The HTC One X for AT&T Review
by Brian Klug on May 1, 2012 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon
- HTC
- Qualcomm
- MSM8960
- Krait
- Mobile
- Tegra 3
- HTC One
- NVIDIA
The One X has a 4.7“ 1280x720 display that’s beautiful, dubbed the ”infinity screen.“ In fact, that’s really all you need to know about it - it’s absolutely wonderful, and honestly if you’re concerned with mobile displays just stop right there. At above 4.5” diagonal, 720p seems to be the new norm, and the combination of that 4.7" diagonal size and 720p on the HTC One X results in a PPI of 312. HTC shipped a device with an LCD display last year whose pixel density exceeded the iPhone 4/4S Retina Display for the first time in the HTC Rezound, which was 341 PPI.
Nevertheless the HTC One X still has subpixels small enough that I can’t visually distinguish them at all but from the most extreme distances. In addition, because it’s LCD you get an RGB stripe as opposed to PenTile RGBG like what currently ships on Samsung’s SAMOLED HD displays at 720p in the Galaxy Nexus.
I did some poking around, and my HTC One X (AT&T) review unit has a Sony display:
[DISP] mipi_video_sony_hd720p_init: assign initial setting for SONY_NT id 0x18103 Cut1, PANEL type = PANEL_ID_ELITE_SONY_NT
The panel goes extremely bright, at over 500 nits maximum, and has top of the chart contrast. As always I characterized the One X display using a combination of ColorHCFR and an i1D2 and Francois’ excellent Voodoo Screen Test Pattern generator application.
I’ve made both the color.chc file and measures available. The CIE diagram shows that HTC’s Infinity Display has very close to sRGB coverage, however color temperature is on the red side at just under 6000K. That’s really my only gripe, and curiously enough the One S with SAMOLED qHD displays are closer to 6500K than the LCD packing HTC One Xes.
Viewing angles look good on the HTC One X, there's no visible color shift at extreme angles. Outdoor viewing is also pretty good on the HTC One X, thanks in part to optical bonding between the display glass and LCD itself. One fewer air gap means fewer Fresnel reflections which quickly turn a display into a mess outdoors.
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mbzastava - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
oh and i forgot data caps. enjoy running into those more often with LTE and having everything in the cloud.wdb1966 - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Exactly!!!On a device specifically targeted to multimedia users, its crazy to NOT have a microSD slot for expansion.
I hope an engineer somewhere lost their job.
I would not use this phone even if it were given to me for FREE!
RussianSensation - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
Samsung S3 is going to launch this week. It's premature to recommend a next generation smartphone without testing the S3, at the very least.dagamer34 - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
I'll bet you good money that the US version of the Galaxy S III is basically an HTC One XL with a microSD card slot, Super AMOLED+ HD screen, and and 12 MP camera.lowlymarine - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
Hasn't it more or less been confirmed that the GS3 is going to be using a quad-core A9 of Samsung's own design? Or did you not mean to imply it would use the same Snapdragon S4 SoC?jwcalla - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
I think I read somewhere that the international version would be the quad-core Samsung A9, but the US version will be a Snapdragon S4. Something about LTE network compatibility.RussianSensation - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Well at the very least considering it's launching this week, wouldn't you wait for a test against the S3?For starters, the quality of construction already looks better than the HTC One and the screen will be larger.
http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s_3_should_...
Also, if you happen to listen to music on nice headphones the HTC One also falls short:
http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x-review-747p5.php
All these things already would alone make me want to wait to see how competing new generation Android phones would do.
Impulses - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
You do realize that review is for the Tegra 3 version no? The audio stack and hardware could be completely different on it, the AT&T One X probably shares more in common with the One S since they both run S4...RussianSensation - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Ya, I know that. There are other issues with HTC One, lack of Micro SD card, smaller screen than S3, worse quality construction most likelyl. Also, the video camera and still camera are not great either, and early benchmarks are showing that the Mali-400 and Exynos 4 Quad chip in S3 will easily beat the HTC One X:http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s_iii_pops_...
Chloiber - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
It won't launch this week. It will be presented this week. Small difference.