[HTC One X] jacobgong:
I'm gonna talk about my one week+ old HOX, and like always, I have a lot to say.

To start with, my last phone was the Omnia II, and it was a piece of ****. I had no idea someone was capable of producing something so stupid I'm just totally shocked I mostly used it as a regular phone+music player. It sucked mainly because of the WM6.5 OS, its just funny how someone could even sell such a thing and call it a smartphone. Firstly the performance sucks and it's obvious, nothing goes beyond 10fps in WM6.5, you'd be lucky to get over 5. The music player playlist scrolls at about 3fps, the keyboard has a half second to one second lag, the browser runs at about 0.8fps, it is a full featured browser but you can barely browse the most plain mobile sites. With performance like this, multitasking can kiss my ass, how about get any single task done right before you can multitask? That resistive touchscreen also sucked, I was stupid I didn't do enough research to know the difference. Why would you have a phone screen that is NOT covered with glass? Why? Ignoring the obvious hardness differences, it sucks when those reflections on my screen are distorted, I wanna see a perfect mirror reflection, I'm a perfectionist ok? And of course there are about three apps for WM. I know there are more but they look like windows 95 and has tiny ui elements designed for styluses so they don't count. And those ones that look like windows XP or with lame 3d themes, SPB shell or some ****, those don't count as well.

Look at iPhone! That's how it should be done, everything must be perfectly smooth period. If its not smooth it's not even worth mentioning I don't care how many features you have. iPhone 4 really kicked android in the ass with that retina display. I still don't get it, even today people are releasing phones with this "qHD" resolution, wtf? That's just laughable it's lower than a phone released two years ago! With a much smaller screen! Really? Who's gonna accept that? Sometimes they even call it their "flagship" product, gimme a break. 720p is the minimum period.

So just a few weeks ago I was struggling to decide between the iPhone 4s, HOX the S3, and Sony's yet to be released waterproof 1.5ghz dual core phone. I can't wait for the Sony because iPhone 5 is coming out by the time they release it so that's out of the question. I already have the iPad so I decided to try out an android phone, already got a taste of iOS. I picked the HOX and here is why.

The Galaxy S III isn't as good looking as the HOX to begein with. Maybe Samsung has been having too many problems with patents their design is severely compromised it looks like a really cheap phone but obviously with latest technologies like that screen and its thickness. That bottom part looks really bad it reminds me of a really ugly version of the Omnia II, it looks so 2006 if you unrest and what I mean. That top part also look really bad with those obvious holes for sensors and cameras, they should be hidden like on the HOX. The back side and the rim also look like a very cheep phone but thinner and bigger.

The galaxy s3 screen is also bigger I think, but with the same resolution which makes its bigger size a negative fetus because it's harder to use. Oh wait, in fact it's of a lower resolution because of that pentile ****, it only has 2/3 the number of sub pixels as the HOX. The amoled display is vibrant but that's not equivalent to good because it's too vibrant and the colors are inaccurate. Take a look at a professional display review of the s3 all three primaries are way off they are over saturated. White balance is non existent it's too blue and sometimes green it hurts my eyes. The amoled display is also far dimmer than the HOX, doesn't bother me much but it's also a down point.

The S3 is slightly faster and has a bigger battery. But the Sense UI also look better and no I'm not a fan of flashing ROMs anymore. Honestly I don't give a **** about performance as long as it's smooth I'm happy, and I don't play 3d games at all. I saw this review concluding the s3 has a mich much battery life, I don't know what to say about their stupidity, it must have been tough finding someone to do that video review with a straight face. They test battery life by playing a video that's basically a static image, on max screen brightness. Ok to start with, the HOX has a much brighter screen, in fact, 60% brighter if I remember correctly. So the HOX shouldn't be competing on max brightness. It should be on 60%. Secondly that S3 has a freakin amoled display how can you compare that with an LCD? That stupid video they use is mostly dark blue with a small rainbow so the total display output of an oled display displaying that image is probably less than 33%. So, we should have the HOX's screen brightness decreased by another 66% down to 20% max brightness to be fair. Or, we should have a video with realistic scenarios like full white google home pages. But of course, the s3 with a bigger battery and it's more advanced processor is probably better on battery life in any case, just not by THAT much.

But that battery life advantage doesn't nearly compare with the HOX's much better looking unibody and its solid feel. HOX's better camera quality and speed. HOX's studio quality display, I just wish that display is 10-bit, cuz sometimes you see banding. Beats Audio is mostly advertising but it's not a bad addition.

However, using the HOX for a week, I found a couple of problems with android phones. For example, they're never ashamed of releasing unfinished products are they? How come LWP pauses when I swipe between home screens? Wtf is that all about? Releasing a feature that's partly or completely useless? It's not too bothering on non-parallax and slow LWPs, but that's not the best part of having a LWP is it? That's a big one but there are also some small ones like the photo stack widget, it resets to the first picture all the time. I can't uninstall useless ****s like google+, showme, latitude, local, locations, navigation, car.... I mean do we not have enough navigation apps already? I don't even think you can uninstall the setup wizard. In iOS you can't uninstall newsstand or reminder but at least you can hide them in a folder and their icons look really good, much better than "show me" at least. The system also doesn't come with a file manager, I wonder how youre supposed to empty your download folder, do you just let it eat up all your storage? And oh, the three dots of death, not too bothering, but it just leaves you thinking if HTC even test their phone, might as well just not have any of the touch buttons so I can feel lest wasteful?

and honestly, I don't like android's multitask system, because you don't know what's running and what's not running. In iOS you always know nothing is running, you don't worry about battery life. But in android they could all be running for all I know, but sometimes I also want an app to run in the background. There should be a better way to manage that. Like having a multitask bar like iOS, have most apps go on save state, but you can allow certain apps to run a background process which could be independently managed from save state. So I don't have to either kill an app or let it eat my battery.

Overall, I'm still really satisfied with the device. It's generally as smooth as the iPhone, browser performance is on par with the iPad2 which is good enough. Audio performance is also good with my Etymotic Research MC-5. And the screen is just a treat sometimes I press the power button just to see the beautiful screen showing my wallpaper. And the unibody, it feels much better than the S3 glossy plastic.