HTC Windows Phone 8X

HTC WINDOWS PHONE 8X REVIEW

Windows Phone 8 was finally released earlier in November. With it, two major contenders for the title of 'premier Windows Phone 8X handset. The 4.3-inch Super LCD 2 display on the HTC 8X has a resolution of 1280 x 720 (341 ppi), which made maps, images and Web pages look great. Text on Cracked.com was crisp on the 8X. TheLumia 822's 800 x 480 display was a different story with rough jagged text. Watching a high-def trailer of "Oz The Great and Powerful" on the 8X offered wide viewing angles. Mila Kunis' red hat and coat popped as did the majestic Emerald City. However, we noticed pixelation during darker scenes. Its 8-megapixel auto-focus camera stands out amongst other things due to the shiny metallic trim around its lens. Sure, it’s not a size that’s pushing the boundaries, but nevertheless, it features HTC’s exclusive ImageSense technology, ultra-wide f/2.0 aperture lens, LED flash, and the ability to shoot videos in 1080p. Towards the bottom portion of the rear, microdots line in unison to consist its speaker grill, but above that, the familiar Beats Audio logo reminds us that it’s going to offer us an exceptional audio experience. Above the screen is a color-matched ear speaker cover with a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera capable of capturing 1080p video off to the left. It also sports an ultra-wide-angle lens with an F2.0 aperture and is powered by HTC’s dedicated ImageChip. Beneath the display sits Windows Phone’s three capacitive buttons, consisting of a home button flanked by a back button to the left and a search button to the right. As an extra sweetener, the handset comes with Dr Dre's Beats Audio technology, essentially an extra amplifier in the headphone jack which can crank up to 2.5V, compared to the usual 0.5V, and more than enough to pump up the volume on a large set of headphones. The 8X uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon dual core 1.5Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM. This is a step up from the single core processor in HTC's Windows Phone 7 models, and puts it on a par with the top smartphones. With a few exceptions such as the Huawei Ascend, which has a headline-grabbing quad-core processor, most manufacturers (including Apple) are content with dual core for now. The range and quality of apps however is still disappointing. There may be thousands available, but some of the best are missing or are a little out of date. None of the BBC iPlayers are there, Instagram is absent, the Twitter and Facebook versions are bare bones compared to those on Android and iOS, and the eBay app, which still uses the old company logo, has been over-customised to the WP8 look. We found battery life from the 6.7Wh fixed battery to be typically short. At the end of a long day (testing the handset and filming our video review) we had 15 percent power remaining. Days of lighter use left us with around 30 percent. Either way we felt that the 8X needed charging at the end of each day. It's my personal opinion that every operating system comes with its own caveats, more so in the app store. Android provides a more raw experience where the user interacts with the device in a more analogue kind of way the software is not designed to mask itself through fancy transition effects or animations and generally feels unadulterated. iOS on the other hand is more fluid and provides a more artificial experience where the operating system is merely a bridge between the user and the apps.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES