Gadgetory

a month after releasing the Titan to windows phone handset HTC is back with its highly anticipated Android phone the One X and I can't wait to see what's inside this Ice Cream Sandwich powerhouse I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open given that the 1x and Titan to look alike and are both from HTC it seems logical that they would have a similar internal design and be cracked open in roughly the same manner but no unlike the Titan tube which has a three-piece back cover held on with screws the One X has a single piece cover which snaps onto the devices frame so using a thin metal tool I started near the bottom of the display and worked my way along the edges popping loose the cover as I went after lifting the display and frame assembly out of the cover we got our first look at the phone's hardware and it's immediately apparent that the One X's internal design is significantly different than the Titan twos the main circuit board is mounted above the battery and partially protect it find internal cover the board extends along the phone's left edge and eventually meets up with a smaller board that's used for the docking connector and it was when removing this board that the One X reminded me why HTC devices can be a real pain to crack open and reassemble instead of conveniently placing the battery and display assembly connectors on the side of the motherboard that faces the phone's outer cover the One X's designers put connectors on both sides of the board now this makes it very difficult to reattach the connectors when you're putting the phone back together and it means that you'll need to remove the motherboard to replace the battery why HTC did this on the One X when they didn't do it on the Titan 2 is just beyond me but enough of my griping let's look at the rest of the hardware the One X has a 4.7 inch display with a resolution of 1280 by 720 an 1800 milliamp hour battery an 8 megapixel rear camera 1.3 megapixel front camera and a Beats Audio speaker looking at the chips our US version has a 1.5 gigahertz dual or Qualcomm s4 processor one gig of ram and 16 gigs of storage now this for me is a bit disappointing when the phones european variant has a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor but the loss of RAW processing power may have an upside the One X's Qualcomm chip contains both the application processor and a 3G LTE modem now this eliminates the Tegra 3 s need for a separate modem given that both variants have a battery with the same capacity u.s. buyers may get a little bit better battery life and as CNET's Brian Bennett notes the 1x flies through Ice Cream Sandwich and HTC's since overlay with oomph and agility rounding out the 1 X's other major chips are an infant Sense 3-axis gyroscope synaptic touch screen controller and audience ear Smart voice processor despite its lack of a quad-core processor or microSD card slot and my complaints about its internal design the One X gives Android fans in the u.s. a lot to be happy about as of this taping it's available for $1.99 with a two-year ATT contract or 629 without to see more teardown photos check out my full cracking open gallery at TechRepublic com forward slash cracking open 4c net and TechRepublic I'm Bill Detweiler and this has been a cracking open of the HTC One X you