HTC One X - Initial impressions

Sliced Bread

Well-known member
Jul 28, 2010
510
94
18,970
I’ve had the HTC One X for a few days now, so I thought I would share my findings. In short though it is excellent phone, but not flawless.

In use the phone is fast and slick. I have not seen even a hint of jerkiness yet, even when running games. The interface is lovely.

The screen is superb! Colours really pop, the screen is sharp and pixels unidentifiable. The standard rolling hills back wallpaper shows this off, as the hills look almost 3D. If it has a weakness in this area; it is dark scenes where OLED phones seem to do better, but on balance it’s a great screen and good for films.

The sound is good but not great. I blame Dr Dre’s Beats Audio for this. Beats Audio is just a loudness switch which produces overblown bass. It sounds much better with it off, although my IPod still beats it in this regard. I can’t help thinking that if Dr Dre thinks that his music needs to be equalized to this extent, then it’s not very well mixed to begin with.

Camera is great quality for a phone and fun to use.

For me the battery is lasting 1 and a half days before requiring charge. Usage is:
• Brightness setting on half way (which is equivalent to the brightest setting on the desire). Full brightness is very bright.
• wifi / data off unless I’m using it. (with data on all the time, the phone lasts about a day)
• Internet used extensively for about 30 minutes in the morning and about 2 hours in the evening, plus occasional e-mails & facebook throughout the day.

Over all it’s a brilliant phone. All phones have compromises and for what I use the phone for (mostly web browsing & photos) it’s perfect, but for music you can probably do better . I have it on a 14 day money back guarantee and after checking the competition (xperis s, iphone etc) it is for me the best compromise.
 
Sliced Bread said:

A first! I've never seen that one before, cool...

Oh yeah, excellent review, I might be tempted to replace my DesireHD, if I had the faintest idea when my contract's up for renewal...
 
Nice review, am tempted also to get one of these, a £10 battery upgrade should sort it.

I have a Desire S & battery life is no issue what so ever, my brightness is set to only 1/4 & bought my self a decent 2430MAH gold battery off a famous auction site for £9.99 I dont need to charge mine for 2 days or so, even using a couple of hrs internet via wifi per day, if i dont use the internet, just use it for calls & texts, it lasts almost a week
smiley-smile.gif
 
🙂
bigboss said:
There have been reports of bugs & design flaws. Have you noticed any of them?

Check the news & user comments:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/does-the-htc-one-x-have-a-design-flaw
I've not noticed this at all. I gave mine a farily hard squeeze to test it and not seen anything of the sort.
From what I've read, it does exist but you have to almost try and break it for it to happen. :doh:
I don't think that will do any phone good and not really something most users will do.
 
Uh oh - It looks like I've had a problem. It's a shame as it is a good phone, but this may be terminal for me.

A few days ago I received the the same banding / distortion issue seen in the you tube video below and once it starts, it continues until a soft reboot is performed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tJJJzAe0QU

The phone was replaced by the carphonewarehouse and the issue occured again almost immediately. I then tried a third time and the issue is back again. I pointed out the video to HTC and they said over the phone that they do not recognize reports on the internet and only those that have been reported to them. They then added that they have never heard of the issue before. I find this hard to believe as it’s so widely reported on the internet and as I’ve had 3 in a row. I’m guessing this is pretty widespread. Maybe even in all of them.

This is frustrating as of course I have no visibility of HTC’s systems so cannot refute what they are saying, but I would be amazed if this has not already been reported. :wall:

The One X has some great features and I WANT it to work. But I don’t think I can tolerate the issue or the customer service response any longer. If HTC said, “yes we recognize it and are working on a solution” then I know something is coming and I can live with that. The response they gave tells me that they have no plans to fix it.

If you’re planning on buying this phone, wait until HTC recognize and fix the issue first. As we don’t know what this is, we do not yet know if it is software or hardware related.

On a more positive note, with this problem to one side, the phone would be awesome. As it stands, it’s a source of frustration. I will keep a close eye on it and report back if anything changes.
 
Just ordered one to replace my slightly knackered Desire HD. Was worried about the size, but it feels better than I thought.

Not too worried about "only" having 32 GB, I've currently got about 2GB left on my DHD (out of 8!), as I use Spotify for music and don't really do video (have a Samsung Galaxy tab for nighttime viewing now 🙂 )

Quite happy to use the cloud (dropbox) too. Currently on 31.2 GB (Installed a One V rom into the DHD and it increased!).

Only worry, battery life, but coming from DHD I can't say as I'll notice. The Sense overlay is the killer for me. Having played with Stock android, Touchwiz etc AND the new Sense 4.0, I can honestly say HTC win this hands down. It's better than stock by a mile, and almost smooth on my 1 Ghz DHD, so I'm looking forward to this 4(+1) core beast 🙂

By the way, the "banding" or rather graphical glitches some people seem to be getting seems to (sometimes) be cured by disabling fastboot according to some folk at XDA.

Sounds like a driver issue to me, hopefully they will get it sorted asap.
 
fr0g said:
Quite happy to use the cloud (dropbox) too.
The Cloud service is excellent. I didn't even notice I was storing photo's on drop box 🙂
fr0g said:
Only worry, battery life, but coming from DHD I can't say as I'll notice.
The battery lasts longer than my Desire, so I think you might be suprised 🙂

fr0g said:
By the way, the "banding" or rather graphical glitches some people seem to be getting seems to (sometimes) be cured by disabling fastboot according to some folk at XDA.
I'm afraid not. This is coincidental as you perform a re-boot when you do this. I have fast boot deactivated and it is still happening 🙁

fr0g said:
Sounds like a driver issue to me, hopefully they will get it sorted asap.
I hope that is all it is, but as HTC do not decognise the fault I am concerned that it will never come 🙁. If they said today that it is a driver issue and it will be fixed with a patch, then I'd be happy. But as it stands, I'm a little concerned.
 
Just to add to that...

Check out the threads on XDA http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1533

Here is a letter from HTC that someone got.

Thank you for contacting HTC regarding your HTC One X.

My name is Rob and I am a Technical Support Agent for the HTC Written Team.

I’m sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with the screen when entering full screen on landscape mode.

The reason for this is what seems to be a faulty screen, without reviewing the phone myself i can't give any detailed explanation on what hardware part is causing the fault.

You have been through all the steps, so will not waste your time with asking you to do them again. What i would recommend is returning the phone to the store in which you purchased it as it is within 28 days so should be able to be swapped. HTC do not deal with the swaps, this is between yourself and the retailer.

If you did want to send it to HTC however we can book it into repair, however being such a new phone i would just recommend returning it to the store.

Should you require additional support please reply using the link below and confirm the following details.

Full Name: Address: Contact Numbers: IMEI (Found by dialling *#06# from your keypad or in the back of your phone):

To let me know I have successfully answered your query, please follow the link below to close your enquiry, you will have the opportunity to leave feedback about your experience contacting me today.

Let me know if I have successfully answered your question, please click here to complete this.

To send a reply to this message, please click here.

Sincerely,

Robert

HTC
 
Thanks Fr0g.

Unfortunately this doesn't really make me feel any better as I've already had 3 🙁

Thing is, I can keep returning it for 28 days, but then after that have to then send it to HTC for repair. It just doesn't fill me with confidence, as I get the impression they are pretty stumped.
 
Oh well...it's a shame as it's a really really nice device, but due to the amount of problems I've had the carphonewarehouse have agreed to return the phone for a refund and have me reverted back to my old contract.

If I hear they've fixed the problem, I would buy another one.
 
Doesn't look like HTC have improved this year as well. I'm having a lot of grief with my HTC Sensation (the Desire didn't have any problem). These issues only strengthens my decision not to buy an HTC phone again. It's a shame really, as HTC sense is the best in the industry.
 
bigboss said:
Doesn't look like HTC have improved this year as well. I'm having a lot of grief with my HTC Sensation (the Desire didn't have any problem). These issues only strengthens my decision not to buy an HTC phone again. It's a shame really, as HTC sense is the best in the industry.
Yes, tell me about it. I'm pretty gutted as the phone is lovley in use. Apart from this problem the phone was flawless and Sense 4.0 is fantastic!

If the issue is resolved I will buy another one, that is unless the S3 is out first and of equal / greater quality.
 
fr0g said:
well i will cross my fingers and hope it was a bad batch 🙂

Lets hope so.

The problem can initially take a few days to show itself. Please let us know how you get on. If it looks like the next batch is ok, then I might try again. I normally wouldn't bother, but it's an awesome phone.
 
Mine doesnt have that problem so I guess you're just unlucky.

I've installed a mod that removes that '3dots for the menu' he mentions - cos it just takes up a line of display space. It also re-assigns the taskswitcher button to act like the old menu button, while the taskswitcher function is accessed via a long press of the home button.

I've unlocked the bootloader, rooted it, and am running a custom rom (LeeDroid 3.0) that tweaks the standard rom and adds the sony bravia video stuff from the Sony Xperia S.

All these tweaks and more can be found on the XDA site.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1536
 
Hi Joe,

How long have you had yours for?

The reason being is I don't want to return it unless I really have to (though my deadline it today).

I just prefer the Sense layout to standard ICS, so would rather this than the S3. If there is hope, I wil keep exchanging it.

Thanks
 
I've had mine for a week.

I've seen 2 suggested fixes for those that have the problem...

1) Settings -> Power -> Turn off fast boot

2) Use a different launcher like GoLauncher. (You can revert back to Sense by selecting goLauncher in Apps and clearing defaults)
 

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts