HTC One X - 1 Week In

Right... as you will have no doubt gathered by now, I'm a bit of a geek, and love my techie things. Especially mobile phones and as I mentioned in my second post, I recently changed my Nexus for a HTC One X. I'm now a week into using it and thought (as many have) I would write a review on my thoughts, expectations and opinions of what I think to be HTC's greatest achievement to date.

Usually at this point, a week in to using a new mobile phone, I would have something to niggle about, something that just wasn't quite right. Because like a lot of men... I'm never happy, never satisfied. But... I can honestly say, with the HTC One X, this isn't the case. OK, so if I really wanted to be fussy, there are a couple of teeny weeny little things, but these are just things I'm finding for the sake of finding something. But I'll come onto these later.

First Impressions

I think the first thing you notice about the HTC One X is how well built it feels. Almost on par with the iPhone 4(s), only difference being you can feel confident that if you were to drop the One X, it wouldn't shatter into a million pieces, which is the feeling I always had with my iPhone.

 I've read some reviews that have slated the single piece, polycarbonate body, and lack of access to the battery, but I actually like this idea. Makes the phone feel much more solid and reliable. I've also read about people not being happy that you can't get access to the memory card, or add any kind of expansion to it... Really?? It's already 32Gb... What more do you want? I mean, I'm a huge music fan, and have a HUGE collection of music on my phone, and that's only taking up 20Gb of space, which leaves with with plenty more for other things. Its not like I want to store numerous films on there or more music that I can listen to in a week. There's just no need for it.

The Screen

'Amazing'... That's quite simply the only word that can be used to explain the display on the HTC One X... the resolution is second to non, it's almost as tho the screen is floating on top of the glass and is crystal clear. It's responsive too, but I suppose that's to be expected coming from what, for the moment, is the worlds most powerful mobile processor. The Tegra 3, quad core chip is definitely setting the bar here, and wow, what a bar it is to reach. I've not yet come across a situation where the processor starts to fail, or lag... It's seamlessly jumps from app to app, opening and closing windows, files, apps, whatever you ask it to do, it does it within a fraction of a second and amazingly smooth.

Whilst we're on the subject of 'switching from app to app'... one of the little things I mentioned above, about being silly little niggles for the sake of finding them. One of the things I have noticed with the HTC One X, is how using the 'recent apps' button, doesn't actually show you the apps in their open state... it shows you a screen shot of them, and selecting them, zooms in on the screen shot, and then loads the app as apposed to showing the actual app and zooming into that. Sounds strange, I know, and not the easiest thing to explain without showing it on the actual handset. But when using the same feature on the Nexus, it was the live app that was shown, and selecting it would instantly jump back into the app. Whereas now, there is a millisecond of a delay as the phone switches from the screen shot, to the live app. Again, not an issue to discourage anyone at all from the HTC One X. It's just another one of those things that you would kinda expect 'not' to see from such a high end device.

Camera

I'm a huge photography fan... and although I'm by far no David Bailey, I can take some pretty good shots, and like to know that my phones camera isn't going to let me down when the perfect moment for a great shot passes by. The HTC One X definitely lives up to the mark on this one also... Similar to a lot of smart phones out there now, you are able to access the camera straight from the unlock screen. However, unlike most smart phones, which use the main processor to handle the image taking tasks. The HTC One X uses a new ImageSense processor, a dedicated chip only for the camera. This makes the One X camera amazingly fast, whether it’s the focusing time or the shot to shot time. 

It also has an awesome quick burst mode, which although is pretty quick, isn’t as fast as the machine gun sound the phone makes when you use it, which leads you to believe you have actually taken more shots that you have. That said, it's great to capture those actions shots, when you're not quite sure when to press the button. With the One X, you simple press and hold the shutter button and the phone does the rest. allegedly, it can take up to 99 shots in a minute, although I'm not sure why you would want to.

I'm not really big on taking video's so can't really comment on the video recording capabilities of the One X, but I've read reviews that have raved about this just as much as its still image capturing ability. There is a nice feature in the playback however, which allows you to take stills straight from the video. Which I'm sure comes in quite handy.

Music

Now this is probably one of the highest things up on my list of important factors of a smart phone. Its music playing capabilities, purely because, as mentioned above, I'm a huge music fan and the majority of the time, can be found listening to my music wherever I may be... Usually on my commute to and from work. Music playback on the Nexus was a huge let down. Not only was the max volume far too low, but its equaliser was also pretty poor and the bass was non existent. Even through my  Beats earphones, my 'Drum & Bass' and 'DubStep' were more like 'Drum & .......' and 'TinStep'. Which was really disappointing considering this was supposed to be Google's flagship device.

The HTC One X however, is a different beast all together. I suppose this comes from the Beats by Dre processor tucked away in that shell, although I've never used another Dre handset so couldn't comment. The HTC One X tho is amazing. This is the first handset where I haven't constantly had my volume turned up to max, purely because on max, the music would be deafening... The bass is also top notch, and even through my cheap JVC earphones (the Beats have died) the music quality is crisp and clear.

It's a nice interface too, easy to use, fast to respond and has to neat little features in it, including the ability to download album art, fetch additional info on the artist and / or album via SoundHorn as well as the ability to share what you are listening to straight onto your favourite social network.

Overall

I think it's pretty obvious from the above that I am over the moon with the new HTC One X, and am pretty confident that its going to be on top of the 'smart phone league table' for some time. From reading previews of the new Galaxy S3 also, I don't think that's going to be much threat either. It would appear that HTC are making a comeback with one hell of a punch and with the HTC One X, they are definitely re-setting all the bars for the likes of Samsung and Apple to try and reach.