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
WiFi Hotspot
The Sensation includes HTC’s own WiFi hotspot software, and nothing much is changed between it and previous versions. It’s still limited to 5 users maximum, and you can view and manage each one’s connectivity. I don’t remember them being options before, but the Sensation also lets you change the WiFi channel and DHCP server settings in the advanced menu alongside the standard power timeout options. I tested the Sensation’s hotspot capabilities pretty extensively and found that things work out perfectly well. Thankfully there aren’t any bugs to speak of, which is more than I can say for the hotspot software on some other recent smartphones.
Speakerphone
Speakerphone on the Sensation isn’t quite as loud or as high quality as we’d like it to be. To be honest, this is probably the only really glaringly bad part of the whole device. I used the phone for navigation a lot while driving the 400 miles to and from California, and then on a trip or two to Phoenix, and the speakerphone volume just isn’t high enough. Listening to music at maximum, it isn’t adequate. For calls, it’s disappointingly quiet and grainy. I’m not sure what happened here or if something needed to go with the phone for it to fit into this form factor, but clearly the speakerphone took a back seat during testing and design, or there’s something flat out wrong.
There’s a grille on the plastic back of the Sensation, then another metal grille. There is a small rubbery ring around the thing as well, so it isn’t like sound is disappearing into a void between the metal case and the plastic back. It just isn’t loud enough.
Voice Calls and Audio Codec
We’re still trying to create an even better way of characterizing and presenting voice quality for smartphones. Until then we’ve provided a recording of the Sensation calling the local ASOS weathe report station by connecting the headset jack to line in. The Senation’s headset audio quality and earpiece volume also are good. The Sensation, like most modern phones, also has ambient noise cancellation which I tested by calling a friend in a very loud environment. Background noise around me was hard to detect on his end. HTC is no doubt using the Fluence noise cancellation audio chain onboard MSM8260.
I listened to lots of Google Music on the Sensation using my pair of Shure SE535 earphones, and found things overall pretty good. The Sensation uses TI’s very low power TLV320AIC3254 stereo audio codec.
Qualcomm's GPS
Last but not least in this section is GPS performance. The Senation uses Qualcomm’s Gen 8 GPS which supports standalone and assisted (A-GPS) mode. I tested and verified that I get a fix from cold start both with cellular connectivity and without WiFi or cellular connectivity. It works and it works well.
Note that airplane mode is on.
In addition, the GPS on the Sensation locks astoundingly quickly. It’s almost instantaneous, which is especially impressive after using the Droid Charge for weeks before, which often took either a few seconds or a full 30 to get a 3D fix.
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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