The best camera phone around

The best camera phone I’ve encountered so far, the HTC One X is an Android-based smart phone that comes up with really excellent image quality. The camera is so powerful that this is the first smart phone I’ve reviewed with the main focus on the photography.

Credit for the amazing image quality goes to the eight-megapixel BSI (backside illuminated) sensor and 28mm wide-angle lens (equivalent to 35mm photography) with a very bright f/2.0 aperture.

The sensor and lens allow the One X to capture terrific photos in almost any light. HTC says there’s even a dedicated image chip just for processing the photos.

Indoors or out, the pictures I took were sharp and clean, with plenty of detail and dimension. The indoor portraits were beautiful and crisp. Shots of nightlife were clear and beautiful. The Full HD 1080p video had good quality as well for a pocket-sized camcorder.

The camera performance is outstanding. Press the button and it takes less than a second to prepare for the first shot. Autofocus takes two-tenths of a second, and you can shoot continuously by holding down the shutter – up to 99 images, HTC claims.

Shoot in full auto mode and let the camera select the best scene mode or manually choose your own. There are HDR (high dynamic range), Panorama, Portrait, Landscape and Low light. Auto mode also includes fun effects – Distortion, Vignette, Depth of Field, Posterise, Sepia and Greyscale.

You get 32 gigabytes of internal storage, plenty for storing images and videos, but purchasers also get 25GB of space online at Dropbox for two years. HTC has integrated Dropbox into its HTC Sense user-interface so you can easily back up your photos and videos on the Web. You can even tell the camera to automatically upload to Dropbox when it’s connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot.

HTC’s wireless Media Link HD – sold separately for Bt3,490 – will display your images on your large-screen LCD or plasma TV. The One X can be wirelessly connected to Media Link HD and thence to a TV set’s HDMI port. But you need a Wireless N router with a 300 Mbps connection speed to ensure that video playback is smooth. 

The Media Link will download HD video content from your phone. To view your shots on TV, simply drag the files with three fingers upward.

You can also use the One X’s DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) wireless connection to connect to a DLNA-certified TV.

I must have mentioned at some point earlier that the One X is also a phone – and it performs impressively as such.

Cool, thin and sleek in a white, beautifully crafted polycarbonate body with a large, bright and sharp screen, the phone is only 8.9mm thick and weighs 130 grams. The sealed body, tapered slightly at the top and bottom, stops you from replacing the battery. There’s a micro SIM card but no slot for increasing storage with a microSD card.

The One X runs on Google’s Android 4.0.3 operating system with the HTC Sense user-interface 4.0. HTC Sense makes Android 4, which is already easy to use.

The power comes from a 1.5GHz Super 4-Plus-1 quad-core with an integrated fifth Battery Saver Core and a high-performance 12-Core Nvidia GPU. There’s plenty of working memory – 1GB of RAM for multitasking.

You get a seven-inch Super LCD 2 touch screen with 1280x720-pixel resolution that’s protected with Corning Gorilla Glass. The screen is quite beautiful for viewing photos and videos. 

The phone plays its own Full HD clips smoothly and fast. Web pages with graphics render rapidly and the menus and page scrolling are responsive and just as speedy.

You can tap into the 3G HSPA connections of all the major operators, using 850, 900, 1,900 and 2,100MHz. I ran a test with TrueMove H’s micro SIM and was delighted with the connection speed. Applications downloaded, YouTube clips played and my Gmail, Facebook and Twitter feeds updated quick as a wink. 

Best of all, the One X automatically uploaded my photos to Facebook within seconds of me taking them.

This is an impressive portable digital music player as well. It has the “Beats by Dr Dre Audio” technology integrated. 

I listened with my Sony premium in-ear type earphones and Beats really improved the quality of the music.

Get your HTC One X for Bt21,900.

 

        Key specs

_ CPU speed: 1.5GHz, quad-core 

_ Operating system: Android 4.0 with HTC Sense

_ Network: HSPA/WCDMA: 850/900/1900//2100MHz; GSM/GPRS/Edge: 850/900/1800/1900MHz

_ Display: 4.7-inch Super LCD 2 touch screen with 1280x720 resolution

_ Storage: 32GB

_ RAM: 1GB

_ Connectivity: 3.5mm stereo audio jack; NFC; Bluetooth 4.0; Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n; DLNA; micro-USB 2.0

_ Camera: Eight-megapixel camera with auto focus, smart LED flash and BSI sensor, F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens 

_ Audio supported: aac, amr, ogg, m4a, mid, mp3, wav, wma

_ Video supported: 3gp, 3g2, mp4, wmv, avi (MP4 ASP and MP3)

_ Battery: 1800mAh

_ Dimensions: 134.36x69.9x8.9mm

_ Weight: 130 grams with battery