Anandtech Review: The HTC One X for AT&T.

[kaerflog]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5779/htc-one-x-for-att-review/1
Haven't seen a thread for this ATT version yet.
I guess all the people crying that the US is getting an inferior One X can now stop.
Pretty much beat the International version in everything except for GPU performance and its not even much.
I'm jealous now since T-Mobile has to settle to the One S.
Would love to have that gorgeous 720p screen instead of the qHD.
Now we await for the Galaxy III tomorrow.

 

[lothar]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5779/htc-one-x-for-att-review/1
Haven't seen a thread for this ATT version yet.
I guess all the people crying that the US is getting an inferior One X can now stop.
Pretty much beat the International version in everything except for GPU performance and its not even much.
I'm jealous now since T-Mobile has to settle to the One S.
Would love to have that gorgeous 720p screen instead of the qHD.
Now we await for the Galaxy III tomorrow.

Who did that?
I thought people were crying the other way around?
That the US market gets the new Krait cores while Europe gets shafted with Tegra A9.

The crying I saw was for the Galaxy S III in which some website mentioned the US version won't get Exynos.

 

[badb0y]

It's official I am returning the Lumia 900 and getting the HTC One X.

 

[kaerflog]

Who did that?
I thought people were crying the other way around?
That the US market gets the new Krait cores while Europe gets shafted with Tegra A9.

The crying I saw was for the Galaxy S III in which some website mentioned the US version won't get Exynos.

There was alot of people crying.
People automatically assumed quad-core >> dual core.
It wasn't till the One S got reviewed that people changed their mind.
Even after that others said the One X has a 720p screen so the results might be different from the One S.

 

[ChronoReverse]

The GLBenchmark Offscreen GPU test continues to show how it's a worthless test. The regular test can't be limited by Vsync if it didn't hit 59-60FPS. And yet the International OneX get 48FPS @ 720p while getting 63FPS @ 720p offscreen.

It's a meaningless test if the better results only show up if you don't display the graphics onscreen.


As for every single other GPU test, including the GLBenchmark 720p ONSCREEN tests, the S4 beats out the Tegra3. So no more illusions about "inferior GPU" to the Tegra3 should remain.

 

[lothar]

HTC fixes two of my complaints with their phones:
1.) Battery life.
2.) Crappy speakers.

A lot of people(myself included) were crying about the non-removable battery combined with the low mAh rating.
Looks like my fears were unfounded.

This phone offers excellent performance with the same(or better) battery life as(or than) the Droid RAZR MAXX.
Is 2012 the year of battery life?

 

[QueBert]

good lord they must have really fixed the battery life with the latest update. Every review I've seen prior the battery life was middle of the road. If I had saw these numbers I would have went with the One X over the Lumia 900 for battery life alone.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Looks good, I'm glad to see HTC successfully competing in the high end market again. I'm still not the biggest fan of how Sense looks but at least it seems to work well now.

 

[vshah]

fingers crossed for a tmo baseband hack like that on the galaxy note

 

[cheezy321]

This looks like a really solid phone. I like the look, love the build and the battery life looks fantastic.

HTC is making a BIG step in the right direction. Good for them.

 

[EvilYoda]

I stopped into an AT&T the other day just to play with the One X and just about had an accident in my pants while I looked over the phone. Shit that thing is gorgeous.

I bought a Skyrocket in November since I was coming from an iphone 3G...I don't regret my purchase since it was the best phone for me at that time but jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez do I want a Galaxy Nexus/One X/whatever.

 

[kaerflog]

good lord they must have really fixed the battery life with the latest update. Every review I've seen prior the battery life was middle of the road. If I had saw these numbers I would have went with the One X over the Lumia 900 for battery life alone.

Well, I think the bad battery life is on the international version.
The reviews that I have read on the ATT version so far say that the S4 SoC is the difference maker in batterry life.

 

[ilkhan]

I stopped reading at this line:
"however the device does not work with T-Mobile WCDMA and the One XL page lists the correct air interface support." The rest of it was totally irrelevant after that. The ATT OneX was already borderline without a replaceable battery and without an mSD slot. The frequency support just closes the book for sure.
Pity. That screen has been getting tons of praise. Maybe the OneX2 will include a proper GPU and TMo support.

The lack of mSD and removable battery really pisses me off. Android phones first got started by word of mouth "expandable storage, easy to hack, total control, function over form", the antithesis of apple. Now they are racing to embrace all the bullshit that apple did 5 years ago. Jellybean is going to drop copy/paste support, but I'm sure KitKat will put it back in.

We don't need 7mm thick phones. Gimme the extra 2 extra mm of thickness if it means I get an mSD slot and replaceable larger battery, I'll be happier that way.

 

[3DoubleD]

Thought I'd move my discussion from the article comments to here.

I'm confused about the radio frequency support of the AT&T One X as well. GSMarena has said it has frequency support for AWS http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x_at&t-4614.php, but this is not the first time I've heard that this phone won't work on AWS... pretty confusing. What's going on? On the other hand, the One XL doesn't have support for the 1700 MHz frequencies http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_xl-4572.php, pretty confusing.

Also, on storage: How come there wasn't any comment on the ludicrously small storage space on this phone? How is 16 GB of flash acceptable in a TOP END Q2 2012 phone?!? This thing costs well over $600 and we only get 16 GB of flash! How much does slow NAND cost? Would an additional 16 GB of storage really cut into the bottom line? How about making 64 GB standard? High performance SSDs are going for $1/GB, and the NAND in these phones is no where near that performance level... food for thought. I can buy a 32 GB USB drive for $18! Why must HTC play down to Apple's level, then yet provide none of the upgrade options (which are in themselves insulting in a $600+ phone)?

Also, I'd personally rather they make 64 GB standard than have to keep playing around with SD cards. Their performance always leaves much to be desired, even if you buy class 10 and internal flash performance is always much better.

All I can say is, I hope the S4 version of the SGSIII will have the One X's great screen quality and amazing battery life, but with more built-in storage (or microSD if they must). I'd also like to see truely universal frequency support (a la Galaxy Nexus) and a better casing material. I don't like the sound of the "scuffing" of the backside plastic on the OneX. That new micro arc oxidized ceramic material sounds much more interesting. A 3000 mAh "MAXX" version of either of either the One X or the SGSIII might be interesting too, so long as they stay under 10 mm.

 

[MrX8503]

I am shocked at the battery life coming from HTC. Maybe they have finally broken their streak of terrible battery life. That screen looks amazing, I'd like to see it in person myself. Can't wait until non pentile 720p is the norm.

 

[Red Storm]

I am shocked at the battery life coming from HTC. Maybe they have finally broken their streak of terrible battery life. That screen looks amazing, I'd like to see it in person myself. Can't wait until non pentile 720p is the norm.

The battery life is definitely impressive, but I would wait for competitors to release their 28nm SOC phones before claiming that HTC has learned their lesson.

 

[ilkhan]

Thought I'd move my discussion from the article comments to here.

I'm confused about the radio frequency support of the AT&T One X as well. GSMarena has said it has frequency support for AWS http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x_at&t-4614.php, but this is not the first time I've heard that this phone won't work on AWS... pretty confusing. What's going on? On the other hand, the One XL doesn't have support for the 1700 MHz frequencies http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_xl-4572.php, pretty confusing.

What I understood was that the ATT OneX[L] and the Int'l OneXL had different frequency support, which turned out like this:
[UMTS]850/1700/1900/2100 (ATT)
[UMTS]850/.900/1900/2100 (Int'l)

At that point you have an AWS OneXL and a Euro OneXL. And that would have been just fine with me. Annoying that its not pentaband and thus "go anywhere", but acceptable.

 

[poofyhairguy]

So no more illusions about "inferior GPU" to the Tegra3 should remain.

From the review:

When not limited by v-sync, the Tegra 3 based international One X is about 12% faster than the Qualcomm S4 based AT&T One X.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

I love how HTC's "unified product line" already is split into a bunch if different, slight revisions. There are at least:
One X AT&T
One S International
One X International
One S T-Mobile

And none of them are the same! awesome.

Not that I care. I'm not getting anything molested by Sense anyway. Make a 28nm Nexus and I might take a look at it.

Also: will there be a not low-end phone this generation with a screen smaller than my dorm room TV?

 

[ChronoReverse]

From the review:

Did you bother reading what I wrote? Anandtech has consistently made the same mistake and has not addressed the fact that the GLBenchmark Offscreen test is extremely flawed and cannot be used as "a test not limited by VSync".

It is literally doing less work. In every single test where something is actually drawn, it loses.

You can tell this because the International OneX only goes at 48FPS. This isn't even close to 59-60FPS where it would be VSync limited.

 

[Knavish]

I love how HTC's "unified product line" already is split into a bunch if different, slight revisions. There are at least:
One X AT&T
One S International
One X International
One S T-Mobile

And none of them are the same! awesome.

Not that I care. I'm not getting anything molested by Sense anyway. Make a 28nm Nexus and I might take a look at it.

Also: will there be a not low-end phone this generation with a screen smaller than my dorm room TV?

Don't forget the Sprint Evo LTE, which I hope is nearly identical to this One X with the addition of a SD Card slot --> if so, sprint has a huge winner in the phone category.

 

[Mopetar]

The battery life is definitely impressive, but I would wait for competitors to release their 28nm SOC phones before claiming that HTC has learned their lesson.

On the other hand, even if HTC still has terrible battery life it just means that everyone else will have some truly phenomenal battery life. Looks like a solid device though. Hopefully this gives HTC some momentum and they can regain lost ground.

 

[soccerballtux]

yeah wondering why bigger deal wasn't made about the lack of micro SD card slot.
Aside from that this phone look perfect.

 

[dguy6789]

Yeah if it was 32GB with no microSD it would be okay but definitely not 16. I have more than that in just mp3s on my phone. I probably have over a gig of apps too. 16GB of unexpandable storage that needs to be shared between your music, pictures, videos, and apps is just not enough for a flagship 2012 device.

 

[dagamer34]

Yeah if it was 32GB with no microSD it would be okay but definitely not 16. I have more than that in just mp3s on my phone. I probably have over a gig of apps too. 16GB of unexpandable storage that needs to be shared between your music, pictures, videos, and apps is just not enough for a flagship 2012 device.

The sad thing is it's not even really 16GB, but about 10GB usable.