Media Playback with the HTC One X
HTC One X, posted: 18-Jun-2012 13:45
If I find myself waiting in a line or flying on a plane, I usually like to pull out my laptop or cell, and watch a video or two. I have found myself in that situation many times with the HTC One X on hand. Luckily it’s very easy on the eyes, due to its large screen and vibrant colours.
The first thing I wanted to do was test music playback, to compare it to other devices I’d used in the past. Playback overall was very pleasing, comparable to the Galaxy S2, although not quite as good as the original Galaxy S. One minor disappointment in the stock player is lack of album art, which makes it a bit harder to scroll through albums, as you have to focus on the name, not the picture.
Overall, scrolling through music to find something to play was nice and quick. The included headphones were fine, nothing special, although a bit weird that HTC has discontinued its Beats headphones on beats-enabled phones! Another highly touted feature is its Beats software, which seemed to be an equaliser with enhanced bass/treble. Not really amazing, more of a gimmick, which reminded me of the old radios with “Enhanced bass boost” buttons written on them!
The FM tuner was a surprising feature, and one I put to good use. The headphones act as an aerial, picking up most stations in a fast and effective manner. It was good listening to the latest news reports on the hour or even testing it out with a little music.
TuneIn was another feature I used a bit. It’s basically internet radio and it searches for your location based on your GPS coordinates. It’s extremely handy when you are out of coverage, or have forgotten your headphones and want to use the speaker to play radio. I tried several NZ radio stations, as well as a few overseas channels, and the quality was very good.
However, video playback was what I wanted most! Loading up a few videos from my computer, it played them effortlessly. I was surprised to see MKV, MP4 and DivX Avis files play effortlessly, although I couldn’t find the Video playback folder at first. It turns out the videos are automatically added under the Gallery section of the phone.
HTC Watch was a built-in app that I also had a play with. It has a selection of recent and decent movies from the last few years. They are available to rent or download, with some as little as 5c each. The encoding was good and they streamed fast. However, HTC might want to rethink the Watch application and maybe include other downloaded videos into the application because having two video applications is a bit of a pain.
After giving the video, audio, and radio a good run in, I decided to throw it up on the big screen. Getting the One-X onto a TV is a breeze thanks to its MHL compatibility. You can buy an MHL adapter from eBay for about $6, and it connects your phone through HDMI to your TV. This means you can Game, browse the internet, or watch videos on the large screen. I only had two issues with it. The first being that it was never at 1080i/p, it was always at 720P, which occasionally dropped even lower when displaying games.
The second issue was that it’s always stuck in Landscape mode, meaning you can’t play portrait games on the TV. This should be able to be rectified by a simple software upgrade that HTC will hopefully provide, as it’s lacking compared to the older Galaxy S2 which can do 1080P in landscape and portrait, as standard. Overall though, the MHL adapter gives you a great cheap option to get movies onto the big screen. It’s also good for showing relatives your family photos or funny youtube videos at parties!
Overall, the media playback of the HTC One X is great, let down by a few small things, which I’m sure HTC will be able to address in future with a software update!
About the author
I am Vincent Garcia: an ICT Specialist by day; technology geek and DIY handyman by night. I enjoy playing with gadgets, old and new. Taking most of them through the paces, and to within an inch of their lives! I also enjoy tinkering with things; spending most of my weekends repairing my motorcycles, or renovating my house. I live in the windy city of Wellington, with my lovely wife Nicola, and my cat Morange. When I was offered the opportunity to review the new HTC One X series, I jumped at the chance. The short aeroplane trip to Auckland was all part of the fun! If you want to ask any questions, please add a comment below, or email telecomtech@vincentgarcia.net
The first thing I wanted to do was test music playback, to compare it to other devices I’d used in the past. Playback overall was very pleasing, comparable to the Galaxy S2, although not quite as good as the original Galaxy S. One minor disappointment in the stock player is lack of album art, which makes it a bit harder to scroll through albums, as you have to focus on the name, not the picture.
Overall, scrolling through music to find something to play was nice and quick. The included headphones were fine, nothing special, although a bit weird that HTC has discontinued its Beats headphones on beats-enabled phones! Another highly touted feature is its Beats software, which seemed to be an equaliser with enhanced bass/treble. Not really amazing, more of a gimmick, which reminded me of the old radios with “Enhanced bass boost” buttons written on them!
The FM tuner was a surprising feature, and one I put to good use. The headphones act as an aerial, picking up most stations in a fast and effective manner. It was good listening to the latest news reports on the hour or even testing it out with a little music.
TuneIn was another feature I used a bit. It’s basically internet radio and it searches for your location based on your GPS coordinates. It’s extremely handy when you are out of coverage, or have forgotten your headphones and want to use the speaker to play radio. I tried several NZ radio stations, as well as a few overseas channels, and the quality was very good.
However, video playback was what I wanted most! Loading up a few videos from my computer, it played them effortlessly. I was surprised to see MKV, MP4 and DivX Avis files play effortlessly, although I couldn’t find the Video playback folder at first. It turns out the videos are automatically added under the Gallery section of the phone.
HTC Watch was a built-in app that I also had a play with. It has a selection of recent and decent movies from the last few years. They are available to rent or download, with some as little as 5c each. The encoding was good and they streamed fast. However, HTC might want to rethink the Watch application and maybe include other downloaded videos into the application because having two video applications is a bit of a pain.
After giving the video, audio, and radio a good run in, I decided to throw it up on the big screen. Getting the One-X onto a TV is a breeze thanks to its MHL compatibility. You can buy an MHL adapter from eBay for about $6, and it connects your phone through HDMI to your TV. This means you can Game, browse the internet, or watch videos on the large screen. I only had two issues with it. The first being that it was never at 1080i/p, it was always at 720P, which occasionally dropped even lower when displaying games.
The second issue was that it’s always stuck in Landscape mode, meaning you can’t play portrait games on the TV. This should be able to be rectified by a simple software upgrade that HTC will hopefully provide, as it’s lacking compared to the older Galaxy S2 which can do 1080P in landscape and portrait, as standard. Overall though, the MHL adapter gives you a great cheap option to get movies onto the big screen. It’s also good for showing relatives your family photos or funny youtube videos at parties!
Overall, the media playback of the HTC One X is great, let down by a few small things, which I’m sure HTC will be able to address in future with a software update!
About the author
I am Vincent Garcia: an ICT Specialist by day; technology geek and DIY handyman by night. I enjoy playing with gadgets, old and new. Taking most of them through the paces, and to within an inch of their lives! I also enjoy tinkering with things; spending most of my weekends repairing my motorcycles, or renovating my house. I live in the windy city of Wellington, with my lovely wife Nicola, and my cat Morange. When I was offered the opportunity to review the new HTC One X series, I jumped at the chance. The short aeroplane trip to Auckland was all part of the fun! If you want to ask any questions, please add a comment below, or email telecomtech@vincentgarcia.netApples and Oranges
HTC One X, posted: 15-Jun-2012 11:29
It was with some trepidation that I brought the HTC One X home, knowing that if it was going to have a shot at being my new primary phone, it needed to integrate into an ecosystem that consists of a lot of Apple technology. Our primary home computer is an iMac, my work machine is a Macbook Pro, and prior to receiving the HTC One X I was using an iPhone 4 for my mobile communication needs. I am used to all this technology integrating seamlessly, with media, calendars, and other data all being easily shared across devices.
The most important point of interest to me was figuring out the best way to get my music collection from iTunes onto the HTC One X. While one solution is to connect the phone via USB and then manually copy the desired files, due to the sheer number of albums and songs involved, this was not really a practical approach. Instead I opted to use the free doubleTwist OSX desktop client. Because doubleTwist can be configured to automatically import iTunes playlists, I can still use the latter to manage my music collection, and yet have my chosen playlists copied to the HTC One X.
By default doubleTwist will perform the synchronization when the HTC One X is connected via USB, but it also has a feature called AirSync, which offers wireless synchronization in a similar way to the iTunes Wifi sync functionality. AirSync is available via a paid add-on to the free doubleTwist Android media player. As luck would have it, there was a 50% off sale just in time to coincide with this blog post. I purchased the doubleTwist Pro upgrade which, in addition to wireless sync and AirPlay streaming (more on that later), gave me a few extra features such as podcasts, equalizer, and finding missing album artwork. The latter two features will only really prove useful if doubleSync turns out to be a worthy primary music player, but it seemed prudent to take advantage of the reduced cost of the Pro upgrade.
I am used to being able to synchronize my work calendar between my iPhone and the iCal application running on my Macbook. Initially I had this set up to create new entries using my iCloud (Apples cloud storage platform) enabled calendar, which the HTC One X doesn’t support out of the box. But as I also lean heavily on Google for mail already, it seemed logical to switch to using Google Calendar instead. This was a breeze to configure, and gives me exactly the same sync functionality that I’m used to, with new calendar events set up on either my laptop or phone being automatically synchronized to the other.
As mentioned earlier, doubleTwist supports streaming via AirPlay to an Apple TV (v2 or greater). This is a feature I use all the time with my iPhone in order to display photos or videos on our TV, so I was very keen to try and get it to work with the HTC One X. Unfortunately there are still some kinks to be ironed out, and so far I’ve only been able to successfully stream audio and videos from the doubleTwist media player. It is also meant to be possible to stream photos from any photo viewer app, but I’m yet to get that working. Additionally, the streaming was not initially very reliable, and playback would cut out partway through a song. I was able to get much better performance by enabling the ‘Keep WiFi alive’ option in the ‘AirTwist & AirPlay’ settings.
The AirPlay support that does work is pretty easy to use. Once the feature has been enabled in the doubleTwist media player, there will be a wifi icon shown next to the playback controls for both video and audio. Selecting that will show a prompt asking you to select the playback device, and choosing ‘Apple TV’ from the presented options will initiate playback on your TV via the Apple TV.
As well as the Apple tech I’ve already mentioned, our router is an Apple Airport Extreme. This is a relatively recent newcomer to our home network, and was purchased to fix an ongoing stability problem with wifi connectivity affecting our many Apple devices (iPhones, iPods, iPad & Apple TV). While this has addressed our stability problem, I was a little apprehensive as to whether the HTC One X would have any issues connecting to the wireless network. Thankfully there don’t appear to be any significant issues there, and the phone has no problems accessing our wifi network. I have seen the occasional instance where the HTC One X won’t always automatically reconnect to wifi after waking up from its slumber, but it will always comply when manually asked to do so in this situation.
Despite initial concerns, the HTC One X has made itself at home in our Apple-centric network. It has even surprised me in some instances as to how it can integrate with our existing tech, especially the ability to be able to stream music and video from the phone to our television via the Apple TV AirSync feature. Granted, some of this functionality took third party software to achieve, but I’m hardly going to count that as a major negative, as I was able to achieve a level of integration that exceeded my expectations. The only feature I’m currently missing is the ability to display photos from the phone on my TV via AirSync, but I’ll continue to work on that in the hopes that I’ll be able to get a workable solution.
About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.
The most important point of interest to me was figuring out the best way to get my music collection from iTunes onto the HTC One X. While one solution is to connect the phone via USB and then manually copy the desired files, due to the sheer number of albums and songs involved, this was not really a practical approach. Instead I opted to use the free doubleTwist OSX desktop client. Because doubleTwist can be configured to automatically import iTunes playlists, I can still use the latter to manage my music collection, and yet have my chosen playlists copied to the HTC One X.
By default doubleTwist will perform the synchronization when the HTC One X is connected via USB, but it also has a feature called AirSync, which offers wireless synchronization in a similar way to the iTunes Wifi sync functionality. AirSync is available via a paid add-on to the free doubleTwist Android media player. As luck would have it, there was a 50% off sale just in time to coincide with this blog post. I purchased the doubleTwist Pro upgrade which, in addition to wireless sync and AirPlay streaming (more on that later), gave me a few extra features such as podcasts, equalizer, and finding missing album artwork. The latter two features will only really prove useful if doubleSync turns out to be a worthy primary music player, but it seemed prudent to take advantage of the reduced cost of the Pro upgrade.
I am used to being able to synchronize my work calendar between my iPhone and the iCal application running on my Macbook. Initially I had this set up to create new entries using my iCloud (Apples cloud storage platform) enabled calendar, which the HTC One X doesn’t support out of the box. But as I also lean heavily on Google for mail already, it seemed logical to switch to using Google Calendar instead. This was a breeze to configure, and gives me exactly the same sync functionality that I’m used to, with new calendar events set up on either my laptop or phone being automatically synchronized to the other.
As mentioned earlier, doubleTwist supports streaming via AirPlay to an Apple TV (v2 or greater). This is a feature I use all the time with my iPhone in order to display photos or videos on our TV, so I was very keen to try and get it to work with the HTC One X. Unfortunately there are still some kinks to be ironed out, and so far I’ve only been able to successfully stream audio and videos from the doubleTwist media player. It is also meant to be possible to stream photos from any photo viewer app, but I’m yet to get that working. Additionally, the streaming was not initially very reliable, and playback would cut out partway through a song. I was able to get much better performance by enabling the ‘Keep WiFi alive’ option in the ‘AirTwist & AirPlay’ settings.
The AirPlay support that does work is pretty easy to use. Once the feature has been enabled in the doubleTwist media player, there will be a wifi icon shown next to the playback controls for both video and audio. Selecting that will show a prompt asking you to select the playback device, and choosing ‘Apple TV’ from the presented options will initiate playback on your TV via the Apple TV.
As well as the Apple tech I’ve already mentioned, our router is an Apple Airport Extreme. This is a relatively recent newcomer to our home network, and was purchased to fix an ongoing stability problem with wifi connectivity affecting our many Apple devices (iPhones, iPods, iPad & Apple TV). While this has addressed our stability problem, I was a little apprehensive as to whether the HTC One X would have any issues connecting to the wireless network. Thankfully there don’t appear to be any significant issues there, and the phone has no problems accessing our wifi network. I have seen the occasional instance where the HTC One X won’t always automatically reconnect to wifi after waking up from its slumber, but it will always comply when manually asked to do so in this situation.
Despite initial concerns, the HTC One X has made itself at home in our Apple-centric network. It has even surprised me in some instances as to how it can integrate with our existing tech, especially the ability to be able to stream music and video from the phone to our television via the Apple TV AirSync feature. Granted, some of this functionality took third party software to achieve, but I’m hardly going to count that as a major negative, as I was able to achieve a level of integration that exceeded my expectations. The only feature I’m currently missing is the ability to display photos from the phone on my TV via AirSync, but I’ll continue to work on that in the hopes that I’ll be able to get a workable solution.
About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.
Socializing with the HTC One X
HTC One X, posted: 13-Jun-2012 11:36
I’m a voracious consumer of social networks, and in particular am a heavy Twitter user. Therefore any potential iPhone replacement must have excellent social networking support.
During the setup of the HTC One X, I was offered the opportunity to supply credentials for my Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts, which I took to be a positive sign that I will be well served by this phone. And indeed the HTC One X comes bundled with Android clients for these social networks already installed.
But the integration throughout the HTC One X runs deeper than that. In many places, such as the Media Gallery and Music app, content can be shared to all the various social networking platforms and online services that you have configured. This is a welcome change from the iPhone, which at this stage only has native support for Twitter.
One improvement I’d love to see is the ability to share to multiple sources at once. Sharing content in this manner currently involves repeating the process fore each platform you wish to post to.
HTC Sense also includes FriendStream, which allows you to consolidate multiple Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr accounts into a single location. There is also a FriendStream widget which can be used to post to all accounts at once. As a result, this is my preferred method of posting to my social networks, especially when I want to cover both Twitter and Facebook. And if I don’t, I can still use FriendStream, and select the accounts I want to post my musings to. As with the other dedicated social networking clients, you can easily attach content from your media library when using the FriendStream interface.
Contacts you have added to the HTC One X can be associated with various social networks and online services. Once this has been done, you can see their activities in these networks by selecting the Updates option when viewing their contact details. You can also use the People widget to see their latest activity. Adding a contact to the widget will prompt you to select a default action to take when selecting them, so you can also use it as a launchpad for calling or TXTing people you frequently communicate with.
In summary, the HTC One X has excellent support for the most popular social networks integrated through Sense UI, and by bundling clients for the major services, HTC have ensured that this phone is a great fit for users who like to keep their friends in their pocket..
About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.
During the setup of the HTC One X, I was offered the opportunity to supply credentials for my Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts, which I took to be a positive sign that I will be well served by this phone. And indeed the HTC One X comes bundled with Android clients for these social networks already installed.
But the integration throughout the HTC One X runs deeper than that. In many places, such as the Media Gallery and Music app, content can be shared to all the various social networking platforms and online services that you have configured. This is a welcome change from the iPhone, which at this stage only has native support for Twitter.
One improvement I’d love to see is the ability to share to multiple sources at once. Sharing content in this manner currently involves repeating the process fore each platform you wish to post to.
HTC Sense also includes FriendStream, which allows you to consolidate multiple Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr accounts into a single location. There is also a FriendStream widget which can be used to post to all accounts at once. As a result, this is my preferred method of posting to my social networks, especially when I want to cover both Twitter and Facebook. And if I don’t, I can still use FriendStream, and select the accounts I want to post my musings to. As with the other dedicated social networking clients, you can easily attach content from your media library when using the FriendStream interface.
Contacts you have added to the HTC One X can be associated with various social networks and online services. Once this has been done, you can see their activities in these networks by selecting the Updates option when viewing their contact details. You can also use the People widget to see their latest activity. Adding a contact to the widget will prompt you to select a default action to take when selecting them, so you can also use it as a launchpad for calling or TXTing people you frequently communicate with.
In summary, the HTC One X has excellent support for the most popular social networks integrated through Sense UI, and by bundling clients for the major services, HTC have ensured that this phone is a great fit for users who like to keep their friends in their pocket..
About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.
Driving with the HTC One X
HTC One X, posted: 12-Jun-2012 12:53
Things have come a long way from just a few years ago, when stand-alone GPS systems were the norm. Now it seems that phones and Google maps are taking over. I managed to get the HTC One X into my car with a universal car holder for $10 from Trademe, as the cheapest official one I could find was roughly $80.
You put the HTC One X into Car mode by selecting the aptly chosen “Car” icon. This brings up several larger buttons, making it look similar to a standard car navigation unit. It uses Google Navigator by default and it works very well, if you input the address via keyboard. The voice - on the other hand - doesn’t work quite so well, especially with Maori street names, meaning almost every time you’ll be forced to type it in by hand.
In testing, it managed to achieve 1.8m of accuracy, compared to over 6m for the Galaxy S2. This meant that while driving, I was actually driving on the road almost all the time, compared to the Galaxy S2, according to which I would randomly appear to be driving on roads a block over from where I actually was. The HTC One X has one of the most accurate tracking systems I’ve used on any phone.
Using the phone to call someone while I was driving was very simple, with a list of recent callers, followed by the contact list. It also managed to connect, and be controlled by both my Parrot, and Aircast Bluetooth speakers.
Music was a breeze to play through the stereo, by using the Music button. However, none of my playlists had their album art. Tune-In is another great feature of the Car menu. It means if your car radio runs out of reception, you can use internet radio to play your favourite station. However, if you lose 3G also, then you are out of luck.
I’d definitely consider the HTC One X a replacement for an in-car GPS system. As it’s faster to obtain a lock compared to conventional GPS, it’s updated faster than most other navigation systems, and it has more features than a conventional GPS.
Very impressive.
About the author
I am Vincent Garcia: an ICT Specialist by day; technology geek and DIY handyman by night. I enjoy playing with gadgets, old and new. Taking most of them through the paces, and to within an inch of their lives! I also enjoy tinkering with things; spending most of my weekends repairing my motorcycles, or renovating my house. I live in the windy city of Wellington, with my lovely wife Nicola, and my cat Morange. When I was offered the opportunity to review the new HTC One X series, I jumped at the chance. The short aeroplane trip to Auckland was all part of the fun! If you want to ask any questions, please add a comment below, or email telecomtech@vincentgarcia.net
You put the HTC One X into Car mode by selecting the aptly chosen “Car” icon. This brings up several larger buttons, making it look similar to a standard car navigation unit. It uses Google Navigator by default and it works very well, if you input the address via keyboard. The voice - on the other hand - doesn’t work quite so well, especially with Maori street names, meaning almost every time you’ll be forced to type it in by hand.
In testing, it managed to achieve 1.8m of accuracy, compared to over 6m for the Galaxy S2. This meant that while driving, I was actually driving on the road almost all the time, compared to the Galaxy S2, according to which I would randomly appear to be driving on roads a block over from where I actually was. The HTC One X has one of the most accurate tracking systems I’ve used on any phone.
Using the phone to call someone while I was driving was very simple, with a list of recent callers, followed by the contact list. It also managed to connect, and be controlled by both my Parrot, and Aircast Bluetooth speakers.
Music was a breeze to play through the stereo, by using the Music button. However, none of my playlists had their album art. Tune-In is another great feature of the Car menu. It means if your car radio runs out of reception, you can use internet radio to play your favourite station. However, if you lose 3G also, then you are out of luck.
I’d definitely consider the HTC One X a replacement for an in-car GPS system. As it’s faster to obtain a lock compared to conventional GPS, it’s updated faster than most other navigation systems, and it has more features than a conventional GPS.
Very impressive.
About the author
I am Vincent Garcia: an ICT Specialist by day; technology geek and DIY handyman by night. I enjoy playing with gadgets, old and new. Taking most of them through the paces, and to within an inch of their lives! I also enjoy tinkering with things; spending most of my weekends repairing my motorcycles, or renovating my house. I live in the windy city of Wellington, with my lovely wife Nicola, and my cat Morange. When I was offered the opportunity to review the new HTC One X series, I jumped at the chance. The short aeroplane trip to Auckland was all part of the fun! If you want to ask any questions, please add a comment below, or email telecomtech@vincentgarcia.netDrive time with the HTC One X
HTC One X, posted: 8-Jun-2012 08:48
One of the more interesting applications bundled with the HTC One X is the HTC Car app. This essentially provides an alternative way to access some of the more common features you may need when in your car. It is designed to be operated with the HTC One X in landscape orientation, and offers larger user interface elements, making the phone easier to use when in a dash mount.
The Home screen for HTC Car has buttons for Phone, Google Maps Navigation, Music, and tunein Internet Radio features. These all surround a clock, with the current weather overview directly underneath. When running the Car app, pressing the Home button will take you back to this, rather than to the standard HTC One X Home screen, and the Task Switcher button is disabled completely. If you press the Back button from the HTC Car Home screen, you are asked whether you want to close the app, and selecting OK will take you back to the standard Home screen.
The HTC Car Home screen
In addition to pressing the four buttons, you can swipe left and right to switch between the core areas of functionality offered by HTC Car. You are given a different user interface view when either of these techniques, with the buttons appearing to be designed to start up the intended function at the same state it was the last time you used it. For example, pressing the Music button will resume playback of the last track you were listening to, whereas swiping to get to the Music screen will show a list of the last albums you were listening to, with playback not automatically resuming.
On the left are the screens shown when functions are accessed from the buttons on the Home screen, contrasted with screens shown when using swipe gestures
Not only is the HTC Car Home screen optimized for use in the car, but the same philosophy has extended to the functionality HTC Car offers. User interface elements are upsized to cater for the larger viewing distance, and screens have had their functionality trimmed to focus on core features with a less cluttered UI.
The phone user interface optimized by HTC Car for in-car use
There are also a range of accessories designed to take the in-car integration even further. This includes a cradle that will automatically start up HTC Car when the HTC One X is placed in it, and will close it once the phone is removed again. There is a bluetooth microphone and speaker which will give you hands free functionality, and an adapter that you can plug into a 3.5mm auxiliary port which will allow you to stream audio wirelessly through your car stereo.
With user interface optimizations designed to make some of the more common phone features easier to use at a distance, and with the specially designed accessories, the HTC One X looks like it will be a pretty good driving companion.
About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.
The Home screen for HTC Car has buttons for Phone, Google Maps Navigation, Music, and tunein Internet Radio features. These all surround a clock, with the current weather overview directly underneath. When running the Car app, pressing the Home button will take you back to this, rather than to the standard HTC One X Home screen, and the Task Switcher button is disabled completely. If you press the Back button from the HTC Car Home screen, you are asked whether you want to close the app, and selecting OK will take you back to the standard Home screen.
The HTC Car Home screen
In addition to pressing the four buttons, you can swipe left and right to switch between the core areas of functionality offered by HTC Car. You are given a different user interface view when either of these techniques, with the buttons appearing to be designed to start up the intended function at the same state it was the last time you used it. For example, pressing the Music button will resume playback of the last track you were listening to, whereas swiping to get to the Music screen will show a list of the last albums you were listening to, with playback not automatically resuming.
On the left are the screens shown when functions are accessed from the buttons on the Home screen, contrasted with screens shown when using swipe gestures
Not only is the HTC Car Home screen optimized for use in the car, but the same philosophy has extended to the functionality HTC Car offers. User interface elements are upsized to cater for the larger viewing distance, and screens have had their functionality trimmed to focus on core features with a less cluttered UI.
The phone user interface optimized by HTC Car for in-car use
There are also a range of accessories designed to take the in-car integration even further. This includes a cradle that will automatically start up HTC Car when the HTC One X is placed in it, and will close it once the phone is removed again. There is a bluetooth microphone and speaker which will give you hands free functionality, and an adapter that you can plug into a 3.5mm auxiliary port which will allow you to stream audio wirelessly through your car stereo.
With user interface optimizations designed to make some of the more common phone features easier to use at a distance, and with the specially designed accessories, the HTC One X looks like it will be a pretty good driving companion.
About the author
Hi I'm David, a self employed software developer on the wrong side of 40, residing in Auckland with my wife and two children. I am a passionate All Blacks and Blues fan, gadget junkie, mature aged gamer, and connoisseur of fine heavy metal (and music in general). I currently own an iPhone 4, but am very open to trying new technologies, and can't wait to see what the best of Android can bring to the smartphone table. I enjoy keeping up to date with the latest technological advances in general, and am encouraged to see that the smartphone market is no longer an iOneHorseRace. I’m very interested to see how the HTC One and Ice Cream Sandwich fares in this regard.
