I made the decision to upgrade my contract to a HTC One S over the quad core One X purely based on size and availability at the time.
I knew I wanted an HTC phone as having had various flavours of Android, HTC always seems to provide a more seamless interface with a lot of neat social features.
Physical and Hardware
The phone immediately reminded me of the original HTC Desire in terms of size and layout. The screen is bright and vivid although purists will argue about colour accuracy.
The micro USB charger is sensibly placed on the left side rather than on the base, so it should attract less dirt. A little cover for it would've been welcome though!
The same can't be said for the front facing camera, which sits inside an awkward little dip and, in the two weeks that I've had the phone has accumulated quite a bit of pocket grime.
Size-wize, its a little large to comfortably use in one hand for texting or browsing compared with previous HTCs I've owned, but others will likely find this is a non-issue.
HTC has made much of the military grade coating applied to the phone shell and whilst I doubt it adds anything to the lifetime of the phone, it does look very nice and polished.
The phone boasts a dual core processor from qualcom with a healthy dose of RAM. It runs the OS without any lag or issue that I've come across.
The battery life is on the high end for a HTC, lasting for a full day of normal use. Unfortunately, the battery is not removable so I hope it lasts!
Operating System and Software
The phone runs the latest version of Android 4.x, known to most as Ice Cream Sandwich. It also features a new version of HTC sense, which is simply a skin and some extra widgets and social features.
As ever, HTC maxes-out the Android experience like nobody else can, with fantastic features like the keyboard which knows what I'm trying to say even when typing drunk.
The social integration is also still on the ball, searching your Google, phone, Facebook and Twitter contacts and linking the data together to form detailed profiles for each contact.
The camera, previously the bugbear of HTC Android phones is the complete opposite of its ugly, slow, blurry predecessors. The camera is ready to go straight away when the app loads and takes microseconds to process a photo. It also has new effect filters you can apply. Another very nice feature is that you can take pictures whilst recording video.
I've experienced no lag at all whilst using the phone, even when running high end games.
This phone also features the Beats audio system which does give a clearer sound experience across the apps, not just in the stock media player.
Overall
To keep it simple, this phone is excellent. It combines speed and ease of use with some fantastic hardware to provide the best Android experience yet. The only issues I have are with the front camera attracting dirt and the lack of a cover for the charge port. A user replaceable battery is also a key thing for me.
One thing I have noticed is that my phone hangs when switching data networks, but turning off data roaming helped this somewhat, your mileage may vary.
These issues aside, this phone could be a dark horse for 2012...bridging the price gap between the top-end One X, Galaxy S3 and inevitable iPhone 5 and the low end nasties.
IT GUY SCORE: 9/10
I knew I wanted an HTC phone as having had various flavours of Android, HTC always seems to provide a more seamless interface with a lot of neat social features.
 |
| HTC One S |
The phone immediately reminded me of the original HTC Desire in terms of size and layout. The screen is bright and vivid although purists will argue about colour accuracy.
The micro USB charger is sensibly placed on the left side rather than on the base, so it should attract less dirt. A little cover for it would've been welcome though!
The same can't be said for the front facing camera, which sits inside an awkward little dip and, in the two weeks that I've had the phone has accumulated quite a bit of pocket grime.
Size-wize, its a little large to comfortably use in one hand for texting or browsing compared with previous HTCs I've owned, but others will likely find this is a non-issue.
HTC has made much of the military grade coating applied to the phone shell and whilst I doubt it adds anything to the lifetime of the phone, it does look very nice and polished.
The phone boasts a dual core processor from qualcom with a healthy dose of RAM. It runs the OS without any lag or issue that I've come across.
The battery life is on the high end for a HTC, lasting for a full day of normal use. Unfortunately, the battery is not removable so I hope it lasts!
Operating System and Software
The phone runs the latest version of Android 4.x, known to most as Ice Cream Sandwich. It also features a new version of HTC sense, which is simply a skin and some extra widgets and social features.
As ever, HTC maxes-out the Android experience like nobody else can, with fantastic features like the keyboard which knows what I'm trying to say even when typing drunk.
The social integration is also still on the ball, searching your Google, phone, Facebook and Twitter contacts and linking the data together to form detailed profiles for each contact.
The camera, previously the bugbear of HTC Android phones is the complete opposite of its ugly, slow, blurry predecessors. The camera is ready to go straight away when the app loads and takes microseconds to process a photo. It also has new effect filters you can apply. Another very nice feature is that you can take pictures whilst recording video.
I've experienced no lag at all whilst using the phone, even when running high end games.
This phone also features the Beats audio system which does give a clearer sound experience across the apps, not just in the stock media player.
Overall
To keep it simple, this phone is excellent. It combines speed and ease of use with some fantastic hardware to provide the best Android experience yet. The only issues I have are with the front camera attracting dirt and the lack of a cover for the charge port. A user replaceable battery is also a key thing for me.
One thing I have noticed is that my phone hangs when switching data networks, but turning off data roaming helped this somewhat, your mileage may vary.
These issues aside, this phone could be a dark horse for 2012...bridging the price gap between the top-end One X, Galaxy S3 and inevitable iPhone 5 and the low end nasties.
IT GUY SCORE: 9/10
