[Device Review] HTC One X (AT&T) – It’s that good.

HTC released the One X today in the US on the AT&T network. The device is available for $199.99 on a 2 year contract and is available in both white and grey. The One X is different than the internationally released HTC One XL, but only slightly. Namely two very important differences that are the processor and the amount of on board storage. Are these differences make or break – I think not. HTC has put plenty of thought and design into the HTC One X. If you are not sure why the HTC ONE X is a great smartphone, then read the review and your question may be answered. Let’s start with the specs.

• Dimensions: 5.3 x 2.75 x 0.36 inches
• Weight: 4.6 ounces
• Resolution : 4.7 inch 720×1280 Super LCD
• 1GB RAM
• 16GB Internal Memory
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
• 1800 mAh embedded battery
• Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor
• 8MP rear camera with 1080p HD Video
• 1.3MP front Camera with 720p video chat
• Sense 4 UI

The Look and Feel

As soon as you grab a hold of the HTC One X and it’s in your hand – you immediately start to see what all the fuss is about. It is so lightweight and quite frankly an attractive phone. The polycarbonate casing exudes style and the overall design was thought out well and even though some may not like the larger sized phones, it fits extremely well in your hand. The power button and the volume rocker are also covered in polycarbonate. There was not one single detail that was missed. Even the dock connector pins look stylish. The phone is so lightweight you might forgot you have it in your pocket – I had the phone in the side pocket of some cargo shorts today and once or twice frantically looked around as I thought I had misplaced the phone – only to find it still in the side pocket. Yes, it’s that lightweight.

The display on the One X is unquestionably the absolute best display I have ever seen. Everyone that has played with it over the past few days just stares, scrolls and says ” wow.” It truly is amazing how clear and true the display is. It worked reasonably well in sunlight, and while not perfectly clear, there is not too much to complain about. Thanks to the Gorilla Glass 2 covering the display looks perfect from any angle. Overall, the impeccable display of the HTC One X sets it apart from other smartphones.

Let’s elaborate some more on the two large differences between the One X and the One XL. We’ll start with storage – The One X gets 16GB of onboard storage, and the One XL gets 32GB. With it being a sealed unit, what you see is what you get. Personally, it’s not a big deal for me (cue the backlash) as 16GB is plenty as I take full use of cloud storage such as Dropbox. Even better, just for owning a One Series device you can get an additional 25GB of storage from Dropbox for 2 years at no cost. While it doesn’t take away the loss of the additional 16GB, it certainly helps.

As for the processor, the One X has a SnapdragonS4 dual-core while the One XL has a Tegra 3 Quad-core. Why? That’s an easy answer – LTE. The One X will run on AT&T’s LTE network, and the Tegra 3 requires and external LTE modem whereas the S4 Snapdragon has the chipset for LTE built-in. Surprisingly, there is very little difference is overall performance of the 2 processors and overall, I hardly doubt that anyone using the device will notice any difference at all. Its very snappy. Check out the benchmark results I just ran below.

Software

The One X comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and Sense 4. I have to give a huge amount of praise to HTC as they have definitely toned down the Sense overlay and the UI still very much has the ICS feel to it. Some users out there who flat out don’t like Sense still won’t like it, but I’ve always been partial to Sense and am glad that plenty of bloat has gone. The scrolling has been snappy and responsive as everything about the display and UI is optimized.

Camera and Battery

I haven’t had the One X for long enough to make honest comments regarding the battery other than this – so far the battery life is great. The usual browsing over WiFi, IM’s, email etc don’t seem to be a huge drain on the battery. This is largely due to the great power management capabilities of the Snapdragon processor.

I love to take pictures, and now I have the HTC One X, I’m going to love it even more. With the HTC ImageSense processor powering the camera it takes amazing pictures and videos. We’re talking 8MP for the pictures and 1080P for the video that will capture every moment the way it was intended.

Overall Thoughts

The HTC One X is a fantastic device in every way. I would put it next to any other device in the US and it would win hands down. It would win from the design and display, the camera, the performance, and it’s on AT&T’s network. I highly recommend the HTC One X and comfortably give it 4.5/5. The .5 is for the missing 16GB of storage on the One X. It didn’t stop me from buying the device, and doubt it will stop anyone else. Seriously, go buy one!

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Steve Brassington

Editor in Chief at AndroidDoes

Steve was born and raised in England, and is now living in KY. He has a long history of Smart phone tinkering starting with flashing ROMs on the HTC Mogul, to BB and on to Android which is the best there is! He is a true Android junkie

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