AT&T HTC One X Review

By Rob Boggan

Reinvention is the spice of life. Sometimes when you hit that brick wall of creativity, reinvention can be your only ally and the one driving factor between the quintessential “sink or swim” mantra. With Hollywood being obsessed with reboots and bettering the past, it seemed like only a matter of time before other industries followed suit. We seen it first last year with the reinvention of the Motorola Droid RAZR, the first mega selling cell phone, converted into a smartphone. While the Droid RAZR enjoyed immediate success, it never really met the sales numbers of it’s decade old predecessor. Add that to the reality of more powerful options being available, it ultimately got overlooked. HTC has taken what it’s learned from Hollywood reboots and reincarnations of past cellular successes, and applied it to their new HTC One series.

I got a chance to sit down with the AT&T branded HTC One X, and I have to admit this phone is awesome. Sporting a design similar to their first mega hit phone, the HTC Hero, the One X has an amazingly clean exterior complimented by a wonderfully powerful interior. For starts, the outside of the HTC One X is one beautifully crafted work of art. Sporting a uni-body frame with a soft white coat, the One X feels good in your hand. The display is as gorgeous as anything I’ve seen before, and I would rank it one notch under the retina display, but definitely on par with Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus, if not better. The screen is so amazingly crisp that text just pops out at you without the slightest hint of jagged text or photo pixelation. Having a 4.7 inch display, the One X sounds like it would be a big phone, but it’s actually quite opposite. Benefiting from the same design as the Galaxy Nexus, the One X is so thin that you don’t even notice how tall it is. In addition to the thinness, the One X is also feather light and literally feels like nothing when slipped into a pocket.

One of the biggest curiosities I had about the new HTC interface was the additions they made to the camera. The camera line up is about the same as usual, 8MP on the rear with a 2MP front camera, but the real affair is the software within. First and foremost, gone are the days of holding the camera shutter button to focus. That functionality has been replaced by a burst shot option, capable of snapping 99 photos rapidly. Most pics we took were pretty solid, and I for one am extremely glad to see that HTC is still keeping camera performance as a high priority within their devices. The video camera also got an uptick in performance with a new still shot option to go along with video mode. This benefits the user by allowing them to snap photos while recording video and never miss a beat. I’ve always wanted this feature on my smartphone as it’s been an option for years on standalone video cameras and now I finally have it. Good job HTC.

The HTC One X also marks the first AT&T Android device to launch with OS 4.0 pre-loaded on it. With full Ice Cream Sandwich goodies in tow, this handset is almost a definite must have. Users can enjoy true multitasking, enhanced web browsing, face unlock, and my personal favorite, data monitoring. With more and more carriers adopting tiered data packages, and subscribers consuming more and more data, it feels nice knowing that you have a bit of a security blanket within your device. Right from within your settings app, you can set a predetermined “soft cap” or red zone, for data usage which when approached, triggers a warning right in the notification bar that is irremovable.

Beats Audio has never really resonated deeply with me, as I use my phone more for social networking, and web browsing. It was more of a novelty thing for me, but it was still nice to “feel” like my music was being enhanced. In all actuality it felt more like an artificial bass boost than music enhancement. Either way it’s a nice addition but I did notice a pretty big battery pull when listening to audio with the Beats Audio enabled.

Overall performance of the phone was rock solid. Calls were nice and clear, and although I don’t live in an AT&T LTE enabled area, thanks to the 1.5 GHz dual core Snapdragon processor Qualccomm popped in this bad devil, the One X ran snappy through all obstacles tossed its way. Browsing the web was a relatively exciting affair as the phone chewed through tasks like none other. There were no hiccups or slow downs, and although there is no LTE in my area, everything data related still performed above and beyond my expectations. GPS, Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue, just to name a few all ran with finesse. The One X is a powerful device, and for those of you who are power users will not be disappointed with this device.

Although the device is still about 2 weeks from actually being launched, you can still swing into your local AT&T store to get in on some pre-order goodness. With a price point of $199.99 with a new 2 year agreement and data plan subscription, the One X launches with not only an attractive design but an attractive price point as well. Available in store on May 6th, The HTC One X ranks as one the years must have handsets.

EDIT: There is no SD slot on the HTC One X, in all there is no SD slot on any of the phones in the HTC One series. This was included in our review in error and has been removed.