Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing and first look at nothing actually no there's something this is the Windows Phone 8x from HTC this is a Windows Phone which basically means that you already know a lot of what there is to know about the device that's inside because Microsoft locks down the platform in a big way compared to what other manufacturers do so on Android you can find any configuration Under the Sun whereas for Windows Phone you can find I mean ok it's better than it was with Windows Phone 7 so you know they've locked down certain things like what kind of a you know processor you can use this guy right here has 16 gigs of storage and unfortunately does not actually give you the option to upgrade it with micro sd one gig of ram ok it's got a Qualcomm s4 1.5 gigahertz dual-core so this is the s4 plus platform this isn't nearly as fast as the s4 pro which is in the Droid DNA that we also took a look at recently but it should still be fast enough because of the optimizations that Microsoft has done on Windows 8 Phone to make it extremely fluid to use so we're sort of taking this off this is a very strange box it's like I thought at first that it was foam but it's actually like a cardboard paper carton thing ah there we go eco-friendly packaging got it Beats Audio is included with a glute exclusive built-in amp 4.3 inch Super LCD 2 screen 720p so this is not Super LCD 3 which is just a new iteration of the technology in the Droid DNA and it is not 1080p unlike the Droid DNA but I'm still really excited to try this one out just because I'm super stoked on trying out Windows Phone what else we got here 8 megapixel camera with an F 2.0 aperture lens autofocus LED flash ultra wide-angle front camera so this is part of HTC's whole image image sense sort of platform here so they've added a lot of that technology in here so it's got their dedicated image chip which is basically just fast video and photo processing the two-pointer aperture lens makes a big difference this is important because the lower the aperture the more light the lens actually allow us to pass through it this gives you automatically better photos compared to if you did nothing compared to if you had a higher aperture lens because the technology works is you've got a sensor on the other side that's a bigger or as small as it is and physics dictates sort of how much light you can hit it with and then the lens either allows more light through or doesn't allow as much light through the higher quality lens the lower the aperture it's capable of running at so they're basically just saying yeah we're gonna use an awesome sensor and we're gonna throw an awesome lens at it as well as the whole beatsaudio branding thing so I don't know I haven't tried it yet the whole beatsaudio paradigm thing that they've got going on this phone but what I do know is that having an amped an amped three-and-a-half millimeter jack on it will make a difference compared to having a non amped one especially if you have higher quality headphones or higher quality IMS this is mostly relevant for headphones though guys so dual-core crate I yes it uses an Adreno 305 GPU which is not the most powerful that's available on that platform it's actually weaker than a 225 but the 225 is sort of a last generation souped-up one and the audrina 305 is sort of a less powerful current gen one there's not there's not that many games on the windows App Store yet but hopefully that will change and we will need that GPU to to be capable of more in the meantime let's have a look at what's inside the eco-friendly box so this is please do not misplace this label and attached to the device to clean service or repair got it then we have a micro sim removal tool we have your Windows Phone 8x quick guide getting to know your phone front camera touchscreen oh yes the importance of the wide-angle front camera lens that's cool because if you're going to be using the phone for things like to haven't even know what see I'm such an Apple person see iPhone 4 right for FaceTime or Skype okay alright okay other things then what you can do is you can point it at you and it'll actually so you'll get a little bit of fisheye but it'll see a wider a wider image so if you had a group of people you know crowded around it or whatever else then having a wide-angle lens there beneficial whereas if you didn't then it would not be beneficial so yeah front camera here proximity sensor here so that could be useful notification LED is built into the front grille here the touchscreen is that this is awesome the touchscreen is actually labeled on here touch screen got it and then camera button is dedicated camera button this is a requirement on Windows Phone so it's a two stage button which means halfway for focus all the way to actually take a picture start buttons here with back and search dedicated buttons down there and you've got a micro USB for charging it should however be noted that this phone does include wireless charging but apparently it's not necessarily hold on let me just see is that this phone I have notes ok it's wireless charging but it's like not quite the same as other wireless charging solutions guys you're gonna have to leave a comment and let me know sort of if I'm wrong about that in fact we'll be back in a moment to put the sim in and then yeah there's a micro USB for charging which isn't necessarily my favorite connector but it's not the end of the world so we stealthily installed a SIM card in it while we while we were off camera there so let's get started click get started I can tell the difference between the Super LCD 2 and Super LCD 3 already because I did just have a chance to check out Super LCD 3 how do you like your Windows Phone can enable mobile data automatically download updates blah blah blah Wi-Fi connection oh this is speaking of what what's your home country United Kingdom where the heck was this phone intended to be sent there we go look at that they have Canada in there send my location to Microsoft when my phone is activated now it should be ok I'm sure Microsoft doesn't care a Microsoft account allows you to do it you know what we'll sign in later Diane later thank you a few more apps still need to finish installing so what else can we say about it um well number one is the fact that the biggest complaint that people have generally had about Windows Phone 8 is the app ecosystem so there's even things like google only has one native app for Windows Phone 8 at this point in time so yeah it's not as rich as something iOS or Android but I personally believe that that will improve over time so I'm my intention as of sort of filming this video right now is to stop using my iPhone for outright and switch to using the 8x from HTC and find out if I can actually survive the switch in the app ecosystem that exists so things like maps I'm expecting to be using Nokia Maps because Microsoft actually doesn't include Bing Maps as the default map application because apparently the Nokia one is excellent so even other handset makers have to use Nokia Maps which I thought was sort of a weird thing but is I guess not the end of the world as long as your Nokia you know what let's have a look at the phone physically a little bit they're calling it a human form which isn't the first time we've heard that as a way of describing sort of the way that a phone is got sort of naturally flowing lines there are no sharp edges on the phone whatsoever so everything is very curvy here if I actually hold it upright like this you'll see that the edges are rounded rounded edges hold it on this side it's hard to figure out the angling yep there you go so rounded edges again even the edges of the glass are actually rounded slightly so I really don't know if you're gonna be able to see that but there's no there's no sharp edge to it it flows seamlessly into the yellow accent speaking of the yellow the yellow shell so I picked this particular color it's a very bold color but there are other colors available guys don't worry the 8x isn't only available in peeled the retinas off of your eyeballs green which is definitely thankful because I have sort of a unique taste in terms of aesthetics and not everyone necessarily shares it so I just want to see if I'm missing anything else here will have to do of course my obligatory iPhone 4 size comparison so the phone itself is wider than an iPhone 4 which you'll know if you've done any research on it whatsoever because it's significantly larger than an iPhone 4 which most phones are these days because Apple seems to be falling a little bit behind in terms of phone sizes and and staying competitive about them people that the trend right now seems to be larger screen sizes thickness is pretty similar but because of the curved shape it actually does feel more natural in the hand compared to the droid DNA which I had said in my unboxing is way too big for my hands cuz I look at that I can barely reach across I have quite small hands and I thought was one of the reasons that I always found the iPhone for quite comfortable to use I can actually reach the top corner it looks like because of the dead space here at the bottom with buttons I'm not quite gonna be able to reach the top-left corner but it's not that bad I can do bottom left bottom right top right and not quite top left so hopefully I won't have too much trouble with that UI seems very very snappy so far and this is actually my first time with Windows 8 other than are not without with Windows Phone 8 other than a brief experience with it at the NCIX tech fair not that long ago so live tiles can be customized in a lot of different ways to actually give you live updates about things on the fly it includes Internet Explorer recommended Internet Explorer 10 which particularly for particularly for html5 is supposed to be quite the Beast so let's just go somewhere where people like to go like oh yes factory-direct oh no not what I meant to do allow no not FA CR that's not what we want I'll look at that speech recognition go ahead Oh facebook.com facebook.com ok then that worked in spite of all the sort of stuff that I was saying before that so that actually won't work that well because we want to go somewhere you know what let's just do our usual thing let's go to the NCIX website I wish it would take you straight there like kind of a I'm feeling lucky search if you key it right into there so browsing feels pretty smooth not quite as good as the Droid DNA where I can see a little bit of I can see a little bit of pop in at the edges and then zooming yet you can see it you can see it a little bit there but the Droid DNA is running the pro tip set whereas this one is running the plus chip set which is significantly less powerful so it's got NFC Kids Korner is kind of a neat feature that's included with Windows Phone 8 so it's not so much to protect your kids from doing anything stupid but it's - well yeah protect your kids from doing anything stupid that bunch of emails to everyone in your contact list but it doesn't necessarily protect them from finding anything harmful on the Internet's I think that pretty much does it I'm looking through oh yes data sense so its carrier dependent but it allows the data be compressed on the carrier side so that you don't use as much data and it also is supposed to help you this is a Windows Phone 8 feature find local hotspots that are around you and connect to them so that any background services can be running off that whenever you're in range of it it is an LG R an LTE 4G phone is not an LG phone LTE 4G phone but it is not going to be available in my region because I have the wrong carrier and this is the wrong phone and all of that stuff that makes it not work the media ecosystem is supposed to easily integrate with the Xbox Store compared to sort of previous zoom branding or whatever else is going on so if you buy something on here that's a song the minute you sit down at another Windows branded device or an Xbox it should all be available through the collec cloud there and that pretty much wraps it up so we'll just do a little bit more close up in terms of size comparison I'd love for you guys to see it up against a couple of other phones so this is a Samsung Note 2 so you can see that it's clearly absolutely ridiculous in size and has a BenQ sticker on the back which diesel thinks is some kind of a fashion statement or something like that then there's the Droid DNA so you can see it's quite a bit smaller than that and finally there's the iPhone 4 which you've already seen don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and I will see you guys again next time