HTC One S Review - International and T-Mobile
by Brian Klug on July 17, 2012 9:30 AM ESTBoth the HTC One S and One X ship with the combination of both Android 4.0.3 and HTC’s Sense 4. I’ve talked in the HTC One X AT&T review about how I feel about Sense 4, and think it strikes a pretty good balance between feeling ICS-ey, and the customizations added by HTC which are HTC Sense. The issue with previous versions was always that there was just too much custom stuff everywhere - Sense 4 scales that back, but it’s still ultimately a skin.
The places that see the most Sense 4 customization are the homescreens (obviously), lock screen, settings pages, launcher, browser, and task switcher. Adding quick shortcuts to the lock screen (in addition to a few other optional modes) is handy, and these shortcuts get inherited from the bottom row of application shortcuts on the home screen.
The home screen is an obvious evolution of previous Sense launchers, and includes a 3D cube effect upon rotation, a number of custom widgets in addition to the stock widgets, and the ability to rearrange pages. The launcher is paginated and scrolls left or right.
I also like HTC’s keyboard this time around. It strikes a nice balance between still feeling like the stock keyboard and adding a different look and feel which matches the rest of Sense 4.
Probably the most controversial thing is the task switcher, which deviates a lot from the stock ICS switcher by including a 3D perspective preview. Apps can then be dismissed by swiping them up, just like WebOS cards. The current controversy is that HTC’s task scheduler seems a bit aggressive about closing background tasks that aren’t present in the notifications shade. I have seen it kill some things a bit quickly (I had speedtest running in the background get killed a few times, but not Google Music, which would be infuriating) but nothing that’s been experience-killing.
Lastly I think it’s worth noting that HTC has gone with the traditional mass USB storage (disk drive) behavior instead of MTP. This is the same across the HTC Ones, with the exception of the EVO 4G LTE (which I’ll talk about in that review). I find it interesting that everyone seems to have gone this way instead of using MTP which Google clearly is pushing.
Filesystem Size Used Free Blksize/dev 342M 136K 342M 4096/system 1007M 875M 132M 4096/data 2G 170M 2G 4096/cache 251M 4M 247M 4096/devlog 19M 14M 5M 4096/mnt/asec 342M 0K 342M 4096/mnt/obb 342M 0K 342M 4096/firmware_radio 199M 33M 166M 4096/firmware_q6 199M 5M 193M 4096/firmware_wcnss 4M 1M 3M 2048/data/secure/data 342M 0K 342M 4096/mnt/sdcard 9G 194M 9G 32768
If you look at df you’ll see that the 16 GB of NAND ends up being exposed as a 9GB / 2GB split for the internal sdcard partition and data (apps) respectively. The rest of that 5GB is absorbed into other housekeeping. Again, the HTC One S has no expandable microSD storage.
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Death666Angel - Thursday, July 19, 2012 - link
4.3" is my normal. 4.0" is really the smallest I could imagine going. iPhones 3.5" is just unacceptable for my usage case and hands. The Note was not that bad, though I only tried it in the shop. 4.6"/4.7" will probably replace my SGS2 in a year or so.ausaras - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
I seriously doubt the AMOLED screen in One S is from SAMSUNG, not after SAMSUNG screwed HTC over.I have read news in Taiwan several months ago that AUO is working on AMOLED screens. After reading this article, I Googled a bit and found several sources (in English and Chinese) that AUO indeed is shipping AMOLED screens at the second half of 2012, to HTC and Sony.
If any reader here is from Taiwan, it should be apparent that the Asian IT industry is in the mist of change. Taiwanese and Japanese companies are forming alliances against the SAMSUNG juggernaut. Another reason why I doubt the AMOLED screen in One S is from SAMSUNG.
tynopik - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
when i saw the pic out of the corner of my eye, i thought it was some sort weird combo phone that joined two regular phones with some metal scaffoldingJohnmcl7 - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I'm glad it wasn't just me, I was trying to figure out what on earth the phone was as it looked like some sort of strange double phone attached with a metal hinge from the picture.John
dishayu - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I love this phone. It's perfect for me. I was waiting for 3 months to be able to buy it, but then all of a sudden, HTC decided to bait and switch and now India has a One S with 1.7 Ghz Scorpion processor, unlike the krait in international version. VERY disappointed.Zoomer - Thursday, July 19, 2012 - link
They pulled a Samsung? Damn.M0rky - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
What countries is this One S international sold in? The version sold in Europe and Asia has a S3 cpu running at 1.7Ghz. I can´t find a single review of this version and as far as I can tell the S4 version is only sold in America.pikahatonjon - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
is the screen in the galaxy nexus and the galaxy s 3 the exact same?because i heard reports that the galaxy s 3 one is a bit more bright, but with franco's custom kernel and with the trinity kernal for the galaxy nexus, i can get it really bright. perhaps brighter than the 200 nits that you mentioned in this review. could you possible investigate?
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=22579...
azntwboy - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
So, according to your measurements, this screen has a color gamut of something like 130% sRGB? How does that actually look? Are the colors super saturated? How does it compare with the HTC X and the Google Nexus 7? Can you please provide a graphic with the color gamuts overlaid so it's easier to compare?One issue I have with all new phones is that they don't have replaceable batteries. I use my phone for both displaying photos for work, and GPS navigation for hiking, so I need to be able to run it for 8 days at a time. I have a HTC desire and I take 8 batteries with me for a week long hike. I wonder if a solar panel charger is something I could use instead of replaceable batteries.
dishayu - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
There are 12000 mAH USB battery packs on the market selling for around 60$ that you can carry along. IMO it's much more convinient than carrying 8 batteries and also a lot more versatile because you can use any USB chargable device with them.But i do agree, user replacable battery is one option i'd like to have as well, because ultimately when the battery performance starts to detoriate after months of usage, there's no other way.