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We’ve said before that the HTC One X is one of the best Android Phones you can buy. The One X + ups the phone’s already impressive specs with a 1.7 Ghz quad-core Tegra 3 processor. And HTC’s clearly heard customers whining about battery life, because the Plus packs a 2,100 mAh battery. Can HTC’s new heater fight the good fight against the likes of Samsung’s hot rod Galaxy SIII?
HTC’s latest and greatest Android phone: a quad-core beast running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
Androiders who crave the absolute fastest thing they can get.
Like the original One X? Good! Because this phone looks exactly the same. Thin and light. Our review unit was decked out in a pretty disappointing variant of soft-touch plastic that somehow managed to attract smudges like it was a touchscreen or something.
As promised, this phone is fast. Apps snap open, games whiz by with zero labour. Jellybean’s impressive Project Butter turns scrolling through lists and screens into some sort of expressionist art: It’s hypnotically smooth. It looks like the original X’s heat issue has been solved by a faster processor (with more cores) that doesn’t have to work as hard. We played graphics-intensive games for hours without it getting uncomfortable, and it never crotch-cooked us riding around in a front pocket all day.
HTC managed to make the phone bigger on the inside while maintaining the OG X’s svelte proportions. The two phones are physically identical, and on our official Gizmodo scale, the Plus was only 8 grams heavier.
Big phone + stylish jeans = accidental power button-presses that turn the phone off in your pocket. (Yeah, yeah, I know: You wear combats and that never happens to you and hipsters should die. Congrats.)
The included Beats Audio®©℗™℠ made sound quality worse on every single pair of headphones we tried. OK, I guess that’s not too weird.
- Samurai Vengeance remains the Gizmodo standard testing game. We own.
- The phone managed to pull down an average of 2.8Mbps via its HSPA connection.
- The phone lasted all day on a single charge.
- Like the HTC One X, this still has the best screen we’ve ever seen on a phone. Bar none. It’s just gorgeous.
- I like HTC Sense 4+. There, I said it.
Probably! If you’re in the market for an Android phone, you can do a lot worse than this attractive, powerful handset.
• OS: Android 4.1
• CPU: 1.7 Ghz quad-core Tegra 3
• Screen: 4.7-inch Super LCD2 (312 ppi)
• RAM: 1GB RAM
• Storage: 32GB or 64GB
• Camera: Back: 8MP, Front: 1.3MP
• Battery: 2,100 mAh
• Price: £500
• Giz Rank: 4
A HTC phone for £500? Rightly or wrongly, to me that just sounds expensive. I think every Android phone is going to be compared to the new Nexus and its remarkably low price.
The price is steep (only now compared to the N4) but non the less this is a good phone. But no one should buy it since the N4 got announced (unless money is no object and you get both
)
You see Joey, if we were New Yorkers we could have spent last night breaking into banks and looting jewelers. We could have made our technology dreams come true. Tut, such a missed opportunity!
Who’s to say I diddent.
Stuck in New York now though, but no one suspects a thing
Well, if you didn’t do it last night you’ve probably got a slim chance tonight but it’s going to be risky. And remember, looters are considered scum of the earth so if you get caught expect a lengthy stint in prison!
You could have gone out and thrown rocks at the glass cubed Apple store and then blamed ‘the weather’.
If only.
Google just kinda screwed all the Android manufacturers with the amazingly priced Nexus 4.
HTC must be shitting themselves. They are screwed. You’d be mad to buy this phone over the Nexus 4 unless it’s no more than £300.
Price war is ON
i think its a good thing, phones have been overpriced for a while,
Except that the Nexus 4 can afford to be cheap, since it’s made by LG, the industry leader in cheap plasticy build quality for phones. Amazingly, even cheaper feeling than the Galaxy S3. But maybe the Nexus 4, with it’s glittery back, will be higher quality than it looks and than the normal LG standard. If so then we should have a good phone.
For the price of a Nexus 4 it would have to be made out of solidified dog excrement to put folks off, and even then I’d be tempted.
Generally I would concur with your assessment on the build quality of LG’s previous phones, but the Nexus 4 looks anything but cheap, especially since its completely covered with Gorilla Glass 2 (back and front). It remains to be seen how well built this will be, but with that price…lots of people will be jumping at it in the run up to Christmas.
I agree, having watched a the videos and looked at the pics, the quality looks fine.
and especially as google were overseeing the build too, i reckon its going to be good.
I agree, the price is exceptionally low and with the features of JB and a quadcore chip it’s going to sell like hot sausage rolls.
I think this is the better phone, but not by £220+
The Nexus 4 has and will defiantly change the game for the good, I like how they are pushing the Nexus 4 for sim only, and at an amazing price.
Less RAM on this than the Nexus 4…
sorry, RAM is the main thing.
WTF Kauzion…. I actually agree with what you have to say!
As an Apple die-hard, do you think even the mighty mother-brand will have to lower it’s prices? I think they have got to do something as they’re heading back to niche
So the Nexus 4 is cheap and great but has no room for a decent music collection, while the HTC has room for a decent collection, but is expensive and sounds shit.
Am I the only person who listens to music on my phone? I want to ditch my iphone but Google doesn’t care about my music, the bastard.
16GB is enough for, what 1000 songs? Plus all your apps etc and a bit of free space.
I have 16GB worth of music alone, and apparently that’s nothing.
I have a 16GB capacity on my phone without an SD card storage slot and 260GB of music in my collection. But do I need to listen to all 14,311 files in one day or one week? No. I put on a few gig of what I’m into that particular week or month and then change it up when I get bored. You don’t need to put everything you own onto your phone. Even if you were an unemployed recluse you couldn’t listen to it all.
I don’t want to do that every week/month.
is there such a thing as a digital horder?
there is, im one and it sounds like you are too, my music collection stretches into the hundreds of gigs, i can put up with 16gb of storage on my tablet but i have a 16gb sd card in my phone and its not enough as i too use it for music, i like to pack it full and play on shuffle. im thinking of getting a 64gb soon
also thank god for both the expandable storage of the desire z and the long press to switch tracks mod i have on it
I have a 16gb iphone at the mo, and every time I want to put some new music on it I have to take some off to make space. I listen to music a lot, and would say I’m a well above average music collecter. Plus I download and rip everything at a higher bitrate than normal because quite frankly it sounds better. So I’d love a phone with 64gb so that i don’t have to delete so much, and can carry a wider choice of music around with me. I’d like an Android phone because my experience with the Nexus 7 has been such a good one. But where is the 64gb high spec smaller than a S3 bigger than a iphone 4 Jellybean toting mutha that I need (want)?
S2? By the way, the S3 really doesn’t feel big after a mere day with it. Use it with a 64Gb SD card for media, fill the built in 16Gb with apps, done!
Looks like they beefed up the storage as well.
I just picked up a One X (not the new + version) to replace an iP4 and it’s my first android experience as well as my first large screen experience. I love this phone! I can’t put it down. I highly recommend it. You don’t need the more expensive + version. Get the older version for a lot less money. I’m talking £320 off contract. It still has a quad core and 32GB of storage and is as really fast and really smooth. The screen isn’t bettered by anything out there at the moment. And the build quality is superb. The sound quality is good but don’t bother using the built in DR Dre Beats Audio amp crap. It just drowns the sound in bass and is a marketing gimmick.
So you can use it without the Beats?
Yes the beats amp can be selected or deselected. If you don’t want to use it you can select from the usual list of EQ presets like most phones and it won’t send the signal through the beats engine. Then you get a clearer, better audio sound that isn’t drowned in bass by some rapper who put his name to some pretty pointless technology that he knows nothing about for the sake of a few dollars.
Yup I’ve got one and I love it.
I said they’ve beefed up the storage because you can get our model in 16gb but they don’t appear to be offering that in the new model
Brilliant phone.. there’s no way I could go back to a smaller screen now
you missed another tragic flaw (and one htc intended, nay went to great lengths to make happen) is how locked down it is, there really is pretty much zero chance that it will ever get s-off, if htcdev unlock is enough for you then thats fair enough, but it isnt for me.
samsung have the right approach to bootloader unlocking, a simple disclaimer and its fully unlocked
Yea, one thing I hate about the HTC One X I bought on the Rogers network and that’s not being able to remove some apps I don’t want on there such as Facebook and twitter. Facebook likes to start up and run in the background at random times throughout the day, even though I don’t have an account with them and have never launched the app. But I think it’s the same for most carrier-bought android phones. They come with bloatware and you can’t remove some apps without rooting your phone. I can’t believe they are allowed to force Facebook on me and it’s allowed to run whenever it likes. What is it even doing running? Can anyone explain to me why it’s loading up and running by itself?
One X PLUS?
HTC has no respect for its own flagship phones. They should market 1 flagship phone only! Not doing mini-upgrades every couple of months!
This is just like the Sensation, Sensation XE, Sensation XL crap all over again.
*No wonder HTC is losing money.
Apple does it too. The 3GS, the 4GS. HTC are doing jumping on the same tactic. And sadly some people will immediately think their non + model or their non S model isn’t enough to fulfil their needs so they’ll upgrade to the slightly faster version. Having said that I don’t agree that it’s a matter of respect. There’s nothing wrong with improving an already good model for those who are about to buy a new phone and want the latest hardware specs. It’s good business and it’s good for the customer who is at their contract renewal time.
Apple releases 1 flagship phone per year (approx). HTC upgrades its own flagship phone multiple times in a year (the same model). One X now has 2 brothers – One XL and One X+. IMO that makes it difficult for HTC to market (and update) its flagship phones properly.
I think it’s a flawed marketing gimmick. Customers would be confused – how many One Xes are there??
Nevertheless I still love my One X. It’s a great phone – i think it’s so much better than the S3 (you don’t see Samsung releasing S3+, S3extra etc).
Actually Apple releases 1 flagship phone every two years and then updates each one during the inbetween year. In fact in my opinion the iPhone5 is just an updated iPhone 4, so in my eyes they haven’t bothered to release a new flagship phone in a long time. And after 5 years they are still just making the original phone a little thinner, a little longer and a little faster each time. Hence the reason I jumped ship to Android and am blown away by the leaps and bounds these phones have taken.
If a customer gets genuinely confused between a One X, a One XL and a One X+ then they aren’t smart enough to own a smartphone and should stick with a Nokia 5110. The One X plus is an update of the One X, exactly as the iPhone 4S was an updated iPhone4. The One X will be phased out as the + version slowly replaces it and then HTC will release a new redesigned flagship phone in another year most likely. There is no confusion. It’s 3 phones. Look at the laptop or TV market, with 4 or 5 or 8 versions of each model sometimes, that’s much more confusing.
I kinda agree. I thought that HTC said when they announced the One X / S /V that they would streamline their operations? At the same time HTC need to keep up with their rivals, lets just hope that it doesn’t impact quality.