HTC Sensation 4G Review - A Sensational Smartphone
by Brian Klug on July 1, 2011 12:38 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Android
- Mobile
- HTC Sensation
- MSM8260
1080p Video Quality
Back when we had the MDP, I took a number of 1080p video samples just to get a feel for what MSM8x60’s ISP and encoder performance were like. Things have improved considerably since then, and compared to the MDP the Sensation shoots much better videos. I had Ganesh, our resident media guru and HTPC reviewer, take a look at everything the Sensation produced and do some analysis, and his initial impressions really mirrored mine. Image and video quality both are better than they were on the MDP, and dynamic range is also improved.
The Sensation lets you shoot in 1080p, 720p, and native qHD resolution, in addition to a number of lower resolution options. Video is encoded at H.264 baseline with 1 reference frame, just like we saw Tegra 2 do on the Optimus 2X. At 1080p you get around 10 Mbps bitrate, and at 720p you get 5 Mbps. Just like the Optimus 2X, “1080p” really works out to 1920x1088. Video is shot at 30fps, though in practice we’ve noticed the Sensation dipping below 10 fps a few times, and to be honest we’d rather see steady 720p30 than 1080p10-30.
We've done the usual thing and uploaded everything in a 245MB zip to the AT servers, and also to YouTube as shown.
Sample:
The Sensation is one of a small percentage of smartphones I’ve seen that also record stereo audio, which is encoded in 128 Kbps AAC. I’ve taken some video with stereo turned on and off, as there is a toggle in the camcorder menus, though I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t record with stereo enabled all the time.
Mono:
With some digging, I determined that the Sensation is using Samsung’s 8 MP S5K3H1GX 1/3.2” 3264x2488 CMOS sensor with 1.4 µm square pixels on the rear camera. It’s the same 8 MP sensor as used in the Desire HD/Inspire 4G. This supports FullHD by cropping, and optionally HD by binning. Fire up the camcorder and you’ll see that HTC has opted for the former, and crops the sensor down to 1920x1088 for recording videos. As a result, magnification appears to increase due to the crop factor, something that’s old hat for iPhone 4 users.
The front facing sensor is a Micron/Aptina MT9V113 1/11” VGA CMOS sensor with 2.2 µm square pixels. Video on the front facing camera is shot at 1.6 Mbps VGA in H.264 baseline with 2 channel AAC audio as well. It isn’t anything to phone home about, but no doubt will suffice for video chats and such.
Still Images
The actual camera application on the Sensation is HTC’s standard fare, and as such I don’t think it bears much going over. The menus are relatively straightforward to navigate, and the icons rotate from landscape to portrait shooting so you know images will have the right EXIF data embedded. I’m a bit disappointed that the menus are still somewhat laggy - opening and closing the settings drawers sometimes just seems sluggish.
The actual preview image is of good framerate however, and the preview resolution seems to be 1:1 with the screen, no cheating here. HTC also still sets the shooting mode to widescreen by default, so to get the full potential out of the sensor you need to go into the menu and uncheck widescreen and shoot in 4:3 aspect ratio.
As a reminder, locations 1, 2, and 5 are unavailable anymore, but 3, 4, 6, and 7 still are being actively used.
Image quality on the Sensation is pretty good with lots of light. In fluorescent light things can get a bit off, as evidenced by colors in location 7. I’ve said before that HTC’s current crop of cameras far exceeds the previous ones, and I’m still thinking that after having taken lots with the Sensation. It’s clear to me that HTC has been paying attention, as there no longer is a piece of plastic between the camera and outside world. Instead, the last surface of the camera really is that surface, and it’s inset slightly so as to not be a contact point for scratching. The camera module sticks through the rear case slightly, and there’s a small squishy seal to keep dirt and grime from getting inside.
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leexgx - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
but is not 800-900MB not enough space thought with an 8-16-32 SD card as well (i be hard pushed to use 800MB of internal storage) samsung need all that space as they have there own app store that has 3-4 games that use a lot of space, most other phones have 800-900Mb free space nowadays, i guessing most samsung phones do the 2gb/6gb split with 8gb internal spaceif you was talking about cheaper phones like the HTC desire or some random 1.6-2.1 OS phones with 500-800Mhz cpus (that are still been sold what's very lame as they are Crap) i would agree with you 110-50MB of space is not enough even with A2D (that's only on 2.2+ devices)
i agree with the sound of the load speaker seem to be lacking on 2 HTC phones i have seen
samsung need to fix there GPS issues there is Zero reason that GPS should be flaky at best (the jumping between to points every 1-2 seconds)
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i agree GPS should be tested and if the phone has less then 1gb internal storage it should be reported as it makes the phone have limited use
bubblesmoney - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Having less internal memory on android phones is actually limitting the number of purchases on the android market. People like me would have probably bought almost all the games by gameloft and many other apps for work. But thats not possible now because of the crap apps 2internal memory policy on android and the equally crap stock app2sd move feature.The microsd cards are ok, but that does not replace the need for proper internal memory. I already have a couple of 4gb cards, a couple 16gb cards and a couple 32gb cards. Would have preffered a hot swappable card feature without needing to pull the batteries. But I guess the USB on the Go feature on the SGS2 is an alternative. My cards are mainly stuffed with office documents and presentations, teaching videos etc apart from a few songs. But still need good internal memory for apps (some games and other professional apps and loads of teaching apps for my child). Presently i am using one phone for me and another for apps for my child. If the internal memory was ok then i wouldnt need to keep switching between two phones depending on what app i want to use. Not everyone is interested in rooting and playing around with firmware. But the present internal memory hardware situation and crap app2sd stock situation doesnt leave one with much alternatives on android for people who need more internal memory.
ph00ny - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/864/sc2011070611392...As for GPS, i've done multiple tests including a tunnel pass and they've been spot on. Walking sessions showed the exact side of the road that i was on (google maps showed accuracy of ~10m) and during the tunnel test, it was able to get gps signal as soon as i was out of the tunnel.
dtomilson - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
Let's see some Mango chatter. Let's see a new and innovative mobile OS that has cool new features that no other OS does. Other blogs have raved about it, has Google paid you not to?kmmatney - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
I'm still waiting for a good real-life battery assessment for a phone. How long does the battery last if the phone is sitting around doing nothing? Can I squeeze 2 days out of it if I forget my charger on a short business trip? How much charge does it lose sitting on a nightstand overnight? I'm a current iPhone 3GS user, and can get up to 3 days of battery out of my phone if I need to. I have no idea if I can do that just by reading this review.JasonInofuentes - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
So, battery life assessments are really particular to the user and even down to what day it is. Let's cover your specific questions first.-Battery life sitting around doing nothing: Well, what good is the phone to you if you're not doing anything with it? And, what is nothing? If you mean screen off and not handled (as I'm guessing you mean, does that mean it's also not updating e-mail, and other apps? If you have absolutely no applications periodically pulling data and you leave any of these phones untouched until they die then they will last . . . a really long time.
-2 days on a business trip: What do you do for a living? Again, if you don't have any apps downloading data periodically, you only ever use your phone as a phone and maybe a few e-mail sessions, then any of these phones should hopefully last that long.
-Sitting on a night stand overnight: See the first answer.
Don't look at these battery life measurements as an absolute, look at them as a guide. If you spend a lot of time downloading data on 3G, then make sure to get a phone that does really well in the 3G test. If 3G isn't your thing but you're on WiFi downloading data a lot, then grok the WiFi graph and pick something near the top. And if you're main use for the phone is voice calls, there's a great list of voice call data available to you. Not sure which you are? Well, it sounds like battery life is your bread and butter so just pick one from the top of the list and go for it. You've got at least two weeks to decide if it's for you and my experience is that the honeymoon period when people get new phones is about 5-7 days, at that point they'll either be happy or dragging their charger around with them.
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crb119 - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link
so is this better than iphone4..........in terms of software avilability...ahat about skype video????.....winst - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link
Hello,Why so much emphasis on phone features and such, but little or no information
on the fundamentals , being able to make a decent phone call in various conditions ?
winst