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HTC One X — Review
The same HTC but with a lot more common ‘Sense’
Review written by Irwin Proud on April 24, 2012 - 17:12pm
42 Comments

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In 2011 HTC got really excited about releasing their Sensation phone, however in light of what Motorola and Samsung were doing with their Dual-Core offerings in that year, this phone fell short of the calibre of 2011 devices. Despite the Sensation not quite being the beast that it should have, HTC persisted and released a few more Sensation branded devices that would boast that extra oompf that the original Sensation wasn’t able to deliver. At the end of last year HTC were reporting lower than expected fiscal performance, this didn’t surprise any of us here at Ausdroid. Peter Chow, CEO of HTC went on record to say that HTC would rein in the number of devices in their portfolio and would focus on a core brand, that brand is now the HTC One range of devices.

The HTC One X was the cream of the crop at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year. This is great news for HTC, but we should also make a quick note that there were no flagship entries at MWC from Samsung, Motorola or Sony, so other than LG’s announcement of the 4X, HTC had the floor. At MWC HTC début the One X, which would be the first publicly available quad-core smartphone on the market. HTC made sure to also mention, that it was a less bloaty and nimbler version of their custom skin HTC Sense and it would run on top of Android 4.0.

Pros

  • Incredible LCD2 screen
  • Sleek and simple form factor
  • Quad core nVidia Tegra 3
  • First Android 4 phone with custom skin
    		•

    Cons

  • HTC Sense Skin on top of Ice Cream Sandwich
  • Carrier Bloatware
  • Battery life
    		•

    What we like

    The HTC One X is a solidly built but incredibly lite phone. It has a polycarbonate chassis, which blends the durability of metal with the weight of plastic and it feels really smooth and comfortable in the hand. The HTC One X is a fraction bigger than the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but because it has dedicated soft keys it actually makes the screen seem larger. The device has 3 dedicated hardware buttons, power, volume up and volume down. It also has 3 soft keys, back, home and recent apps. When the device opens an app that still uses the old menu key it gives you a black band with the menu button on screen which is reminiscent of the on screen keys from the Galaxy Nexus configuration. It looks silly at first, but you get used to it and it doesn’t take any more screen real estate than what would be present on the Galaxy Nexus. The overall build quality of the device is solid, soft and visually pleasing.

    The telephony quality is great, with the phone being HD Voice capable out of the box. Data speeds are what you’d expect of any HSDPA+ phone on the market at the moment, however there appear to be a few times that calls don’t connect the first time.

    The LCD2 screen on the One X is a huge selling point. Samsung with it’s Super AMOLED HD seemed to indicate that AMOLED was the best screen technology for smartphone’s, but the LCD2 screen quality is sharp, detailed and superiorly more visible in daylight. Its colours are a little more subtle than on a Super AMOLED display but this makes it feel more true to real life.

    HTC chose to mod ICS with their HTC Sense 4.0 skin, but have gone for a much more minimalist approach than their previous iterations of Sense. The personalisation options of the HTC are great, whether you want to change the way the desktop looks with ‘Scenes’ or the look of the menus an layouts with ‘skins’ or even modify the lockscreen, HTC has you covered.

    The overall feel of the software is smooth and fast, but does feel a bit hindered considering that it is quad-core processor in the phone. The phone is able to run anything you throw at it with relative ease and being a Tegra device you have access to all the intensive graphics games that nVidia has pushed developers to make. The only draw back is that now games are getting bigger there is less available RAM and it only takes 2 or 3 somewhat intensive apps to be open for Android’s native task killer to close something, thus forcing you to wait for a game to load again.

    What can be improved

    Sense has been greatly improved on the One X, but this doesn’t change the fact that it interrupts the elegance, style and fast feeling performance of stock Ice Cream Sandwich. There are no neon glows through the system and the Roboto font which was beautifully implemented by Google to highlight HD screens is also gone. Sense will also occasionally crash which means you have to wait for your desktop to load again before going to your apps and the included Sense widgets will also flicker in unusual ways. The Recent Apps option feels heavier than it should, rather than getting a vertical band of 3 or 4 open apps that you can see thumbnails of, HTC turned it into a carousel or conveyerbelt that only comfortably shows one app and the edges of others on the left or right, which means you have to flick through them before opening them or flicking them up to close them.

    The battery on this phone sucks! It is one of the worst batteries I’ve ever experienced on an Android phone. It will get you maybe 10-12 hours of light to medium use, but once you get that quad-core processor going it’s game over after 5 or so hours. This is actually something HTC is aware of and that they are comfortable people will be ok with… what?!? really?!?

    The HTC One X can also get a little hot when playing games, this is normally disconcerting thing when your phone starts to warm up your hands, but since ‘Winter is coming…’ this might in turn work in the users favour. The real problem here is that when you feel the phone warm up, you can also see the direct relationship with the battery drain.

    Specs..

    • Android 4.0.3
    • 1.5GHz nVidia Tegra3 Quad-Core CPU
    • 4.7-inch 1280×720 (312ppi) LCD2 Display
    • 134.4 x 69.9 x 8.9 mm
    • 130 grams
    • 8MP / 1.3MP cameras
    • 32GB Internal Memory
    • 21Mbps HSPA 850/900/1900/2100MHz
    • 1800mAh battery
    • NFC

    Conclusion

    Despite the HTC One X rocking Sense 4.0 and having a somewhat shitty battery life, it is definitely a device I’m happy to call my own and have not regretted moving from my Galaxy Nexus for it. The phone looks good, feels great and runs amazingly fast. That being said though, once the modding community gets some customs roms out for it, I know I’ll jump ship from Sense and try out CyanogenMod 9 or AOKP. For an everyday user, I have no doubt they will love this phone immensely. HTC put a lot of effort into getting this phone right and it shows in every way you can use it, it’s almost like it was built with love.

    The HTC One X is also available from Optus ($60 plan), Vodafone ($59 plan), Virgin ($59 plan) and out right from Allphones ($658). We should also see it’s brother from another mother (HTC One XL) come to Telstra in the coming months with the 4G frequency included.
    Google+
    • vodka4boris

      Do you have the OTA update that has the battery fix in it?

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=678969321 Rohan Juneja

      Would you say it takes the crown of best Android out? For the moment obviously

      • Irwin

        Absolutely, but with the speed and competitiveness in the market, they won’t hold it for long.

      • 3xile

        No. G nexus ftw. If you like sense buy this phone if you like android buy the g nexus. To me the phone is not running ics. If you know what I mean.

    • Nick Fletcher

      Wow $658.. seems like the phone retailers have recently dropped the price – mobicity was selling for $730, and it’s now $690.  awesome!

      do you know if allphones has a warranty?  would it come with an HTC australia style warranty?

      that battery life sounds pretty bad, though.  made worse by the non removalable battery.  Have you tried the XDA custom ROMs/kernels?  I know the guy who makes insertCoin ROMs (HTC Desire -> HTC Sensation -> HTC OneX), might ask him if they have been able to get a decent improvement from the battery.

      • Irwin

        I’m actually running the LeeDroid rom at the moment and they have all boasted battery improvements, but it just doesn’t cut it with how demanding HTC Sense is. I suspect that with CM9 or AOKP, you could see some improvements as there’d be less junk running in the background.

        • Nick Fletcher

           have you tried running with a different launcher? 
          Just checked out the xda forums, i was suprised* to find no real kernel developers releasing anyhting yet.  i’m sure once people start getting their head around hte tegra3 stuff you’ll get some nice battery efficient kernels being released.

          *suprised – coming from the SGS2 world where there seems to be a new kernel popup every week!

    • Nick Fletcher

      whoa! these guys are selling it for $599!
      http://www.becextech.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1650{17}135{20}120{19}119{14}32

      has anyone dealt with becextech before?  are they OK?  I found them from the ad on the top of this page :)

      • BobbyClark

        Add shipping and watch the price rise heaps.

        • Nick Fletcher

           yeah i can’t find anything about shipping on their site, so i’ve sent them an email.  it can’t be as much as allphones final price though (658 + 16 – 599 = $75)…
          another weird thing i’ve noticed.  allphone’s online price is $568 + 16 (shipping) = $574.  their “RRP” (i assume this means in shop price?) price is $668.  so it’d actually be cheaper to go to the shop and buy it than buy it with their discounted online price.

          OK wow, i got impatient and signed up to becextech.com.au, shipping is $74.95!!
          so it works out to be exactly the same as the online price at allphones, and more expensive than if you go to the store at allphones (assuming they sell it at RRP in store).  amazing.

    • http://www.facebook.com/jason.lockart Jason Lockart

      This is a pretty shit review. For a phone with the tagline “Amazing Camera, Authentic Sound” (I think?) you mentioned none of those, which are huge selling points.

      I’ve also heard that the battery life is actually pretty good, so…

    • http://twitter.com/rashasman Rashas Moustaches

      The Engadget review is far more comprehensive and contains many fewer spelling and grammar errors 
      http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/02/htc-one-x-review/

      • NOZ

        On yet bike then

      • Greviousmcg

        “contains many fewer spelling”
        What a hypocrite……Look these guys may not have the best grammatical or spelling skills but they are a bunch of enthusiastic blokes who are willing to give up their time to write about all things Android for us Aussies fans. So they are a little rough around the edge with their writing skills but so what?? They are passionate about Android and this is what we like about them and this site.

        If you going to be pedantic about the their writing skills then stick with the sites that can afford to pay professional writers otherwise how about lighting up a bit before coming here.  

      • http://www.facebook.com/nick.bellios Nick Bellios

        Typical interweb nazi..

    • MuffinMan

      Dude, the review seems OK for content but you need to work on structure. Why have you put in those dot points? Maybe it’s cos I’m reading this on my phone but they seem a little random; certainly not the handy pros/cons summary that ausdroid reviews used to have.

      My other gripe is more minor – but please use the real word “light”, not “lite”.

      • Matt Booth

        I’d say it is due to the rendering of the review on your phone. The ‘specs’ dot points are separated out with the Pros and Cons so people can see the most important aspects of the phone at a glance. 

        I quite enjoyed reading the review, as I enjoy reading all reviews on Ausdroid, since they are from the perspective of the average user (OK maybe enthusiast more than average) and are refreshingly different from what you can read elsewhere.

    • http://www.facebook.com/vijay.alapati Vijay Alapati

      i dont understand this…in pros u said ”
      First Android 4 phone with custom skin” and then in cons u said ”
      HTC Sense Skin on top of Ice Cream Sandwich”?????

    • 3xile

      After a quick play with the onex I have to say I hate sense. After using the g nexus I love the fact that there’s no capcitive buttons. Android have to be stock.

    • José Muñoz

      lol @ Peter Griffin fighting chicken in the background!

      I’m happy with my 1X. I don’t mind sense but I use Apex anyway so that eliminates much of the heavy skin.
      Battery last all day after 1.28 providing you don’t have the screen on 100 all the time.
      I used to connect charge every chance even if I had 70% battery in fear of getting too low.
      Simply actively managing wifi, gps and brightness keeps the device fit though.

      Though the review was brief it’s good to read one from an Aussie site.
      The followers who have been here from the beginning are already grateful for its existence.
      Comparing Ausdroid from what it began as, to the Ausdroind it is now, has shown it has matured well and will continue to grow and become central to Android AU.

    • Joshua

      bought mine from Allphones a couple of days after the official and rooted it that following weekend.
      Have been running LeeDrOiD rom ever since… and battery life has not been a problem for me and I stream tunein radio at work for much of the day, use it as a mobile hotspot for my tablet at lunch and watch a TV episode on the way home on the bus and still have 50% remaining at bed time.  The big thing is that I turn off 3G when I am not purposely wanting to use the internet, and turn down the screen brightness one step from full.

      my quadrant score (3 runs) were 3800 when it had the Optus oem rom, but are up to 4300+ to 4500? now on LeeDrOiD rom.

      the only issues with the One compared to my Inspire /Desire HD is that

      # vlingo does not work anywhere near as good, 

      # the FM tuner is not as sensitive to picking up stations ( which is probably better as I delete these stations anyway),

      # the GPS may not be as quick or as accurate to lock in.

      Can’t wait until OTTERBOX brings out a defender cover for the One.

    • Alex Gerontzos

      Good looking phone right here, I think I read somewhere on xda that someone has made an unofficial battery mod fix that sees a 10-20% increase of battery life.. Maybe something to check out for those in fearing not lasting the day.

    • Phil

      I’ve had my htc one x for about 3 weeks now and I think it’s fantastic.

      The screen is beautiful, stunning. I wowed my friends when showing the photo gallery.

      I don’t know what the fuss is about htc sense, but liked it on my original htc desire, and I also like it on my htc one x. The cool unlock feature quickly choosing the camera and other apps is nice is handy.
      I’ve only used ICS on my asus transformer tablet and  it doesn’t seem any nicer. Definitely not as smooth as my One X.
      I also like the recent app changer. silky smooth.

      The htc widgets are great, I really love the weather widget.

      The phone feels fantastic in the hand, feels no bigger than a 4.3 incher, and its super light, I forget its in my pocket allot of the time.

      I’ve found the data speed to be excellent with Optus, much better than my optimus 2x, and htc desire.
      I tested on the Sydney western train line from central to Penrith.
      It almost equals my telstra wireless elite modem .

      The battery life has been better than I thought after reading negative reviews.
      It lasts all day from 6am to 12pm for me and still has plenty left.
      It out lasts my htc desire and optimus 2x, I’ve never needed to charge it through the day.
      It even lasted 28 hours one day when I forgot to charge it over night.
      I think I probably fall into the light user category.
      I do probably 2 hours web browsing on the train, and a couple of calls or sms, listen to abit of music.
      I don’t play many games, maybe angry birds or fruit slice occassionally, and those don’t seem to drain the battery much.

      Web browsing is also like a desktop speed, fast to load, super smooth scrolling.
      I really love is the speed, everything is super fast, after having a laggy slow LG optimus 2x, it feels fantastic.

      The camera is great too, it has some nice effects, and takes photos super fast. Its best picture mode is nice when trying to get the smiling photo of the kids.

      my gripes…
      Abit disappointed with the sound quality in phone calls, the voices sound tinny and not as clear as my optimus 2x.
      I’ve noticed once when playing with the active backgrounds I got some nasty artifacts (tiny white flickers) on the top left of the screen. I haven’t see it again after switch to a normal background. Doesn’t bother me much though since the active background stuff chews the battery.
      I’m little concerned the camera glass on the back will scratch easily, it seems I already have a tiny light scratch on edge.
      The other thing that pissed me off was it had this annoy sms broadcast channel 52 setup and I got spammed with location SMS messages for a couple of days till I worked out how to turn it off.

      But over all brilliant phone, better than the galaxy nexus. Gotta love 32GB, 8mb camera. And like having an fm  radio.

    • Sagi_jm

      i really hate phones that are built to necessitate cases. That camera will scratch in about 5 seconds flat… horrible design. That would be a real pity, because the camera is a beast.

      It will be good if you like sense, and don’t mind being attached to a power outlet. I get 2 days of use out of my GNex. I have not seen anything yet which it can’t run, nor do I get lag. I wonder how fast a processor OEMs will put into phones, without making any major advances to the battery?

      It is a solid phone, but having previously owned a HTC incredible S, I don’t think i will buy a HTC again. Creaky build quality. Infrequent updates with some pretty annoying time stamping issues on calls and texts that were never fixed.

    • Rokampa

      The battery is shit and continue to get worse. How in the fuck can that expect people to care a charger all dam day. And once the quad core starts up only. ………5………. HOURS. Are out of your mind. Phones are for everyone not just for the nerds that sit all day on there ass. FOR EVERYONE PULL YOUR HEADS OUT YOUR _ _ _.
      HOPEFULLY THE GS3 WILL BE BETTER. (MOTOROLA ATRIX 4G)

      • Phil

        Wrong! The battery is decent, I know because I own one.
        You don’t need to carry a charger because the battery is good.
        I think your out your mind!
        I think most people with desk jobs sit on the arse all day too, and if you not your probably not using your phone, so actually the phone is for most people.
        I think you should take your trolling back to the hole you came from.

        • http://twitter.com/gemini67 gemini67

           decent you say, since when is having to charge a device at least twice a day decent.  Up until my HTC Crap-Sensation I never owned a device that needed to be charged more then twice a day.  I have most account sync’ing manually (and I only sync a few times a day), I don’t play many games, screen is set to average brightness, and less than 30 minutes of phone talk and yet it seems as if I have the thing permanently connected to a charging cable.  If HTC are not careful they will start loosing heaps of sales.

        • Mark

          HTC= Have To Charge

    • http://twitter.com/tfqkhn Taufiq Khan

      Thumbs up for the Game of Thrones reference

    • Davidatscpc

      Can you comment on call/signal strength of phones you test please?  Many of us live in regional cities and  some phones have poor signal strength and will drop calls, and other phones will not drop the call in the same area.  Telstra have their “Blue tick” system, but it would be good if other carriers and testers of phones also commented on phones signal strength.  Thanks.

    • http://twitter.com/gemini67 gemini67

      Memo to HTC: Look at what Samsung are doing, they release extended capacity batteries for their Nexus and SII, what do HTC say “our customers want slimmer devices”, and people are ok with 10-12 hours of light use, you must be joking !!!!  When I upgrade my HTC Crap-Sensation it WONT be for another HTC device.

    • TechGuy-Tech

      I’m pleased I opted for the Galaxy Note instead of the Nexus or HTC1. Whilst some people may be comfortable with a limited battery life that you can’t swap, it’s something I couldn’t. I also wanted a card slot for carrying loads of media around with me. The “Cloud” is not always available. The Galaxy Note Stylus and FM Radio are also nice bonuses and the screen is beautiful. I doubt if even the Samsung Galaxy 3 will beat it.

      I liked my original HTC Hero but it seems that HTC have lost the plot when it comes to what users really want to do with their phones. All the bells and whistles are useless when the power runs out.

    • Paulmcarth

      Thats odd, your battery issues sound like a problem. I’ve had my One X since release in Aus i get atleast a full day with heavy usage, with medium to lite usage i got 29 hours since charge that included 3-5 phone calls.
      Sounds like you got some dodge software or HTC QC aint upto scratch

    • http://twitter.com/durx craigd

      I certainly do hope this is not going to be the quality of reviews moving forward.  This site has great reputation amongst Aussie and world Android fans.  Coming in with exclusives that are republished by the likes of Engadget and XDA.

      I have to say I was eagerly awaiting the review of this device, this review in my opinion is a total joke.  Irwin Proud should not be proud, he should be disgusted.  The editors of this site should have not let this go ahead.  They should probably go one step further and revoke any further content from him.

      Couple this with using words such as “shitty” I have put this review in the waste of space category.  Time to get back to the roots guys, flick this guy off and get back to what you do best.  QUALITY CONTENT not rushed have soaked “shitty” reviews to borrow a phrase.

      To the rest of Ausdroid keep up the good work

    • http://www.weddingphotographerofsydney.com.au/ Wedding photographer of sydney

      right. The phone has not disappointed me so far. I love the light weight, great design and the finishing. Apart from the great HTC Sense overlay, I love how the phone feels on my hand and every one who has seen the phone has fallen in love with it. The camera is pretty awesome as i. it is a 2.0 – which means it takes great low light images and ii. it can take images whilst shooting video. The speed at which the cam focuses it amazing.

    • http://www.kedr.com.au/ KedR

      Love the phone and all the features. I got it from Allphones outright for a good deal and I am with Optus – prepaid. My only complaint is with optus, having their sim inside the phone, I get all these crap apps from optus which I cannot uninstall. 
      Not a happy chappy optus.

    • Nick Fowler

      Can’t decide on whether to get the LTE 4G version with dual-core or the quad-core version.

      My carrier in Canada offers the LTE for $624, but I’m leaning towards the quad. Anyone else debate this?Thanks

    • katynashon12233

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    • Tuka

      I had bought my 1X two days ago, I liked the looks, especially the
      sleekness, the screen size is WOW and the weightlessness. Still I am
      exploring it’s utilities, battery life is under monitoring and prior to
      commenting about it, I want to check and test it according to my
      personal usage requirement.

    • pat

      I HATE MY ONEX, it will not connect to wi-fi at ALL. HTC will not even help. unless directly plugged into power you probs can’t watch an entire movie even with full battery. I wish i had of waited another few months for the new iphone….

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