A Month With A HTC OneX | Initial Impressions

It's been a while since I promised updates to what it's like living with a Quad-Core beast of a phone that likes eating Ice-cream Sandwiches, but the truth is I'm so reliant on using it for quite possibly everything in my life, going back to this keyboard seems a little antiquated.

A green, white, box

The key thing here is tactility. A strange one I know, but it really isn't something you can get by watching videos, reading most reviews or looking at specs online before a purchase. But the HTC OneX feels amazing. It may take a little getting used to and perhaps for the first few minutes it may even feel cheap, but this soon changes. The screen for instance, is curved at the edges. A tiny detail, but when you are swiping left or right across the screen, the very edge is smoothed over.

Combined with a very light weight, high quality plastics on the rear (that have an almost matte feeling) with an embossed HTC logo and the phone feels lovely to behold. Now that may seem a little odd, anal even, but when you consider how much you actually use a phone and how often it is in your hands, it doesn't seem so daft to point out after all. It really gives the phone a premium feel, a sense of purpose and this is something that Apple have managed for years with the eponymous iPhone. I'd argue this is the first phone not from Apple to really match it on build quality (and funky packaging).

A OneX, Lens Cap Not Included

Then the look of the phone is something quite subtle. From directly above it looks like any other run of the mill HTC, but with a large screen. Perhaps, even too much like my old DesireHD, alongside each other the OneX doesn't stand out initially. But side on, sat atop a table for instance, there is a really cool swage line that tricks the eyes into thinking it has a curved profile. In actual fact, the phone is completely flat. I've tried to show that in the pictures, but perhaps it has to be seen to understand how a clever little touch changes the entire look.

So, it is a quality product that is leaps and bounds forward over previous HTC devices from a design standpoint. What about what it's like to live with. After all, it may be one of the (if not the?) most powerful phones on the market, but if that was reason alone to buy one we'd all be buying Blackberry Curves or Nokia Lumia 900's. But we're not. Come back later this week for more and in the mean time, check out the quick video below when I opened it and turned it on for the first time. I've also made a G+ picture album and read the image captions for more impressions (for instance, transferring old contacts to new phone using Bluetooth is pretty swish and every so useful).

A follow up post to A New Phone: Taking The Plunge