Gadgetory

now you wouldn't know it looking at the packaging of these two phones this is for the 8x this is the packaging for the 8's but the 8's is actually the little brother of the 8x so it has a bit of the lower spec overall a one gigahertz processor versus the 1.4 gigahertz s4 processor in the 8x it also has 512 Meg's of RAM four gigs of on-board storage which probably seems like not that much in the context of installing like a ton of apps or anything like that but this is more of an entry-level phone overall so the screen resolution is only 800 by 480 which is still a fairly respectable I think 226 pixels per inch or something along those lines it is smaller than the 8x so if you guys don't know already I'm using an 8x as my daily driver phone I switched from my iPhone 4 because I'm doing a 30-day challenge where I'm trying to see if I can survive in the sort of fewer apps available and sort of less well-established ecosystem that is Windows Phone 8 as an avid iOS user so I'm in the middle of that I don't remember where I was going with this but yes it is the younger brother of the 8x it is smaller it has more of a rounded shape to it that I actually find more natural to to hold and I'd actually go as far as to say I like the finish on the back of it better than the 8x as well because the 8x is a little bit slippery on the back whereas the soft touch feel on the 8's is is a bit more grippy so the fact that I have small hands makes it easier to hold from the get-go and then the roundedness and the and the grip enos means I should be able to actually type more easily on an 8's than an 8x one of the cool things about Windows Phone is the fact that the way they've optimized the UI it should be snappy pretty much regardless of the processing power available on the phone but while that's what we're waiting for that to turn on there's the screen it's using Super LCD vs. Super LCD 2 in the 8 X version so while we're waiting for that to turn on let's do a quick I phone size comparison just because you know it's what I do so this is an iPhone 4 and then this is the 8's up here you can tell because they look very very very different so the 8's has a slightly slightly larger screen there you go terms of the width it's fairly similar but it is a little bit taller at sixteen by nine and then you can tell my iPhone 4 is pretty beat up overall the rear camera is a 5 megapixel camera it does have a built-in flash unlike the 8x which has notification LEDs on both sides so there's actually one built in here and then one built in under the grill on the front it looks like the ADA doesn't get that feature and it also doesn't get a front-facing camera unfortunately now I don't want this to turn into a whole huge list of what the 8's doesn't have because it does have a few things going for it it's got a microSD expansion slot which you can access by removing this bottom piece right here somehow I actually haven't I haven't had it out of the box yet so I don't know how to access it but you the sim installation is not down there yeah it's down there as well as microSD expansion but part of that is to compensate for the fact that the AES has four gigs of on-board storage so that means for installing applications you're going to have four gigs of space including Windows Phone 8 alright so we figured out a couple of things off camera number one is that we all agree that it has a really nice feel to it just with the reduced weight the size the the grip enos of the back and we figured out there you go that's how to remove the chin from the phone so it actually comes off reasonably easily and it looks like there's a built-in sensor there that will allow the phone to know that you've opened it up so that's good there's your microSD expansion there's your SIM card and then you can go ahead and close it back up it because it wasn't easy to remove I would say that it was oh yeah there it goes see Mary I would say that it's not easy to accidentally remove because you have to actually put pressure on it this specific way we had to check the instructions in order to figure that out so this is the Windows Phone interface we can click get started now most okay the general consensus about this phone seems to be that the UI is still very snappy remember that's what that's what Microsoft has done so here we're gonna sign-in later that's what Microsoft has done with Windows Phone 8 is they've attempted to say ok well regardless of whether it's a 1 gigahertz processor or 1.7 G a Hertz processor or whatever else we still want the UI to feel very smooth and responsive now I've noticed this with the 8x but obviously I haven't spent to me time with the 8's yet so I won't have I won't have any specific feedback on that in terms of dedicated buttons it's again in line with that Windows experience so you've got a back button a Windows key the back button also serves as a multitasking button so you hold that down to access your multitasking applications so for example here on I'm sorry I'm demoing on an 8x but that's not what we're unboxing right now so you just hold that down and you can skip between all of your different all your different applications that you have open so that's what that buttons for the Windows button goes back to sort of the main home screen which is where you keep all of your live tiles so there you can see little previews and notifications you can scroll down and access other live tiles and then the search button so this is a dedicated search button which takes you to a Bing search now the Bing search attempts to look at whatever you're searching for when you press it and go okay he's probably if he searches for Hello Kitty he's probably looking for pictures whereas if he searches for guide on how to drywall something then he's probably looking for a video or whatever else so it tries to be intelligent that way one of my complaints about Windows Phone is I wish it was more like a contextual search and it searches for whatever you happen to be looking at but that's not the way it's designed they want it to be very sort of searchable on the phone does include seven gigs of storage on SkyDrive so that and the expansion using micro sd should help to alleviate some of the some of the issues people might have with having only four gigs of storage for installing apps and for entry-level users it may not be an issue for me personally I would find four gigs to be restrictive but if that's the case you can't always step up to you know the bigger brother the 8x in line with that consistent Windows experience you've got the buttons that are included so there's your three-and-a-half millimeter Jack here there's your power button here at the top your volume buttons here on the side and finally a dedicated two stage camera button so this is for the five megapixel camera that is a back mounted camera and the way that it works if the phone is the phone's booted up now right nope still setting up your phone okay again I'm gonna do this I'm gonna show it to you on the 8x because this is the one that I actually have booted up so the way that works is you actually hold it down to your camera app and then you can focus with a half click and then take your picture with the second click so I actually found it very very quick very responsive to use on the 8x and we clearly haven't tried it on this one yet right last thing to mention is that beats audios not I was going to say sticker but that beats audio branding on the back the 8x actually has one of the better speakers that I've encountered on a phone yet including slicks s3 that we've got handy here for size comparison as well here I'll let you guys enjoy that size comparison while I talk about the audio so it has one of the better built-in speakers but that's not actually what the Beats Audio branding is about the Beats Audio branding is all about the headphone experience so you can actually turn it on or turn it off and what it does is it boosts up the audio level so it does make the audio louder and it also amps up the lows and the highs so I personally didn't find it to make much of a difference for me well I found it to make a difference but I found turning on Beats Audio didn't make my music more enjoyable for me but I didn't find the onboard audio for the 8x again I'm talking about the 8x to be objectionable either so you can turn Beats Audio off and then it's a perfectly good audio chipset in there so it wasn't an issue that I had it turned off so the Beats Audio branding is here so this one has Beats Audio as well we can have a look at what's included in terms of accessories so you get a couple HTC stickers that do that you get a Windows Phone 8 s by HTC quick guide that shows you some basic stuff like installing the sim which we used customizing your start so your Start menu customizing your ringtone keeping in touch so the people app is actually very useful it takes sort of your Facebook your Linkedin your Twitter and all that stuff and just kind of yeah puts it all in one place and it works very well it works better I'd say for consuming information than it does for posting information because I found things like tweeting from the People app somewhat limiting and a little bit non-intuitive but it's great for just kind of seeing what's up with the people that you follow are the people that you're connected to at Glantz rooms and groups keeping things in sync another thing that I absolutely love about Windows Phone all the apps finished installing all done there we go so the 8's has fired up one of the other things that I love about Windows Phone is moving media on and off of the phone is absolutely drag-and-drop you plug in a micro USB cable and then it's just a folder which is the way that every phone should work for copying music I should not have to deal with iTunes to get some music on my stupid phone that's just ridiculous so here we go that's what the that's how the UI smoothness is on the 8's here so again I can't really see anything that would particularly bother me about it compared to the 8x now if you're browsing the internet for example you'd probably run into things that are a little bit slower on the 8's versus the 8x but the Windows Phone ecosystem is designed for this I don't know if I mentioned this before it has 512 Meg's of RAM and right let's see if there's anything else included right so you do get a wall wart there we go as well as the USB cable that I mentioned before that you might need and I think that pretty much covers it thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the 8's from HTC don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from on boxing's reviews and other computer videos