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
Display
I suppose that’s as good a segue as any into the Sensation’s display. It’s a 4.3” qHD (960x540) “Super LCD” display. As the displays editor in addition to smartphone editor here at AT, I have to admit that I’m granted an interesting perspective. On one hand, you have the traditional desktop LCD market, which is currently mid-stroke in a frenzied race to the bottom, and on the other, the new and emerging world of sub 10” mobile displays. Well, anything tablet sized and below.
I find myself more excited and concerned with mobile displays at any given time than desktop LCDs because that’s where everything exciting is going on. Further, it’s mobile displays where all the new innovation and competition is happening - Super LCD, AMOLED, Super AMOLED with and without Plus, qHD LCD, and qHD LCD with PenTile, all in just the last year! On the desktop side, it seems everyone wants to outdo each other at shaving another $20 off mediocre 1080P TN panels.
In the mobile game right now, you need to have some sort of non garden variety display on a flagship device, and more and more that means one of three things. Either you have to have a display that’s inordinately huge, has extremely high DPI, or is one of three AMOLED varieties.
If you remember, about a year ago HTC started marching down the AMOLED path. The Nexus One, then the Incredible, and Desire had first generation 3.7” AMOLED displays with PenTile. As things went on, availability constraints made the Incredible supplies scarce, and forced HTC to switch to Super LCD with the Desire. Depending on the content you spent most time looking at, the Super LCD Desire variant also got better battery life. I suspect that things are a bit more balanced with Android 2.3’s black-heavy theme, but back in the 2.1 days the Incredible and other AMOLED-topped displays ate battery. Since then, HTC has stuck to its guns with exclusively Super LCD displays, although they don’t underscore the Super part of that descriptor as much anymore.
So what is Super LCD? Earlier I mistakenly stated that it was IPS - it’s actually a PVA derivative. So why PVA? Well, remember AMOLED’s strengths - excellent (completely off) blacks, extremely fast response times, and good viewing angles. It’s easy to nail the first and last with IPS, but I wager that HTC also wanted to eliminate any chance of smear, and went for S-LCD which (thanks to its PVA heritage) offers a nice balance of the three. In addition, the S-LCD panels use a traditional RGB (3 subpixel per pixel) stripe rendering layout, making it even better in some ways than the original AMOLED for things like web browsing and sharp-edged or one pixel thick UI elements. Panel types aside, S-LCD is good enough that it’s hard to tell apart from IPS. Right now the options are either to get WVGA with SAMOLED+ sans pentile, or qHD with an LCD. Soon we'll have a third option, Super AMOLED qHD but with pentile. I wonder what that'll be called - at this rate, perhaps Super AMOLED Extreme HD MAX?
So how does the Sensation’s qHD 4.3-incher stack up? I’d argue that it performs very well. First off are our usual charts where we report brightness (white and black) and resulting contrast measured using an i1 Pro at maximum brightness.
Here the Sensation is actually almost top of the charts when it comes to contrast and its blacks. It isn’t the brightest display at just short of 400 nits, but does very well in the tests. I suspect the Sensation could benefit from more brightness in general, but it isn’t a huge thing.
The previous charts are at maximum brightness, I also want to continue looking at how whites, blacks, and white point change across the brightness scale. To do this, we measure all three at steps of 25% on the brightness slider and create some graphs.
We’ve just started doing this, beginning with the Droid Charge, so we’re also learning here, but the HTC Sensation has some interesting behavior. Blacks strangely enough get better at maximum brightness by a small margin, and again we see that brightness for white is pretty close to linear. Where I’m very impressed with the Sensation is its white point, which is nearly 6500K at maximum brightness. Contrast that to Super AMOLED Plus, which we showed was up past 8000K (blue).
I’d say that mirrors my experience and what I see, especially because I end up pulling down tons of screenshots over ddms on my own calibrated display, and can simply compare side-by-side to the handset. When it comes to faithful color rendering, S-LCD is a clear winner.
Side by side with another Super AMOLED Plus packing smartphone, the AT&T Infuse 4G (which we’re still working on), this is readily apparent. This is essentially a 0.2” bigger but completely comparable version of the Charge / Galaxy S 2 display. Here you can see that the Super AMOLED Plus panel looks bluer, and by comparison the Sensation a bit warmer. In addition, colors are more saturated on the Infuse.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
107 Comments
View All Comments
synaesthetic - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
No SGS2 on AWS bands. :(coolhardware - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
Nice review. Never thought I'd see a gf discussion be the first comment posts on an AT article ;-)A note on the Sensation, it is supposed to be capable of 1080p MKV playback!
http://www.jdhodges.com/2011/06/can-android-do-108...
And of course the 1080p recording is pimptastic too:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&i...
Overall a pretty sweet phone IMHO :-)
mutu - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
pls review Samsung galaxy S2.Penti - Saturday, July 2, 2011 - link
Not to nitpick but why is it even called 4G? It's simply a 14.4Mbps device, we have 32Mbit (advertised speed) HSPA+ for "mobile broadband" here in Sweden, and nobody would care much what speed the cell phone is able to use and nobody tries to pass it as anything else. It's simply called HTC Sensation over here in Europe. Do not yet have 4G in my very little town, but 32Mbit HSPA+ is here. Expect 4G even out here in this market within a year or so though. Sooner in neighboring towns. Guess it's a good thing AT&T are picking up T-mobile USA. We will still need HSPA/+ for a while, but we are quickly moving on. Sure you could also opt for a WiMAX 16m network and the handsets is about as immature, but you need to be building your next gen network now.synaesthetic - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
The "4G" is T-Mobile US silly marketing speak that means nothing, of course. They tack 4G on the end of every phone with an HSPA radio capable of more than 7.2Mbps peak downstream.Penti - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
Yeah I know that, but why not just call it "Our old network till we get picked up by AT&T"? It's clear why they are without a next gen plan. Their customers need to be picked up by another operator for that to happen.synaesthetic - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
Until it's unlocked, I won't buy it.tejagamer - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
Excellent Review.. As usual..Now waiting for your comparison of SGS2 vs O2x vs Sensation and the SGS2 review..
bubblesmoney - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
Hi Brian,When you review the SGS2 please compare the internal memory on it to the internal memory available on other top of the line android handsets. This is an important limitation on android handsets which are not rooted +/- rommed to overcome the app2internal memory problem of android. Full time Android users [not part time android reviewers :) ] will appreciate what i mean. None of the reviews of android handsets bother to cover this problem users of stock handsets face if they dont root their handsets.
Handsets made by the likes of HTC severely skimp on the internal memory, more specifically the internal memory partitioned and kept for loading apps. On just a year old HTC Desire the partition available for apps is just a measly 147mb. Even on the HTC sensation it is just about 1gb. Compare this to the year old samsung galaxy s which has 1.8gb available for apps. The samsung galaxy s2 also has about 1.9gb available for apps from its 16gb/32gb internal memory. The HTC low internal memory problem does not go away by buying a 32gb card as the card is useless for apps that go on internal memory. The only option on HTC handsets which ALWAYS come with low internal memory compared to the competition (internal memory partition available for apps) is to buy a non HTC handset or to root and get rid of the problem or to use the sdk method described on xda forums.
For a reviews of android handsets it is vital that the internal memory is compared too in a comparison chart and more specifically the internal memory available for apps need comparing too. Please exclude the useless microsd cards supplied with handsets as that is useless for apps that dont go to sd card. Hope you provide such comparison charts for future reviews of android handsets. When games by gameloft etc run into many MBs on internal memory, having internal memory of the likes of 147mb available for apps on the HTC desire will be crucial information especially for many android handset buyers.
Similarly the rear speaker quality being poor is another HTC hallmark in my opinion after owning 2 HTC handsets. But not sure if it is just a hardware issue or HTC software issue. But things get better after loading apps with equalisers (poweramp etc) and boosting the gain. This works later even if the said apps are deleted I think.
Software is nothing without good hardware, so i will be keeping away from HTC and go the samsung galaxys2 way. But I guess the compromise is the much poorer GPS reception on samsung galaxy s2 and other handsets made by samsung.
USB on the go needs to be mentioned as well as competitor handstes have this feature but not the HTC sensation.
Accessories like speaker docks, keyboard are an important differentating feature. Just have a look at the HTC website to see if their handsets can even find one speaker dock or even anywhere else on the net. These options will make a difference to buyers and need to be mentioned in handset reviews.
bubblesmoney - Sunday, July 3, 2011 - link
Brian,In another review they seem to be saying the speaker is good. see http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_sensation_vs_galaxy_si... see the link for detailed test results