HTC 8XT Review

Introduction

HTC has been in the news a lot recently, and unfortunately it is as much for the gorgeous, all-card-on-the-table One as it is for their poor financial results. But last fall HTC made another newsworthy announcement that didn’t get too much attention: their recommitment to Windows Phone. That this news flew mostly under is no surprise; much like HTC itself the Windows Phone platform has been praised for its beauty and critically well-received, but that praise hasn’t translated into market adaption.

The HTC 8XT is Sprint’s first Windows Phone 8 device, but despite the extra letter the 8XT isn’t necessarily an upgrade to the 8X we liked last fall. While visually similar, there are some significant changes, such as the addition of BoomSound speakers and a downgrade in display resolution. In an increasingly crowded lineup, can the 8XT survive on Sprint?

Design

At first glance we wouldn’t blame you for confusing HTC’s 8X and the new 8XT. They share the same form factor and materials, but there are easy to spot differences. To start with the good, the single, rear-facing speaker of the 8X has been replace with dual, front-facing BoomSound speakers. As with the One, we love the sound they produce. Other changes are more minor.

The 8XT keeps a black bezel around the display, except at the bottom where it is a slightly lighter shade of blue/purple than the back. This off color circles around the back to the non-removable part of the device. The earpiece, rear camera and Beats Audio logo have all been reworked. Lastly, the bottom portion of the 8XT’s back breaks from the rest of it and changes materials, likely to accommodate for antennas. While most of these changes are minor within themselves, collectively they make the 8XT look a bit cheaper overall. The front bezel and rear antenna housing strive to match the rest of the phone’s purpleish hue, they do not. The camera bezel is comparatively gaudy, and the refined earpiece lessens the boldness we felt when first seeing the 8X.


The HTC 8XT feels excellent in the hands, with subtle curves in the right place that belile the phone’s angular appearance. Buttons offer good feedback, and the soft touch back is perfectly done though the back cover takes way too much effort to remove. If it wasn’t for the mis-matched colors the phone’s purple would be more ambiguously blue, and therefore more uni-sex. As it is we feel the color will appeal mostly to women, though it is good looking enough that we’d carry it ourselves. We are disappointed in the little design changes, but they are mostly minor flaws and overall the HTC 8XT retains the same premium fit and finish of the 8X which we have long expected from HTC.


Display

The display is another area where HTC cut back. Gone is the HD 720x1280 display of the 8X, replaced with a 480x800 panel. It remains sized at 4.3”, resulting in a drop from 342ppi on the 8X to mediocre 217ppi on the 8XT. It still has good brightness, color and viewing angles, and Windows Phone’s flat design masks the drop well, but the loss is noticeable browsing the web or viewing multimedia.








Camera

HTC has likely recycled the 8MP camera found on the 8X. It features HTC’s ImageSense technology, backside illumination and an f/2.0 aperture lens, which are carry-overs from last year’s One X flagship.

The overall camera interface is clean and well done, but overall the focus/capture process was longer than we’d like. We continue to appreciate the physical shutter button, which can be used to launch the camera even when the device is sleeping. This time around HTC added a burst shooting mode, but it only available when using the HTC Camera app...yes, there are two camera apps out of the box here.



The camera does a fine job in good lighting, displaying good color reproduction and acceptable detail levels. It still suffers from graining in poor lighting, something that HTC’s new Ultrapixel cameras found on the One and One Mini have improved. Videos can be recorded at 1080p, and produced displayed the same strengths and weaknesses seen in still images.

HTC 8XT Sample Video:



Multimedia

The 8XT played all of our test files just fine, although it didn’t recognize the embedded album art in out music. Music sounds good through both the BoomSound speakers and the included headphones.

As mentioned earlier, the decreased screen resolution is more noticeable in areas such as video playback, but at least the 8XT was able to handle the various file formats we threw at it.



Call Quality

Callers had no complaints about call quality, saying that the HTC 8XT didn’t stand out in either a good or bad way. They sounded natural with plenty of volume for us, and overall call quality was an 8.5/10.

Battery

As mentioned earlier, the new Snapdragon 400 processor allows the HTC 8XT to get more life out of its comparatively small 1800mAh battery. It is rated for 14 hours of talk time, which is very good for a CDMA device and LTE smartphone.

Conclusion

In the end we found ourselves enjoying the HTC 8XT, and are glad to see Windows Phone 8 finally make its way to all four major carriers. We once again are impressed with HTC’s ability to design a phone, but the device is not without compromises such as the decreased display resolution. What it really comes down to is your affinity for the Windows Phone OS; as pretty and smooth as it is the ecosystem just isn’t there and market share shows that. If you’re looking for a good mid-range Windows Phone device the 8XT gets our blessing, but in the end we’d imagine most users will look to a different OS, something the phone has no control over.

OS version: 8.0.10327.77
Firmware revision number: 3030.00.10008.651