Since the release of the One series I was interested in these phones, and was finally able to test them out, the first being the One S. Read the article again, if you haven’t already. I loved that phone. Wasn’t about to drop my Nexus just yet.. it was a little smaller than I’m used to, and lower resolution (once you get these HD screens, it’s hard to go back). But it was a definite recommend, and something to prelude the One X… more like my Nexus.
I got the X on Monday and have been giving it a go.
I have to say, I never tire of setting up a new phone… sure it can be tiresome and arduous to do… but I just love how all I have to do is set up my gmail address and most of the apps automatically come to the phone, or it’s as simple as going into ‘my apps’ in the Play Store.
Anyways, how is the phone? Pretty awesome. At 4.7″ it’s supposed to only be ever so slightly larger than the Nexus, but with the capacitive buttons (versus the software buttons) it looks a lot bigger, but the phone doesn’t feel any bigger. Nicely done HTC!
Most of the same stuff I said about the S applies to the X as well:
– Sense 4.0 is smooth
– fluid… hardly any noticeable lag
– EXCELLENT camera (did i miss the ‘burst mode’ in the S)
But some additional points I’m noticing:
– power button.. maybe it’s been used to much, but it doesn’t quite have that ‘spring’… maybe it’s the angled bezel
– 16GB… lots of space, but only 2GB for apps…
– that camera lens piece really sticks out
– having some issues with the accounts & sync – if you go into the settings, I see a fair number of red ‘sync-circles’ and it says “Sync is currently experiencing problems. it will be back shortly”. something I’ve seen on the ‘browser sync’ forever… but now I’m seeing it on Facebook Calendar, SkyDrive, & Hotmail Contacts. Just weird.
Other than that, it’s an impressive phone, and every hand I’ve put it in has said “wow, great picture (meaning resolution)” or “this is just the perfect size” (that one was from an iUser).
Glitch
What happens, as far as I can tell, is that the signal is just dropped. The past few days we’ve had some nasty stormy weather, so signal has been pretty weak, and my town doesn’t have the strongest signals in some areas. So I’ll find that I’ll pull out the phone and it’ll have the X by the signal… meaning no signal.
I’ve run into something like this before. How I would trick the phone to re-connect is to set it to “Airplane Mode”, and then turn the Airplane Mode off … it re-initializes the SIM/Radio and things will be tickity-boo. Not so in this case.
You can put it into Airplane mode, but trying to turn the mode off leaves the phone in some sort of state of limbo – the setting will continually say ‘turning off’, but never do anything.
I’ll even try going into the *#*#info#*#* setting [btw – I’ve set up that “number” as a contact, so on my nexus I can just ‘speed dial it’, but you can’t do that on the One X… it’ll actually DIAL], from there you can change which bands you want to connect to, and changing any of the settings does nothing. It’s like the radio went into a coma.
Only thing that’ll revive it is a reboot. Which sucks. I’ve contacted the folk who lent me the unit and they said they’ll look into it, but maybe it’s the demo SIM card. I’ll keep you posted.
And before you say “well, you just need to root and patch a new kernel…’ I assure you, Tom has tried, and his exhibits the same issues. Many others out there in the G+ community that I’ve talked to about it haven’t had this issue… so maybe it’s a bad batch.
Okay… other than that one glitch, I love this phone. If it was rock solid, then I would probably lose the Nexus. …maybe.
I’m going to see if I have time Saturday evening to do a hangout, if anyone’s available and talk about the phone. Other than that, look for my full review next week.