HTC One X+ vs iPhone 5
Introduction:
The HTC One X+ is shaping to be one of Android's battleships this season, thanks to its sped-up quad-core procesor and 64 GB of storage, so as always we are pitting it against the iOS flagship, Apple's iPhone 5.
Both handsets have sealed chassis, great LCD screens, and 8 MP cameras, but they target different categories of users from the onset with the size gap. What other differences are there between the two? Read on our comparison to find out...
Design:
Actually the sealed chassis and rounded corners are the only things in common between the designs of the two phones. The OneX+ rocks a slightly convex polycarbonate body that fits very well in the palm, aiding the grip with its soft-touch finish, just like its chassis twin, the One X before it.
The iPhone 5 is much smaller and easier to operate with one hand, so it dares to be edgier, with clean cut lines, made of metal and glass. It is incredibly light for the premium materials that build it, and also very thin.
Both companies have made a name for themselves in designing their handsets, but these days the shapes of the chassis and choice of materials are dictated by the obligatory huge screen any self-respecting Android high-end has to rock, and you can't really slap much premium material around a 4.7” screen without making the phone pretty heavy.
Display:
The HTC One X+ S-LCD 2 display is with 1280x720 pixels of resolution, netting 312ppi density. At 4” size, the iPhone 5's in-cell touch IPS-LCD screen is much smaller than the 4.7-incher, and its 1136x640 pixels grace it with the pretty high 326ppi. Pixel density is therefore not an issue for both screens, text appears crisp everywhere, and there are no icon jaggies.
When it comes to color representation, the iPhone 5 has one of the most accurate display of all phones, while the One X+ panel seems to go a tad on the undersaturated side. The iPhone's display is also brighter and with a very low reflectance, ensuring a win in the outdoor visibility department. The One X+ screen is sufficiently bright and very good outside, too, so you won't have trouble with both handsets, even under direct sunlight. The viewing angles seem equally good, and the contrast ratios are pretty high for the LCD screens, so overall we have two great displays on both devices.
HTC One X+ 360-Degrees View
Apple iPhone 5 360-Degrees View
Interface and functionality:
The iOS 6 interface of the iPhone 5 bets on simplicity and doesn't get much in the way of launching apps, whereas the HTC Sense 4+ UI over is a full-fledged manufacturer overlay over Android Jelly Bean's stock looks.
It offers a rich number of themes, skins, and widget customizations, even allowing you to change the trace color of the Swype-like input option of the on-screen keyboard, whereas iOS is very restricted in terms of user personalization.
HTC Sense is more versatile not only in functionality, but also has pretty polished looks that are graphically consistent throughout the menu levels, like in iOS, which can't be said for many Android manufacturer overlays.
Processor and memory:
The 1.7 GHz quad-core Tegra 3 of the HTC One X+ can't be directly compared to the dual-core A6 chip inside the iPhone 5, except in browser benchmarks and graphics tests, where Apple's silicon scores more.
A more important takeaway here is that you won't feel underpowered with either of these two, and each runs the respective interface and apps from its ecosystem without any hiccups.
The phones offer 1 GB of RAM, which suits them fine, but the true multitasking advantage of Android over iOS is somewhat lost on HTC One X+, as it doesn't allows more than to run 8 apps at once, closing the initial ones automatically if you launch more.
A very generous 64 GB of internal storage amount awaits you with the One X+, whereas a 64 GB version of the iPhone 5 will run you pretty penny, and both phones don't offer storage expansion via memory cards.
Internet and connectivity:
Both stock browsers won't give you any trouble rendering pages quickly, panning around them, scrolling and zooming in. Safari on the iPhone 5 has a more limited scrolling inertia compared to the Android handset, but its makes a tad more fluid impression in other navigational tasks.
The browsers of the One X+ and the iPhone 5 have a one-tap reading mode next to the address bar, which devoids the articles of ads clutter and other distractions, leaving you with clean text to read comfortably.
HTC, however, has embedded full Adobe Flash support in its browser, which has a convenient toggle in the context menu, so if you come across a place where Flash is needed, the option is there for you.
The handsets support LTE connectivity on carriers that offer such networks, and also have 42 Mbit/s HSPA+ radios. Other wireless connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS and DLNA, while the One X+ throws in FM Radio and NFC. HTC's handset uses an MHL port for wired connectivity, where you can plug a regular microUSB cable, whereas the iPhone 5 has its new proprietary Lightning connector for hooking up to computers and accessories.
Camera:
As usual, iOS offers just a few camera interface options, and most of the camera decision-making is left to the phone's algorithms. There are Panorama and HDR options to choose from, and that's about it, but the phone is incredibly fast when stitching panoramas or taking a high dynamic range photo, with consistently great results.
The HTC One X+, on the other hand, offers plethora of settings, scene modes and color effects, which include the above mentioned Panorama and HDR, in an easy to use interface layout that combines picture and video shutter keys on one screen.
Both handsets sport 8 MP sensors, but when it comes to the quality of the photos, the iPhone 5 has the upper hand with spot-on white balance measurements, while we often have purple casts from the One X+. The photos from HTC's handset look overprocessed and detail often gets smeared to keep noise in check, whereas Apple's handset produced clear and natural-looking photos with low noise in most circumstances, including indoor shots.
When it comes to video capture, the iPhone 5 has an even bigger advantage with its fluid 30 fps video and nice color representation, compared to the jumpy autofocus and artifacts in videos taken with the One X+, especially inside, where the frame count falls to the uneven 22.
HTC One X+ Sample Video:
Apple iPhone 5 Sample Video:
HTC One X+ Indoor Sample Video:
Apple iPhone 5 Sample Video:
Multimedia:
The gallery of the One X+ is nondiscriminatory when it comes to the source of your albums, and aggregates your internal pics and video with the albums uploaded on Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, SkyDrive or Picasa, whereas with the iPhone 5 you have the internal media backed with iCloud.
The Music players are categorizing the songs by artusts, albums and playlists, and offer clean, easy to use interfaces. The iPhone 5 has equalizer presets, which are, however, not embedded in the player's interface, whereas the One X+ comes with the Beats Audio preset, which fires up only when you plug in a headset, and ups the bass and sound intensity.
If you pump the music out through the loudspeakers, the ones on the iPhone 5 hold an advantage with their strong and cleaner sound than the unit on the One X+. Apple's Earpods also provide a better sound than the in-ear set HTC had bundled.
Video playback on the HTC phone deals with any file thrown at it, although DivX/Xvid clips can be run only up to 720 definition with the default player, which is unusual for a high-end Android. This is easily remedied with a Play Store app, though, not to mention watching on the larger One X+ screen is a joy. The iPhone 5's default video format support is much more limited, but there are a few capable paid players that can expand it as well.
We witness a stellar voice quality with the iPhone 5, both in the earpiece, and for the receiving end, where the tri-microphone setup helps relay voices crystal clear and with strong volume. The HTC One X+ earpiece also performs loud and clear, but its two noise-canceling mics relay your voice with slight distortion towards the high end, though they do well in removing background noises.
Battery:
The Apple iPhone 5 squeezes an excellent battery life out of its juicer, with talk times, browsing and video playback sessions only giving way to phones with oversized batteries like the RAZR MAXX line, or the Note II.
One X+ doesn't have official talk times yet, HTC only says “50% more talk time than the One X”, but its 2, 100 mAh doesn't offer anything extraordinary than the usual daily charging with normal usage.
Conclusion:
The choice is clear cut here – if you can't live without a larger display and the associated supersize media consumption, the HTC One X+ offers a good HD screen, fast processor and copious amounts of internal storage with decent battery life.
If a more compact designer handset with excellent display and battery life rocks your boat, or if you are heavily invested in the iOS ecosystem, the iPhone 5 is the best iPhone created so far, so it is an easy pick, hough a 64 GB version runs pretty steep if we are to compare apples to apples. It has one very notable advantage before the HTC One X+, too, and that is in photos and especially video capture.
HTC One X+ vs Apple iPhone 5:
HTC One X+ vs Apple iPhone 5:
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