely out of polycarbonate, aka plastic.
Generally I’m a fan of glass and metal in smartphones but I’ve
got to say the One X is really impressive.
Build quality is top
notch as it’s all a single piece and the plastic feels very good
in the hand.
This also makes the phone very lightweight.
Even
considering the much larger display and the nearly identical
thickness the One X is still 10 grams lighter than the iPhone 4S.
This makes pocketing the phone absolutely no problem at all.
As far as ports go there isn’t a lot to speak of.
On the left
side you’ll find MicroUSB which is in a slightly awkward position
and on the right is the slightly narrow volume rocker.
Up top is
the similarly thin sleep/wake button, the slot for your MicroSIM
and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the rear is the 8 megapixel camera
with LED flash, five small contacts for accessories and the speaker
with Beats Audio branding.
The speaker works fine but it’s
pretty unremarkable.
With headphones plugged in the One X
automatically turns on Beats Audio although you can turn it off if
you want.
Overall it’s nothing spectacular, bass is slightly boosted
and the range is compressed a bit.
Where I was really impressed was
with the Beats Audio off.
It drove a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-M50s
much better than my iPhone 4S, making it easily one of the best phones
I’ve ever tested as far as audio quality goes.
Moving on to software as
of this review the One X sports Android 4.0.3, also known as Ice Cream
Sandwich with the HTC Sense 4 skin.
Generally I’m not a big fan of skins
but Sense 4 is probably the best one I’ve used yet.
For example the lock
screen uses a ring that you can drag up to unlock or drag an app into to
immediately launch it.
ICS definitely isn’t very far below the surface
so if you’re familiar with Android the One X should be very easy to get
used to.
Performance is rock solid for an Android phone with the
Snapdragon S4 able to power the UI without any major lag.
Unfortunately
as with every Android device I’ve ever used the overall experience isn’t
quite as smooth as iOS or even Windows Phone with a single core processor.
There always seems to be the slightest delay between giving an input and
the phone responding but it’s not really a major issue and something you
forget about after a while.
There’s also a car mount accessory available
for the One X.
Paired with the Car application it gives you easy access
to music, GPS and calls in a very large and car friendly UI.
One place the
One X does very well is with the camera.
It sports an 8 megapixel rear
facing camera with an impressive f/2 aperture and 1080p video recording.
Image quality is impressive for a smartphone and right up there with the
best from Apple and Nokia although in lower light I did notice that it
tended to oversaturate.
With that wide aperture you can actually get some
decent depth of field.
All right so I am now recording using the HTC One X.
So as you guys can see here the video quality is not half bad at all.
So
right now the phone is on a tripod and the only light in the room is just
from the window right in front of me.
However if we go ahead and add some
more light right here, and right here, and right here you guys can see
that it definitely makes a big difference.
On top of that if we want to go
ahead, although the audio on the One X is not half bad, if we want to go
ahead and cut to some external audio you can definitely tell that it makes
the overall video quality much better.
And finally but definitely not least
we can go ahead and do a bit of little color correction to make sure that
the video is the absolute best that that it can be.
Just as impressive as the
camera itself is the software.
You’re able to fire off images with almost
no delay and if you hold the shutter button the camera will fire off shots
as long as you hold it and then give you the option to only save the one it
deems best or all of them.
You can also shoot stills and video at the same
time with manual controls over everything you need.
The front facing camera
is a 1.3 megapixel shooter and is fairly decent as far as front facing cameras
go.
It does shoot 720p video but you probably won’t want to use it for much
more beyond video chatting or a quick vlog.
As far as the specs go, the One X
on AT&T is rocking a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 System on a Chip.
This means you’ll
have two Krait cores clocked at 1.5Ghz, Adreno 225 graphics and 1GB of RAM.
While on paper it’s down compared to the international version which is powered
by a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor in reality you won’t have any issues
with normal usage and gaming.
The reason for the dual core CPU is that this
version of the One X comes with LTE for AT&T.
If you live in an area where
AT&T has rolled out their LTE network you can crack up to 10Mbps in both
download and upload.
Speaking of cellular performance, overall I was impressed.
AT&T tends to have issues in my area but generally the One X grabbed a signal
well and provided decent call quality.
Another benefit of the Snapdragon is
excellent battery life.
I was easily able to get through a day of moderate use
with the One X with frequent 3G and Wi-Fi usage with a few calls mixed in.
I can sum up the HTC One X in five words: this thing is a bawse.
The screen is
superb, design is right up there with the very best, performance is top notch
and its futureproofed with both LTE and NFC.
The list price is $200 with a two
year contract however Amazon is offering the exact same deal for $150 right now.
Overall it’s very simple: if you’re interested in an Android phone on AT&T,
the One X is the answer.
If you’re interested in more, feel free to check out
the unboxing of the One X.
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