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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UltraTech79 - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Why would this matter? It's not like you can upgrade the GPU or change the screen. Its an integrated package, so he shouldn't do that at all.randinspace - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
LOL Totoro! That takes me back to a far more innocent (and lower resolution) time. 本当になつかしな...jjj - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
no microSD = deal breakerHTC is such a tease,almost having the device to buy ...
sprockkets - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
What about the battery being non removable as well :)Well, I'd like for it to be removable but it seems having a solid body wins out with the majority.
ImSpartacus - Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - link
I used to mentally require that, but I haven't touched the 16GB card that came in my Droid X. I thought I would've upped it to 32GB by now, but I haven't needed to do it.The0ne - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Just depends on your use and needs. I absolutely require memory card expansion support as all my files will be stored on there (music, videos, movies, books, documents, work, and so on).I was about to order this phone on Amazon for $150 but without SD support it's a deal breaker for me.
g00ey - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
EXACTLY! And don't forget that Android games also require a considerable amount of storage space. The game Modern Combat 3 requires at least 1,75 GB of free storage to fit inside the phone. With the advancement of the GPU and CPU of smartphones we will soon see DVD sized games on handhelds. Imagine having 5 - 10 such games on a smartphone.The internal storage that comes with smartphones these days are abysmally low and a lot of people out there don't want to rely on some sleazy cloud storage solution, especially when travelling around the world.
Arbie - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
I agree - a (micro) SD card is a necessity. I can't carry TWO devices around if I want both a phone and a file player. Too many mobile makers appear to be clueless about this. Very sad to see it missing from such an otherwise excellent device.
ol1bit - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Cloud my man, Amazon stores it for free. Your local SD card is becoming not as important.Not only that but who can listen to 32Gb of music?, just use Pandora.
:-)
mbzastava - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
no one wants to be tethered to the cloud all the time. one can not be tethered to the cloud all the time. And 32GB of music is nothing if one wants to carry a decent variety.