HTC One X+ Review

Introduction:

The HTC One X+ is a decked-up version of the One X, which shipped as the first phone with a quad-core processor back in the spring, but arrived on US soil with a dual-core Snapdragon S4. With the One X+, both the US and international versions sport a 1.7 GHz quad-core Tegra 3+ processor.

The upgrade was necessitated by the competition going into the holiday season, and with the most generous internal memory amount from all flagships at launch, Android Jelly Bean, plus the upgraded processor and battery capacity, the One X+ can stand its ground against threats like the Galaxy S III or the Optimus G. Does the upgrade warrant the higher price, though? Read on to find out...

In the box

• Wall charger
• microUSB cable
• In-ear stereo headphones
• Warranty and information leaflets

Design:

The curved unibody chassis introduced with the One X stays absolutely the same in the One X+ - it fits your palm nicely, and the cascading side bezel makes the front look seamless. Thanks to the polycarbonate housing the handset is very light and also pretty thin, with firm grip allowed by the soft-touch finish. We had the black version, which is a finger smudge magnet on the back, and there are also gray and white variants, like with the One X.



You can compare the HTC One X+ with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Since it is unibody design, the only openings around the sides are the MHL port on the left, the audio jack up top, and the micro SIM card ejector hole on the upper back. As for the rear, the only thing sticking out is the camera module, ringfenced in red to match the Beats logo at the bottom.


The capacitive keys underneath the display are also painted in red to match the overall accent style, and are responsive to the touch. The metallic lock/power key at the top is almost flush with the surface, so accidental press chances are taken to a minimum, but the volume rocker on the right is flush too, which makes it a bit difficult to feel and press when you are not looking.

There is a higher resolution 1.6 MP frontal camera now, capable of HD video recording, which is much clearer than before, and a helpful LED notification light next to it, indicating missed calls, messages or charging status.


Display:

The excellent 4.7” S-LCD 2 display hasn't changed, which is good, since it is probably in the top three of high-def LCD mobile screens. It is a 1280x720 pixels HD panel, bringing pixel density to 312ppi, meaning crisp text and discernible details.

The strength of this display lies in its high brightness, while visibility outside is improved by a seemingly low screen reflectance, too.

The LG Optimus 4X HD is brighter, for example, but reflectance is high outside, and thus its screen compares worse. Low screen reflectance helps the AMOLED displays of the Galaxy S III and the Note II outside as well, despite that they are fairly dim compared to the LCD ones, yet only the Note II is comparable to the One X+ outdoors, as the S III screen brightness is too low.

Compared to the best LCD screens, the One X+ fares about equal with the in-cell touch panel on the Optimus G, but the same tech in the iPhone 5 yields better results, thanks to the bright screen, coupled with one of the lowest reflectance ratios of any mobile screen.

When we add the good color representation, high contrast and excellent viewing angles, the HTC One X+ screen is close to the best out there. It is now protected by the thinner and less brittle Gorilla Glass 2nd edition.

Interface and Functionality:

HTC has graced the One X+ with a version of its own Android UI overlay called HTC Sense 4+, applied on top of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The Sense UI is the most uniform-looking of the manufacturer interfaces, though some find it a tad too much skinning. Thanks to JB's Project Butter, the interface runs fluid, without any hiccups.

So what does the “+” in the UI version bring now that we don't have in the One X? No, we don't have multi-screen mode like on the new Samsung and LG handsets, or things like their Smart Stay, S Beam, QMemo or Pop Up Play. On the other hand, HTC hasn't messed up with a great thing, too, putting its own “H Voice” speech recognition of sorts, like Samsung does with S Voice, or LG with Q Voice, to override Google's solution.

We have pure Google Now and Voice Search to aid your everyday life with personalized info presented in the form of cards when you long-press the home key, and natural language recognition algorithms that allow you to start any song with a voice command while driving, for instance.


The HTC addition to the new Sense 4+ interface are aggregated views in the gallery and the music app, which bring together your local content together with the one in social networks and cloud services you might have subscriptions to – such as Dropbox, SkyDrive, Facebook, 7Digital, Picasa and Flickr. Apart from that, it is mostly centered around bringing forth the good things in Android Jelly Bean, like Google Now and the new Voice Search, just as it should be.

Processor and memory:

Compared to the international One X, the NVIDIA Tegra 3+ quad-core processor in HTC's flagship is clocked a step higher now, at 1.7 GHz, and the graphics processor clock is boosted too, from 416 MHz, to 520, resulting in benchmark scores which are up with the best out there, like the Optimus G, or the Note II. Compared to the US version of the One X, which runs dual-core Snapdragon S4, it scores much higher.

Unfortunately, since it is still with the same 40nm process, compared to the above mentioned phones' 28/32nm ones, the HTC One X+ gets pretty hot under heavy load, especially around the metal camera area, which at times makes it uncomfortable to hold while gaming.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
HTC One X+	7244	13439	56,7
Samsung Galaxy S III	5335	12016	58,6
LG Optimus G	7669	11245	60,1
Sony Xperia T	4839	6925	60,1

We have 1 GB of RAM, compared to 2 GB in the competition high-ends, which means you won't be able to have the endless list of open apps they allow, yet we never felt the need to close anything manually, the phone did it for us. It only maintains running your last eight open apps chronologically, so if you open more in a short period of time and expect to return to the first where you left it, no go, you'll have to reopen it from scratch.

The 64 GB amount of internal storage is where the HTC One X+ really shines, and it is probably the most important feature for handsets without slots for storage expansion. HTC has learned a lesson from the backlash against the One series at introduction, when we learned that we have 32 GB with the One X, and 16 GB with the One S, and that's that.

About 56 GB are user-available storage, which should be plenty for most users, and a definite advantage before the competition, allowing you to carry a lot of high-quality tunes, HD movies or TV series with you to enjoy on the pretty display, or rarely worry you'll run out of photo and video space on your next vacation.

Internet and connectivity:

HTC supplies both Chrome that comes with Jelly Bean, as well as its default Sense browser on the HTC One X+ - both didn't give us any trouble with scrolling, zooming or panning around.

The Read mode in the default browser is similar to Reader in iPhone's Safari, stripping down the articles of images and ads for easier reading. There is a strip at the bottom, which pops when you start scrolling up towards the address bar, that allows you to quickly bookmark or save the page for later reading.

For what it's worth, HTC's browser does sport full Adobe Flash support, which is off by default, but can be switched on via the plugin settings or with a handy button for Flash in the drop-down settings menu. The browser warns you that Flash would eat processor power, hog memory and battery, etc., but nevertheless turns it on, despite that we are dealing with an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean handset. This shows you can have your cake and eat it too, provided that the manufacturer allows you, and is a great solution for those times you might need Flash support.


Internet connectivity is provided by Qualcomm's MDM9215 radio, which sports 42 Mbps HSPA+ downloads, and LTE download speeds up to 100 Mbps for certain carrier versions of the One X+, like the one for AT&T.

There is the full suite of other radios, too – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, DLNA, FM Radio and NFC. Wired connectivity is taken care of by the versatile MHL port, so you are covered as far as TV out goes, with the respective adapter.

Camera:

An 8 MP module with f/2.0 aperture is what we find on the One X+, accompanied by an LED flash. The ImageSense ISP chip is governed by the typical for HTC's One series a unified interface, which allows you to take photos and shoot videos without switching screens. Picture-taking is almost instantaneous, and the burst mode is much faster now than on the One X, which might have to do with the faster silicon inside.

There are Panorama and HDR options, as well as the embedded Slow Motion mode, which we are used to see in HTC handsets starting with the One series. A blue orb above the on-screen shutter keys starts a scroll list of many color effects you can apply to your pictures and videos.


Unfortunately the same issues that we had with the One X are present on the One X+, too, which could be expected, as we have the same camera unit. Contrast and saturation seem too high, and shots of the clouds turned out purplish instead the gray they were, especially visible in the violet lines that mark the borders between lighter and darker areas. With the HDR mode turned on, photos get much better exposed, but it is quite slower than the normal, automatic mode, that most people are using.

Indoor shots turned out fine, with no over or underexposed region or weird hues cast over the photo. Noise-suppression software lowers the detail a bit, and the LED flash is not particularly strong, even from a five feet distance.


The 1080 video capture is also a mixed bag. While frames per second have reached the typical 30 number outside, which was an issue with the One X, and the focus is no longer as jittery, there are plenty of artifacts to go around. Color, saturation and noise-suppression are also off the mark in video mode.

HTC One X+ Sample Video:



HTC One X+ Indoor Sample Video:



Going inside, the jittery autofocus we know and don't love from the One X is back here, too, and it took us several trials to make it work as it is supposed to. The frames per second count fell down to 22 inside, which is also inferior to the other high-ends out there.

As advantages we can point out the very fast exposure compensation when panning around from light to dark objects in front of the lens, and continuous autofocus works well for change – the handset focuses very rapidly when an object appears in the frame closer to the lens, but is slower to focus away when you take it out. Still, both speeds are more than we can say for most other handsets in terms of continuous autofocus, where most of the time it barely even works without tapping on the screen to focus.

Multimedia:

We already mentioned that the music player and the gallery aggregate your tunes, pics and video from various sources under one roof, but in the music player this is less evident, only allowing you access to your 7Digital music store locker, plus TuneIn Radio, and you can't mix and match playlists among them.

The player interface is easy to operate and good-looking, but the only equalizer presets it allows are turning Beats Audio on and off. HTC says that this mode delivers “deeper bass” and “crisp vocals”, and that's precisely what it boosts. This time the surge in volume when you switch Beats on is palpable, though, unlike on the One X, so it really makes a difference in that regard. The One X+ loudspeaker is strong and fairly clean, even at the maximum level.



Video playback supports DivX/Xvid files out of the box, but up to 720 HD definition, whereas MPEG-4 files play up to 1080 definition, thus you'd have to hit the Play Store for something more versatile like the MX Player app.

The default video player interface allows you to adjust screen brightness directly from it, turn on Beats Audio, or capture a screenshot during playback, but no zooming option, or the ability to watch video while doing something else, like Pop Up Play in Samsung's Nature UX. There is a trimming command, which lets you cut footage captured with the camera on the fly, but for external videos you have to start the editing app.

Call quality:

Sound quality in the earpeice of the HTC One X+ is pretty stellar, with loud and clear voices on our end, and no audible distortion. The microphones, however, relay a slightly distorted voices when the other end is at full volume, but the strength is enough, and the noise-canceling mics do their job of keeping ambient sounds at bay.

Battery:

The upgraded 2,100 mAh is now up to the capacity standards of the other flagships, and needfully so, since we have an overclocked processor in the HTC One X+. HTC quotes “up to six hours more talk time” compared to the One X, but there are no official times yet. Video playback tests peg the stamina at a bit north of 7 hours, which is about average for a large LCD Android, yet far from the Note II, Galaxy S III, or the RAZR MAXX achievements.

Conclusion:

We can't say that HTC “took a sad song and made it better” by upgrading to the One X+, as the One X handset is pretty capable. HTC, however, changed the specs where it most counts, and as a result we have a handset that can go neck and neck with the seasonal Android flagships in everything but camera performance.

The overclocked quad-core processor might be still a 40nm affair, but it delivers benchmarks on par with the Optimus G and Note II, and, unlike the G, the HTC One X+ ships with Jelly Bean out of the box.

The HTC Sense 4+ doesn't get in the way of the unique Jelly Bean features, like Voice Search and Google Now, and the company even leaves users the choice whether to go with the Chrome browser, or use the HTC one, which has a full Adobe Flash support with a handy switch to turn it off at will.

Considering the generous 64 GB of storage the One X+ comes with – more than any other flagship at launch – we would've wholeheartedly recommended it as one of the best Android handsets out there right now, if it wasn't for the subpar camera results. The fly in the ointment is that the camera has stayed unchanged from the One X, so you can expect some questionable white balance measurements and video artifacts.

As it stands now, the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Optimus G offer similar features for the price, with better camera performance. If you are not a big shutterbug, though, but rather into media consumption, the One X+ couples one of the best LCD screens out there with 64 GB of memory from the start, so you can enjoy your video collection on the go.

Software version: 1.14.401.16

HTC One X+ Video Review: