So I'm a week into owning the AT&T Version of the HTC One X and figured I'd finally go ahead and post my initial impressions after a week of solid use.
So initially I hadn't planned on getting a phone upgrade. I was trying to wait til my Birthday or Xmas towards the end of the year. I had a Samsung Focus, and while I could tell it was getting slightly long in the tooth I could wait it out. Long in the tooth didn't exactly mean unusable. At the very least I contemplated getting a new battery. Then my phone just sort of died on me I'm still not sure wtf actually happened, but it basically decided to just crap out on me at the end of June.
Luckily I was coming out of contract in July, and I actually tweeted to AT&T CS who hooked me up a week early. The obvious choice around the phone world is obviously the Samsung Galaxy SIII has the new hotness. The new iPhone is still a few months away as is WP8. The other idea was to get an off contract Nexus, but being on AT&T I wanted to grab an LTE device since I can get LTE service. I had also heard about the One X, but it wasn't at the top of my list despite being in the back of my mind.
I told myself I would end up probably grabbing something off of Amazon because they always seem to have mad deals. I googled around but with supply problems and big demand the GS3 was basically stock price everywhere (Amazon was like I think $10 cheaper only). I noticed the One X in white and said well hell I'll just check the price. Boom Amazon said it was like $119. Blah blah blah. Basically I did some research and decided I liked the phone, it was HTC's current flagship, compared favorably to the GS3 trading +s and -s in different areas, and it was by far the cheapest phone that wasn't just last year's model on clearance.
I got my One X last Monday, and I'd say I put my phone through a decent amount of paces. I'll admit I was really hyped to get my new shinny device, but I was more just hoping for a decent Android experience that was smooth and not bogged down by the Sense UI. I think I actually underestimated the quality of the phone after a week of use.
The phone feels really snappy. I know I got my One X just after Jelly Bean was shown with project butter, but I'm left going my phone is already rather smooth. Maybe the newer chipsets have gotten so fast they just can brute force a lot of this now. At anyrate my One X hasn't really had any stuttering or performance issues. Granted I'm hardly some crazy power user doing 5,000 things at once. For my uses though the phone is good in this regard.
I also told myself I'd got a week or two with the Sense UI before I really decide if I need to root and flash. So far Sense hasn't really been a bother. I know the multitasking came under fire, and I can understand why. It's not huge deal to me, and I can still switch and clear my apps rather fast. Also outside of texting/gtalk/music I don't really multitask much anyways. This was a big worry going in that has basically become for me anyways a total non issue.
Beats Audio which is now an HTC thing is again being touted on this phone. It only clicks on when you plug in something into the headphone jack, and you get a little beat icon. Honestly it's not as horrible as it's been made out to be, but it's not great either. Best thing I could compare it to is the old school option of bass boost be turned on along with a slightly more compressed mid range which you can hear in the vocals. Music sounds pretty good with it off though. No discernible drop off from my Focus with the Wolf DAC. I'm currently using Google Music as my player, and for now I'm just using the Google Podcast app as well.
Not totally sold on the mail options. The GMail app while decent frick'n blows without pinch to zoom. The HTC app is better in this regard, but not perfect. I like a tad more spacing between e-mails (ie I got with the middle option in in the gmail desktop client). Still it works. I get my e-mail, and I can send e-mail too!
First app I downloaded was Chrome since I have ICS. I know some dislike the layout, and some miss some gesture stuff that their stock browsers have. I'm really digging Chrome though. Chrome + LTE or good Wifi + S4 processor = really fast browsing experience. I can load picture heavy sites with a breeze, and things like GIFs don't slow things down either. Plus since it's Chrome I just don't get a lot of the random CSS/HTML5 rendering issues I get on some other mobile and even desktop browsers. Things just look like they are suppose to. Plus I like syncing with Chrome in W8/Ubuntu/CR-48 and getting all of that extra functionality across all of my OSes.
I know another bane of connection was HTC agressively app killing. Yet to be a problem for me, but like I said I'm not massively multitasking. I might have 2 Chome tabs open while listening to music. Then I'll throw out a text or gtalk message interspersed. So HTC hasn't killed anything for me that I've seen that I needed.
That along with the phone not feeling laggy and chrome being speedy has also made me not really worried about not getting the GS3 with 2 gigs of RAM. 1 gig seems to be fine on my phone for it's current usage.
In terms of the hardware itself I really liked the Lumia 800/900 designs. When I heard HTC was going to try something similar with the One X I was hyped, but when I saw it I wasn't as wowed. The white unibody design was okay, but not show stopping for me. Seeing out at demo setups wasn't great either. Getting the actual phone in my hands I really like the white unibody design. The phone looks good and it feels great in my hand. Plus for as big as the phone is being 4.7" (my Focus was 4") it's really light. My GF made the same comment on her own the 1st time she held it. She was like woah that's really light!
Space isn't really an issue for me either seeing as I was getting by with 8 gigs in my old phone. I'll gladly take the unibody design,. I know for some power uses this is all a deal breaker, but I'm fine with the 16 gigs.
Also the battery seems great. Reading through some tests before I ordered it seemed to edge out the GS3 battery wise as well as the GNexus. I get really good usage time, and I seem to have great standby time. Even though it's powering a 4.7" screen with LTE I've yet to have a ton of issues. Granted I use wifi most of the time where I am and I try to toggle 4G off, and even wifi when I know I don't really need them on. It's nice because even with mobile turned off it still allows me to send and receive MMS. I imagine if I used LTE more often my battery life might not be AS stellar. Still even taking another hour off the battery life time would be a solid amount of usage time. Couple this with really good LTE speeds and it would still be more than worth it.
Chris Ziegler did the One X review for The Verge and this is what he said about the screen....
The One X's display is, without a hint of hyperbole, the best I've ever seen on a phone. Full stop. Seriously, I'm struggling to find fault with it in any way: it's got a near-perfect 180 degree viewing angle and perhaps the most accurate color reproduction and color temperature available. At 720p, it falls well into "retina" territory where the individual pixels become invisible to the naked eye. It also lacks the infamous pentile subpixel arrangement commonly employed on high-resolution AMOLEDs like that found on the One S, and it runs circles around the Galaxy Nexus's 4.65-inch Super AMOLED for overall quality.
Historically, one of the big reasons manufacturers have chosen AMOLED over LCD is because AMOLED is thinner it's self-illuminating, so there's no need for an external lighting arrangement. Considering that the One X packs its SLCD into an 8.9mm shell, though, that concern has all but evaporated (compare it to the 720p Rezound, for instance, at a beefy 13.7mm).
Put me in this camp. I've yet to see another mobile device outside of maybe the iPhone 4 when it launched or honestly more the iPad 3 to be this wowed by a screen. Call it hyperbole, but this shit is light years in design better than the current two top dog Samsung phones.
First off the way they added the top screen into the unibody design is awesome. HTC also went with the new approach of trying to get the screen as close to the top glass as possible. 1280 x 720 gives you a ton of pixels to look at which is nice in and of itself and really good considering phones like the One X are getting so big in terms of screen area. Also that SLCD or LCD2 tech or whatever you want to label it as is
STRAIGHT BOSSLY!
Seeing it in store didn't even compare to getting it home, and seeing it at the stores where they are dummy units does this phone a massive disservice. The screen looks redonkulously good. It's deceiving at 1st because HTC Sense and the Android interface in general isn't something that will make a great screen immediately apparent. Fuck loading up chrome and browsing or scrolling through FB and seeing pics and stuff posted was frick'n godly. Color accuracy seems off the charts. Text seems ridiculously crisp when browsing say GAF Mobile. Viewing angles are the best I've ever seen. You can move almost 90 degrees left or right from staring at the phone dead on and see an amazing picture quality.
You also don't get any of the shitty problems AMOLED screens have. Sure blacks might not be AS black as on my Focus, but pentile matrixing doesn't exist. Plus you don't get any of the weird saturation problems or color fringing other screens get either. You can really tell when you see a photo shot with a DSLR or when you watch a professionally done video. I watched the gymkhana five race through San Fran on Youtube in HD, and it was ridiculous that a mobile device like this should exist.
Considering I use the screen every time I use the phone it's awesome. I mean I get a ton of use with the phone's greatest feature. I seriously can't stress enough just how mind blowingly awesome the screen looks. I got to compare to my best friend's GS3 (verizon version) over this weekend, and we both agreed there wasn't really a comparison when you got beyond just scrolling through Sense or TouchWiz.
All in all after a week of use the phone is generally solid with very little issues coupled with great hardware design and a best in mobile leading screen. Since the space isn't a big deal for me provided the battery lasts the fact that it's unibody won't be a detractor for me. Definitely more than worth a look if you're on AT&T considering it's LTE, and Amazon has it for roughly $80 less than the only other LTE phone you'd get aka the GS3.
PS: If you have any other questions or if I missed something you want to know about let me know. I might post more impressions tomorrow if/when I realize what I forgot to talk about.
