[HTC One X] devvfata1ity:
DISCLAIMER: This phone was purchased by me. Its the Indian sim-free version. I am no fanboy. I have used a variety of smartphones over the last decade. The views presented are unbiased and as objective as possible. The review was written over a period of two months due to obvious reason that I went through a couple of replacements that took a painfully long two months to materialize. Therefore the views and observations have been updated as and when I managed to get my paws with the phone. This review is late because it was in the oven for a long time due to delays as mentioned above.

Plz dont start a flame war.

Introduction

So after waiting impatiently for 8 days, I finally received my HTC One X. I had pre-ordered the X on 2nd of April. Needless to say I was itching to get my hands on this highly anticipated phone of 2012, however at the same time I was quite concerned after reading about so many issues/problems that early adopters like me were facing.

Have a look below to find out about what I think of this cutting edge smartphone.

Background

My first steps in adroid world was with the marvelous Desire HD. In my opinion this was one of the most under-rated phone of 2010-11. This phone had mostly a love-hate relationship with the worldwide user demographic, mainly due to its polarizing design. My next android phone was arguably the best android smartphone till date- the samsung galaxy s2.

After knowing about the HTC One X, I could not stop thinking about the phone. I was sold on the design from the very first go. So after selling off my SGSII I waited for the X to launch with baited breath. Finally its here in my hands and I am very happy camper.

Packaging

The One X packaging is very minimalist and so-called eco-friendly if you ask HTC, but if you ask me, I simply think HTC have cheaped out on the packaging. The packaging does not do justice to the premium feel of the handset and is more akin to the packaging we get with 50 USD handsets.

Hardware & Build

I was very apprehensive about the build quality of the phone after reading so many threads regarding the disappointing build. Fortunately, the handset that I received has very good and solid build. The soft-touch mat back is absolutely a delight to hold and look at. The glossy sides are also good looking and dont look cheap but I would have preferred the more premium mat finish. The overall fit and finish is of a very high order. However, looking closely there are few rough edges that should not have been there. But at the end of the day the overall fit and finish gets a thumbs up in my book. Now if I have to nitpick, then a couple of things sticks out.

1) The simcard tray is not very easy to slot back into the body

2) The volume rocker lacks tactile feel

Apart from these there arent any niggles with the construction.

As expected the white is a magnet for smudges and dirt but its very easy to clean off using a moist cloth.

In my handset the build was very solid. In fact I would rate the build close to that of the Desire HD (which IMO had fantastic build). The build is lightyears ahead of the SGSII. Plz ignore all the people who says that the GNex and the SGSII have solid build and better than the build of the X. The X's build quality is in a totally different league. In my case there was no creaks, squeaks, flex etc whatsoever.

The Display

I have only one adjective for the display and that is mesmerizing. This is the bloody best display I have ever seen on a phone. The colors pop without looking overly saturated. Viewing angles are as wide as you can hope to get. The entire display has a painted on feel to it and is a good enough reason on its own to force a purchase decision. I have compared the display side by side with sgs2, DHD, iphone and a friend's note, and in my opinion the X's display has the best output. Compared to the One X display, the iphone display looks a little washed out as by default the iphone display is calibrated to be very neutral. The whites on the HTC One X is slightly warmer and if I have to guess, then I think the color temp of the X is around 6700-6800k whereas the iphone usually is around 6500k (ideal is 6500k). Compared to the AMOLED, AMOLED+ displays the whites are absolutely gorgeous. The AMOLEDs suffer from a very cool color temperature and as a result whites and neutral tones look more bluish/greenish.

On further testing I have found out that unlike the AMOLED+ display on the SGS2, the One X display does not change color temperature that appreciably with varying brightness levels.

Audio quality

The audio quality during call is very good and better than both the desire hd and sgs2, however the iphone has slightly better quality overall. The music quality through headphones is unfortunately not that great. The desire hd IMO has better music quality. However its night and day better than the pathetic output of the sgs2.

The speaker performance on my handset is ranging from good-very good. The speaker is loud enough most of the times and is louder than both DHD's and SGS2's speakers. However the iphone has a slightly louder output.

If I have to rate audio fidelity then IMO its iphone>One X> DHD> Note> SGS2.

Performance

The quad-core tegra 3 processor and the light-weight sense 4.0 means the UI performance is very fast. Theres hardly any lag anywhere. However the UI gradually slows down a little once multiple apps are installed and a lot of heavy multi-tasking is done. This is the best phone on the market for the hardcore multi-taskers. However I do feel that sense requires further polish and optimization. There are trivial bugs that should have been fixed before the mass release of the phone.

Most of the times the UI just flies and only very occasionally will there be a delay in the response. But on the hindsight, the delay is at par with the performance experienced with SGS2 and only because the X is so fast and fluid in everything else, that these small delays gets magnified. One must keep in mind that even with these little delays/lags, the phone is still the absolute fastest android phone till date. In fact it is the only android phone I have used that gives stiff competition to the iphone in terms of UI smoothness.

One thing I have found out that most of the glitches can be got rid off by enabling developer mode (usb debugging) and disabling HTC gestures. (At least this is applicable in my case)

Imaging

The camera as advertised is blazing fast to take pictures. The out of the box pics and videos quality is good and comparable to iphone and better than sgs2. However to extract the maximum out of the camera, you have play with the settings. I found that the best pics IMO came when sharpness was set to -1, exposure was set manually for the scene, and white balance on manual. Depending on how good you are at taking photos, your mileage will vary. But still at the end of the day this is one of the best cameras on a smartphone today.

Heat

In normal use I dint find the phone heating up to alarming levels as have been portrayed by many. In fact in normal use (calling, browsing, messaging, music etc), the phone never once exceeded 35 C in a room with ambient of around 25-26C. In a room with ambient of 32C the phone got upto only 38 C. These temps are what I used to get with the DHD, and better than that of the SGSII.

Now coming to intensive usage, I decided to play riptide Gp while downloading apps in the background through wifi, and the phone never reached more than 43 C. On the SGS2, while playing riptide Gp, the temp routinely used to exceed 48C.

So I would say that considering the X is packing a quadcore 1.5ghz chip, the heat generated is not intense and certainly in line with the sgs2 or may be slightly less.

Now obviously people with genuine hardware faults will see the phone overheating, but those are in minority and can happen with any phone.

A little update about the temperature. Today I was playing shadowgun and temple run at office. In the AC environment where the room temp was like 24-25C, the phone only got to a max temp of about 39 C. So what temps you are getting depends a lot on your ambient temps.

Battery Life

After fully charging the phone for the first time, I was able to get around 20 hrs or moderate to heavy usage with screen on time of around 4 hrs. This is quite decent battery life and I am expecting it to improve after a few charge-discharge cycles and the impending OTA update.

UPDATE: So I have had the phone for four days now and right now I am on my fourth charge-discharge cycle. One thing is very obvious is that the battery life significantly improves with or after the third charge-discharge cycle. After my third charge I managed to last the phone for more than a day with moderate use. The screen on time was 2.5 hrs or so. Also voice calls were for 1 hr.

Now after my fourth charge, I only lost 1% overnight when the phone was just lying idle. At the time of typing I am still left with 52% charge after a good 15 hrs. The screen on time is roughly 2hrs with 40 mins of calling and 1hr of temple run thrown in.

I dont know about the other owners but I am pretty satisfied with the battery performance so far.

UPDATE 2: Unfortunately my One X turned out to be not so perfect. It had a small gap between the metal frame surrounding the screen and the screen itself. In conditions with low ambient light one can see the backlight of the touch buttons bleeding through this gap. Got it replaced. The replacement took aprox 25 days. Very poor HTC!!

UPDATE 3: Got the replacement on 14/05/2012. Its of the HT24 batch. But unfortunately it has a more pronounced gap and backlight bleeding though this gap is more severe than my earlier unit. This one also has a spot on the screen and a couple of dead pixels. Have sent it back again and waiting for the replacement to arrive. Keeping fingers crossed that everything will be perfect this time around.

UPDATE 4: So finally got my third HOX after 25 days of waiting (Again!!) on 09/06/2012. Thankfully this time round the phone is largely fault free. Its a SH25E batch and I would say the build quality is really good, as in the phone is well put together and feels like a cohesive piece/unit. Now there are a couple of places where the finish of the poly shell and the metal rim surrounding the screen is a bit patchy but that is just nitpicking. However after a day one of the pixels got stuck on the blue color in the lower part of the screen. From what I can see its a partially stuck pixel, which fails to change color from blue on white and light grey backgrounds. It changes colors properly in black, red, blue, yellow etc as expected.

And since its very difficult to spot this unless specifically looking on a white-ish background, I am not too bothered by it.

The phone came preloaded with 1.29 and the screen protector on the phone simply said " One X" instead of " I am the One you have been waiting for". The rest of box and packing was the same as before. I although kinda liked the " I am the One you have been waiting for" bit. It was personal and different.

The battery life for me has been phenomenal on 1.29. I am getting almost two days of standby time with minimal usage. On heavy use I am managing a solid 16-17 hrs with around 3.5-4 hrs of screen on time. On moderate usage (read watching blu-ray rips), the battery lasts for around 25-27 hrs with almost 6 hrs of screen on time @ 50% brightness. These are what I consider really good battery life figures for what is a really high end smartphone. As usual your mileage may vary but overall One X has a very decent battery life for the underlying hardware it is blessed with.

Conclusion & Value For Money

The One X is a very handsome phone to look at. Arguably it is the best smartphone in the world currently at least in the aesthetics department. It is a beast of a phone and has the go to match the show. Performance is fluid and the features are great. The highlight of the phone apart from the stunning design is the display. For my hard earned money, this phone has the best display on a smartphone yet. It leaves the iphone 4s and galaxy S2 far behind in terms of the screen quality. The recently launched GS3 also falls short of the One X in terms of the display quality.

Coming to the direct comparison between GS3 and One X, I would pick the One X as the overall winner simply by virtue of packing the best display available today. Since with a touch phone you will interacting with the display all the time, any phone that carries a display that can make you go wow everytime you look at it, is a winner in my book.

The One X also plays the value card really well against the GS3 and is widely available at a street price of approx 34k (680 USD) compared to the ludicrous 38k (760 USD) for the 16GB GS3.

ONE X vs GS3

1. Looks - One X

2. Performance - Equal

3. Stills - One X

4. Video - GS3

5. Display - One X

6. Battery Life - Equal

7. Ugradability- GS3

8. VFM - One X

9. Feel Good Factor - One X

10. Audio - GS3

Overall for the One X I would give 9 out of 10. The phone has fantastic hardware, and good software, but there are issues in the sense skin that needs to be ironed out. If the One X launched without any glitches and bugs, it would have been a straight 10 out 10 for me.

Price as Tested: INR 35850 ( 720 USD)

Price Now: INR 34500 ( 680 USD)

The PICS

http://img401.imageshack.us/slideshow/webplayer.php?id=20120609111055v.jpg