HTC One Series
HTC announced their new line of smartphones a few days ago, the HTC One devices and because I use an HTC and love their phones and tablets, I decided to write about what I think of their new phones and HTC Sense 4.0.
The One V is now a lower-mid-range phone, with a 3.7 inch WVGA display and a single core 1GHz processor. I don’t really think mid-range smartphones really need dual-core processors because my phone has a single core processor and it works great. I haven’t properly tried out a dual-core smartphone and I’m sure I would notice a difference in performance when multitasking, but my phone works.
The One S is a mid-higher-end phone with a 4.3 inch qHD display and a dual-core processor. If I was going to get a new smartphone from the One line, this is probably the phone I would choose. It isn’t as powerful as the quad-core One X but I don’t think I will need a phone more powerful than my MacBook just yet.
The One X has a massive 4.7 inch screen with 720p high definition resolution. The quad-core processor means that this phone is very future proof. That is because a new version of Ubuntu has been developed to run on Android smartphones. Of course, it is possible to use Ubuntu for Android with a dual-core smartphone without any problems but the quad-core processor would be able to allow Ubuntu to run on two or even three cores.
All three of those phones look great but I can see room for improvement for HTC Sense 4.0. More specifically, I think HTC should have put more thought into the homescreen for the new version of Sense. I don’t think there’s much wrong with the new homescreen, but the main problem is the dock bar at the bottom. The only problem I have with it is that it has five icons, while the rows on the homescreen only have four icons. Nobody else seems to notice that but it could be just because I have OCD. I think the app drawer icon should be hidden, with a swipe gesture to bring it up.
Another slight problem with these phones is that the back, home and multitasking buttons are still separate from the screen. If they were instead placed at the bottom of the screen, a lot more could have been done with them. For example, they could have added the option to have a search button down there with the other three buttons. Some people use the search button in Andriod and other people don’t so I think it needs to be a choice. They could have also merged the on-screen buttons with the HTC Sense dock bar on the home screen, because I don’t think many people on their Androids use the home button while they are on the home screen.
Apart from that, HTC Sense 4.0 has some great new features, such as the changes they made to the camera app, allowing users to take pictures while recording video. I also think the Dropbox integration was a good idea, and giving everyone with an HTC One 25GB of Dropbox storage for two years will increase the sales of their devices. Sense 4.0 also has a new minimalistic look. Because of the changes they made, I am hoping that my Desire S will get the update.
Posted on Thursday 1st March 2012 - Leave a comment