Last week I posted my first impressions of the HTC One X, which can be viewed here. Over the course of this week I’ll be taking a more detailed look at various aspects of the One X, starting with its performance.
Besides the screen on the HTC One X which is phenomenal, there is another aspect of this phone that jumps out at the user early on. It is the performance.
It would be easy to write about this phone and explain that it is the fastest I have used to date, but I can’t do that because I don’t really know what fast is any more. All of the high-end Android phones are incredibly fast and so are the iOS and Windows Phones. Slow-downs and freezes are not common at all and for most tasks, a high-end phone will have no performance issues at all. However, the One X would appear to be different and in a way that is far from easy to explain. I could say it is smoother than most phones, but it is beyond smooth. Just like the gap between the screen surface and the pixels, it is often impossible to see some things happening. You tap an icon and the app just appears, you swipe and it feels as though it moves before you even touch the screen. This sounds crazy I know, but there is something going on here that is hard to quantify.
Do you remember when the original iPhone was announced? Whether you love or hate Apple, it was a revelation and the industry followed suit. It offered something so completely different to what we had seen before and it was quite difficult to put into words what that was. The One X does a similar thing with the performance and in particular the way it works. Again I find it hard to put in to words, but it is different to the other phones I have reviewed in a very positive way. It feels more immediate than any other phone I have tested, iPhones included, and in some ways surpasses the smoothness of Windows Phone and iOS devices because it is quicker than smooth. If the smooth transitions of modern mobile operating systems do not feel like computers, the One X feels even less like one.
You need to use the phone to understand what I am talking about, but the performance in the One X is unbelievable. Unbelievable because I still can’t work out why it is so good. It just is and that is what makes modern technology so great.
About Shaun McGill
Thank you Shaun for the update.
There’s only two things stopping me getting the One X
1. No external MicroSD ~ yes, I know it has a larg-ish Cloud Storage but I already have a sufficient CS but what I want is ‘MAXIMUM’ onboard storage.
2. The Samsung Galaxy Note ~ Slightly bigger screen but that S-Pen and soon to be released additional S-Pen software keeps me glued to the Note….. Plus, there is bound to be a Note 2 surfacing on the horizon later, especially as Samsung are now committed to the S-Pen.
Mike
I just thought I would pop back in here again to expand my views of Cloud Storage.
The two main issues with CS I feel are:-
1. Availability & Coverage
2. Storage Size v App Sizes
1. Availability & Coverage
I do not feel we are totally ready yet for CS.
One of it’s biggest problems is the Network Coverage.
Network Coverage in the UK can be quite spasmodic and unsteady.
It would be painful to be in a remote area that suffers from coverage only to find you can not access any of your CS files. As such I personally find CS not to be my main area of storage.
2. Storage Size v App Size
A couple of years back if you installed a file on your phone you would probably be looking at sizes of 1MB to 2MB Max. Once installed depending upon the installed file you would then ‘maybe’ have to install an additional 30MB to 50MB of Data to run the App.
However, files these days, especially graphic intensive games and programs can demand an additional extraordinary amount of data files.
As an example I recently installed for my GrandDaughter Super Monkey Ball 2.
Although this title only required just over 16MB to install the main app, once run it then asked for a further 800MB (yes EIGHT HUNDRED) of Data files to be installed.
Another title is ‘SkySafari Pro.
I recently installed this App on my Tablet and again although the main App was only 10MB, it’s additional Data files totalled over 600MB.
Now whilst it is obvious you would not install these additional data files to the Cloud, what it does mean though is where you would have had 800MB & 600MB of space to store other files this area has now been taken by ONE SINGLE GAME or TWO if you had installed both as an example.
As such that area for other files has to be allocated to the Cloud once your Phone starts to run out of internal storage.
Therefore, even with a phone that has 32GB of internal storage, once you have installed several graphic intensive files you soon start to fill up what internal storage you have remaining.
So, do I think phones should be totally reliant on their own internal storage and the Cloud………. Not on your life!
Mike