HTC One S Review - International and T-Mobile
by Brian Klug on July 17, 2012 9:30 AM ESTIt took me a while to finish the One S review, partially because honestly I didn’t want to be done with it. Ok, well that's part of it, truth be told it took me far too long to finish the One S review, but I have some good excuses - a month full of abrupt life changes, a move across town, and a number of trips to exciting places covering the SGS3 announcement, Google I/O, and Windows Phone 8 all seemed to preclude hitting post on the One S review. The whole time, I've been using the T-Mobile One S with my own T-Mobile SIM and plan (the magical $30/mo prepaid one with unlimited SMS, 5 GB of full speed data, and 100 minutes) since getting it, and the device is almost always in my pocket alongside either the One X, SGS3, or Galaxy Nexus with my other AT&T line.
If you’re a T-Mobile customer in the USA, there’s no doubt about it that the HTC One S is the current number one or two device out there, thanks in part to that combination of DC-HSPA+ and new 28nm SoC. Even now that T-Mobile has the Samsung Galaxy S III, the One S still has a place at the top of the carrier’s lineup for shoppers that aren’t looking for the largest device, or value the metal construction. Since both are based on the same SoC, the differentiating factors really come down to display, camera, and other features. SGS3 obviously includes the bigger and better display, but HTC feels like it holds the upper hand in camera and construction. The rest is just personal preference. For international shoppers, their particular One S gets the plasma sputtered metal case in addition to none of the T-Mobile software preload.
Really the differentiator is the display, and LTE. With regards to the display, I initially thought that another 4.3" qHD SAMOLED display with PenTile would immediately turn me off, but HTC has done the best job I’ve seen thus far of getting that particular panel to a place where it doesn’t have a weird tint at every brightness level or insane amounts of sharpening. It blows my mind that Samsung can't get its own AMOLED panels tuned this well. With regards to LTE, there are still a number of carriers out there who don’t have LTE, but are instead looking to improvements on WCDMA to both increase capacity and deliver higher throughput. In my neck of the woods and other similar places where there's no AT&T LTE coming for the foreseeable year or so, going to a carrier with DC-HSPA+ in the interim does make some sense.
I really have to go back to what I started talking about in the first section - the One S has an absolutely phenomenal in-hand feel thanks to the combination of both that metal construction, and the center taper. Even in the supplied case, the device sort of fades away in the pocket in a way that is starting to become depressingly uncommon as OEMs push into much larger display sizes and form factors.
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Zoomer - Thursday, July 19, 2012 - link
One could also take apart the phones, hook the logic boards/screens to seperate specialized lab power supplies, and then conduct the tests that way.Possible? Yes. Realistic? No - unless you are Intel and want a competitive advantage.
amdwilliam1985 - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
On my SGS2, I enabled wifi-calling and limited radio to edge speed(10k/s), I can go through 2 days with normal usage at no problem.Android device got the power but doesn't mean you need to run it at maximum speed all the time. I run at "slower" speed most of the time, and ramp up the speed only when I "needed".
e.g. How fast can your car drive at? How fast do you normally drive at?
tipoo - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Screen size, processor clock speed.amdwilliam1985 - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Puny screen that doesn't show much for anyone to see.TareX - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Also, AMOLED consumes close to twice more power when displaying the predominantly white screen of web browsers compared to LCDs.Aslund - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
I have recently recommended this phone to my mother, which she also bought. Initially I also thought the screen would be a huge let down, but after viewing it in real life I was pretty impressed. Sense 4 gave a good impression and the sleek feeling compared the Motorola Razr Maxx makes this phone, in my opinion, the best within its size range.hurrakan - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
The "Display Mate" website advises NOT to set a black background on OLED screens:"Because of differential aging, setting your wallpaper to all Black is most likely a bad idea because the fixed arrangement of Home Screen icons may eventually affect screen uniformity, so ghost images of the icons might become noticeable."
http://www.displaymate.com/OLED_Galaxy_S123_ShootO...
Brian Klug - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
I suppose it depends on what tradeoff you're willing to make. If you go through phones like I do, you'll be onto the next device long before aging effects start to burn in (and remember, it's also a function of what brightness you're driving, too).-Brian
nitram_tpr - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Nice review Brian, looks like a good phone. It's still a bit too big for my liking, I have the SE Xperia Ray and it (for me) is almost the perfect size. I'd love to see Samsong, HTC, LG etc come out with a sub 4" screen sized phone with a good high resolution.Size isn't everything you know?!?!
As for battery life, the 4s is thicker than this phone and alot that are out there so will have a bigger capacity battery. It also has a less powerful CPU/GPU than the newr phones to cope with.
MadMan007 - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
For this SIM-only plan "(the magical $30/mo prepaid one with unlimited SMS, 5 GB of full speed data, and 100 minutes)", can 'anyone' (not a major tech site journalist) get the SIM through T-Mobile site or Wal-Mart without buying one of the matching phones?