Many in the industry believe that HTC, which was once most beloved among Android fans, has fallen from grace. That the company has lost its way, its edge. I am here to tell you that those people are wrong. I offer as evidence the new HTC One X. The One X, the company’s new flagship Android smartphone, is the kind of phone that just leaves you breathless. Its single-piece polycarbonate body is unique in the Android world, and it is as comfortable to hold as it is drop dead gorgeous. The X’s 720p resolution touchscreen display is just as attractive and functional as it is expansive, measuring 4.7 inches across the diagonal. The One X’s two marquee features, however, are likely its Android 4 OS with the new Sense 4 user interface and the phone’s powerful NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, which has 4 processing cores that can run at speeds of up to 1.5GHz. The real world impact of a quad-core processor might be negligible for most tasks, but there’s no denying that the marketing appeal it offers is great.
About the only thing that is missing is 4G connectivity, since that shiny new Tegra 3 processor lacked LTE support until very recently. Apart from LTE, the HTC One appears to be everything that the Google Galaxy Nexus by Samsung is and should have been. Read on. The HTC One X is an exquisitely designed device. The white body of our evaluation handset is made from a single piece of polycarbonate that features a matte finish, save for the high-gloss edge of the phone. It is supremely attractive and comfortable, and it blends perfectly into the tapered edges of the Gorilla Glass front of the phone that protects its 720 x 1280 pixel Super LCD2 display. Offering a dot pitch of 312dpi, the One X’s 4.7-inch HD touchscreen is more than sharp enough to make even the smallest of fonts look entirely readable - assuming your eyes are up to the task. The X’s display also shows significantly deeper black levels than previous HTC HD displays, such as the one seen on the HTC Vivid for AT&T. It still can’t quite compete with Super AMOLED for black levels and color saturation, but it is getting quite close.
Since it is an Android 4.0 device, and was designed from the ground up as such, the HTC One X features only three touch sensitive controls under the display. Users will find a back button, a home button, and the task switcher button. Missing is the search button found on most older Android smartphones, and I am glad to bid it farewell since a three button arrangement is much easier to use without looking, as LG showed on its Nitro HD for AT&T. Above the display on the front face of the phone is the secondary 1.3 megapixel camera for video chatting, which supports the primary 8 megapixel camera, with LED flash, that resides on the back of the phone. A power button sits on the top edge of the One X, where it is somewhat difficult to reach - even with large hands. A 3.5mm headphone jack resides there as well, as does the hidden tray for the phone’s mandatory micro-SIM card, which requires a paper clip or something similar for removal. A micro-USB port for charging and data is located on the left edge of the phone, with the volume control sitting exactly on the opposite right hand edge.
With a weight of only 134g (4.7oz) and a svelte profile of 9.2mm (.36in), the One X fits easily into a pocket. Its 134.5mm x 70.8mm (5.3in x 2.8in) length and width can make it a bit unwieldy to use single-handedly for those with smaller hands, but it is no worse than Motorola’s popular DROID RAZR and DROID RAZR MAXX smartphones in that regard, even though it offers users a much larger, higher resolution display. Apart from the position of the power button and the micro-USB port, I find the industrial design and build quality of the HTC One X to be just about as good as it gets. It is a device worthy of both love and lust.
