For the last three weeks or so I have tried my very best to rough up the the white polycarbonate body of HTC One X. While I am not courageous, or brave enough to cover the back in permanent marker and attempt to rub it out like this guy I have still yet to cause any marks that can’t be removed in seconds.

When I have started to notice some black marks starting to appear on the where the battery cover perhaps should have been they have all disappeared without any of my own doing.



The other few times some marks did stick around some saliva always did the trick in seconds. My One X hasn’t been sitting around in a case sitting on a desk all day either. It has been in shorts, unwashed jeans and even a bit of rain, and all it has to show for it is a bit of grime in the power button and the usual fingerprints.



If have perhaps been holding back on a One X purchase due to thinking that the white polycarbonate body will be easily marked, think again. The shell that encases the the Tegra 3 processor and other chips should cause no problems, and so far, at least in my case is still as good as new.

About the author

I’ll be honest: there was once a day when I got bored and sick of seeing all the smartphone related news in my RSS feeds. This day was literally no more than nine months ago. Well here I stand today; known as Blair the college student in the real world, ArchSerpo in this one. Whilst not even considered an adult by the Government I have established myself as a Android and mobile technology news reporter and in depth reviewer for KitGuru, Android Mobile New Zealand, and now (hopefully) the TelecomTech blog. While bias towards the green team may appear given, I have had experience with all the major mobile operating systems except BlackBerry and MeeGo in the last six months and always keep an open mind.

Heading into my third week with the HTC One X, and a few of my iPhone owning colleagues wanted to know what it’s like to carry this handset around.

In my opinion, it feels better in the pocket than the iPhone 4.  It feels similar in shape/slimness to the Samsung Galaxy SII.  The polycarbonate backing also gives you a sense of security, allowing you to throw keys in with it - something I never did with the iPhone 4.
 
It’s slim enough to go into the same pocket as a wallet, while still allowing easy access. This means I’ve been able to walk round with both my work and personal phone in the same pocket.

After showing my iPhone colleagues how well it stacked up, I decided to meet up with some old colleagues who were provided with HTC phones: the Wildfire S, and the Sensation S.  Both are under a year old, but compared to the One-X, the screens look decidedly different.
 

From left to right: HTC Wildfire S, HTC One X, HTC Sensation

The Sensation, although sporting a Super-LCD display, tends to go grey on side viewing angles.  The Wildfire S, sporting a standard LCD, looks even worse.  The Super-LCD2 on the HTC-One X provides remarkable viewing angles.  Very close to the iPhone 4S, and Galaxy S2.

The difference in Sense UI was noticeable also.  The Wildfire had Gingerbread, with Sense 3.0. It was extremely bloated, and overtook most of the UI.  The Sensation was closer to the HTC One X, with ICS 4.0, and a Sense 3.5 interface.  However, it is still quite clunky compared to Sense 4.0.

All three of the HTC phones had mate plastic/polycarbonate backs, which made them less likely to slip while in the hand.


From left to right: HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy SII, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Apple iPhone 4S

Heading back to the office, I decided to get a few of the most popular phones together for a photo shoot.  The HTC One X, the Galaxy SII, the Galaxy Nexus, and the iPhone 4S.  My overall rating was:

• Best fit in the pocket – Winner HTC One-X, runner up the Galaxy S2
• Widest number of viewing angles – Winner Galaxy SII, runner up the One-X/iPhone 4S
• Best colour reproduction – Tie Galaxy SII for its vibrant blacks, HTC One-X for its real colours
• Slimmest  – Tie between the Galaxy SII and HTC One X, both were about the same thickness
• Best operability in direct sunlight – tie between the iPhone 4S, and the HTC One-X, followed closely by the Galaxy SII.
• Least slippery – Winner HTC One X, runner up Galaxy Nexus.  Both the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy SII are quite slippery in the hand and I have in fact dropped both over the last year!

Front top to bottom: Apple iPhone 4S, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy SII, HTC One X

Overall, the screen clarity, design, and thinness all help the HTC One X  to be one of the easiest to pocket.  Just beware of the camera lens if you do put keys in your pocket.  It is the one part that seems to attract scratches, as mentioned in my first review.

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

This week I decided to stop being anti-social with my phone and started communicating with my friends and family again. Text messaging sufficed for most. However, I also wanted to contact a few family members and friends overseas in more depth than texting allows, but I was too cheap to call.



Fortunately for me, the HTC One X integrates nicely with e-mail and social networking applications. I used my Gmail first.  The large display and newer Gmail app work well together.  I can now view 5-8 emails with short summaries (depending on screen orientation), versus the 3-5 emails a time on the Galaxy S II.  While it may not sound like many more, it makes wading through emails a lot faster.

Facebook integration is getting very close to the desktop site now.  Most Facebook features are available in the HTC OneX’s Facebook app, including: messaging, photo uploads, and wall updates.  I now hardly ever need to use my PC to check Facebook, as it’s all in the palm of my hand.  By using the HTC integrated contact list, you can easily send a Facebook message to anyone on your list.



There are a number of built-in HTC apps to help socialise also.  The eBuddy app is a hybrid of various messengers.  You can add in Yahoo, Google, MSN, and Facebook, if you want.  I didn’t use it myself, as I don’t have a Yahoo or MSN account.

As I entered the second week of owning the HTC One X, I felt it was time to explore the communication side.  After all, what good is a phone if it’s difficult to work out how to make a call?Dialling a number is as simple as hitting the phone icon, which brings up a nice large dial-pad and recent calls list.  The call quality on the Telecom XT network is very clear and very rarely suffers from drop-outs or fading.  

If you begin to input a number that you’ve saved in your contacts list, the phone directory will recognise it and automatically start populating the rest of the number.  This is extremely helpful and a great ICS feature.   If you want to search contacts manually, you can select “People” from the phone dialling app or use the contacts app on the home screen. 

 

The contacts list will bring up a list of all phone, email, Facebook, Linked-In, Exchange, Gmail, and Google Plus contacts.   However, you can customise the way contact information is displayed so only those with phone numbers, or only selected accounts display.  It also gives you an option to link contacts with matching details. If a contact has a Google account as well as a Facebook account, it will pick up the details and ask you if you want to link them together.  This creates a single contact for 2+ accounts, which is another great automated feature.

Texting on the HTC One X is a breeze.  Even those with large fingers - like me - will have no issues hitting the right keys.  In “Landscape” mode the keys are even larger still.  The HTC sense keyboard is great, plus you have the option to install any keyboard from the Play Market.  I ended up using SlideIT, which compliments the screen perfectly.



After testing texting and calling, I decided to tinker round inside the call settings.  After changing a few settings, I came across “SIP” and decided to explore further (SIP is a voice over IP protocol).



Having used VoIP for several years at home, I decided to put my settings in and see how it went;  bearing in mind that I tried it a few years ago when XT first came out and the quality was quite terrible.  I found that the quality has now improved dramatically.  No longer does it echo, or experience cuts. This feature means I can now answer my home phone while on the move;  or dial out from my home phone number  and the billing will get charged to my home account. 



You will need a Telecom data-pack to use VoIP, and it will drain the battery faster, as it is constantly listening for calls.  However, it is entirely worth it, and a lot easier than setting up call forwarding on a home phone.  Please note, however, that while the VOIP quality was good while I was testing it, Telecom doesn’t guarantee it always will be.  This means that VOIP won’t be suitable for everyone.

From the Telecom XT Terms and Conditions:

“Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is not supported, and we cannot guarantee that access or performance levels will be maintained.”

There is similar wording in the Vodafone Terms and Conditions.  2Degrees’ Terms and Conditions state that it can restrict or prevent VoIP use as it sees fit.

To summarise, calling on both the XT Network, and HTC One X, are exceptionally good.  Even over unsupported VoIP, it never skipped a beat.

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

I communicate with my family a lot via SMS, so having an easy way to send TXT messages is key for me when choosing a phone. I’ve really come to love the conversation view that iOS uses to present TXT messages, as it makes it so much easier to retain context. So it was a relief to see that this same UI paradigm is retained on the HTC One X.

Couple that with a few different ways to enter my messages, and we have a device that meets my primary mobile communication needs very well.



There are a few ways to initiate a TXT message. Firstly you can select the Compose option from the Messages app. You then have the option to enter in a number or name in the To field, which will present a drop down of all people matching the text as you enter it.



Or you can tap on the ‘People’ icon to present a list of all your contacts in a scrollable list. This list will allow you to select multiple recipients, making it easy to send group messages.

Alternatively you could initiate a new message directly from one of your contacts in the People app, or any of the other places that you can interact with your contacts throughout the OS and via the HTC Sense UI overlay. If you have an existing conversation with this contact, you will be taken to the end of that, rather than to an empty conversation window.

As an example of this, there are a few Message and contact widgets which you can take advantage of, and one of these is installed by default. This particular widget presents all your message conversations as a stack, allowing you to easily rotate between each conversation with a flick up or down. Selecting one of these will take you directly to the conversation, allowing you to continue where you left off.



In addition to the various ways there are to initiate SMS conversations, there are also different ways in which to enter the content of these messages. Of course there is the traditional touch keyboard, but one of the first tweaks I made was to enable the Trace keyboard feature. This allows you to spell out words by tracing your way across the keyboard. It does a pretty good job of deciphering what can often appear to be unintelligible or ambiguous scribbles.



Once you’ve got used to this method of input, it really is quite a bit quicker than typing out the words in the more traditional manner.

Another option, although probably more novelty than actually useful, is voice dictation. While this can work reasonably well for short messages, if you’re trying to communicate anything more complex than “See you soon”, you’ll find yourself constantly correcting misinterpreted words. Thats the price we pay for having an accent too awesome for developers to parse accurately, I guess.

The one feature I do miss from my iPhone is the ability to assign a custom tone to received TXT messages. You can chose from a list of canned ones, but I like to assign my favourite riffs to such events. I’m also struggling a little with selecting single words in messages, as the implementation seems to be quite fussy about the double-tap required to do so. But with practice I’m sure I’ll prevail over this.

In summary, the HTC One X works well at serving my primary mobile communication needs. The Trace keyboard feature is an excellent addition to my TXTing arsenal, and for this reason alone I’d probably rate this over my iPhone as my SMS weapon of choice.

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.