Gadgetory

HTC lost a lot of ground over the last year or so to some of their competitors Samsung Motorola and others they're trying to reclaim their crown with their new one series of devices with the one series they hope to regain a new software experience better hardware quality and choice so your choices are the one V the value model the one s the model that we'll review now and the 1x their new flagship so the question is is the HTC one s a good choice for you let's go find out like others in the HTC One family the 1s comes in a recycled paper box it feels cheap and it touts its environmental friendliness with packaging from renewable sources which is printed with soy based ink and is 100% recyclable and biodegradable the box is wrapped in a simple but elegant sleeve which highlights the phone on the front and includes specifications on the back lifting the lid you'll find the phone with protective films on the front and back a few manuals a micro USB cord european-style power adapter and tangle free headphones sadly they're not Beats headphones but they do the job the phone has an aluminum unibody construction it's cool to the touch and it feels hefty without feeling heavy it feels like a quality device something that we're missing in today's smartphones the power button is on the top and a large volume rockers on the right side on the top is a three-and-a-half millimeter headphone jack and on the right is the microUSB port the top and the bottom of the device have dual microphones one for your voice the other for noise cancellation the front of the phone has a very nice looking speaker which hides the notification LED which is near the left to the right is a front-facing VGA camera on the rear is an 8 megapixel camera with one LED flash which can record 1080p videos at 30 frames per second ironically the video app is only set to record a qHD from the factory what that means is if you want to get 720 or even 1080p recording you're going to have to go into the settings and manually increase it while that's not a problem it's curious so we recorded a couple videos to see why they set it that way is there some kind of technological reason to it we couldn't find any so you may want to just go ahead and bump that up to 1080p right away a few of the features that we like in the HTC camera app include the ability to take still shots while you're filming video but this usually results in a jitter in the video due to poking the screen with your finger the still camera has a burst mode that will take continuous shots while you're holding down the shutter button when you release it you're asked to pick the best picture and all the others are deleted the still and video cameras share the same viewfinder so you don't have to wait while you switch from one mode to the other what don't we like about the camera there's no panorama mode like there is with other Android 4.0 devices and video recording can take a full second or two after the shutter sound before it actually starts recording the camera is good for both still and video but it's not great most people will be entirely satisfied with it but the HTC One S won't replace your high-end camera or your SLR inside the phone is a 1.5 gigahertz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1 gigabyte of RAM and 16 gig of storage space a little over nine of which is available to you unfortunately there is no microSD card so you can't expand that if you want HTC addressed that by including 25 gig of Dropbox storage for free for two years that does mean that you're going to have to be connected to the Internet to use a lot of that stuff and it means that after 2 years you're going to have to start paying for that additional storage we use the usual benchmarking utilities to measure the phone's speed the results were some of the fastest we've ever seen quadrant topped out above 50-100 did that translate into a snappy experience when using the phone we'll come back to that in a minute the HTC One S is well so how does it do with basic phone tasks the 1s takes a GSM micro SIM which is easily accessible through the removable panel on the top of the phone since this is a European phone it's not locked we were able to get both AT&T and t-mobile Sims working just fine though data speeds through t-mobile were limited to edge battery life was quite acceptable lasting solidly through the day but requiring a charge to be able to make it through the evening so how does the HTC One S fare as a smart phone after all it's based on Android for specifically Android 4.0.3 which is Ice Cream Sandwich and then HTC went and laid since over the top of it it's more intuitive than ever before it's less in-your-face and more refined around the edges speed has also been improved but not enough and rather than using Ice Cream Sandwich is task switcher like the one Vee does the 1s sheds the stock Android Ice Cream Sandwich tests with your UI for a more webOS like 3d panel switcher thing sure it looks nice but it's significantly slower and adds extra hesitation in time to something that's supposed to be really really quick pinching on the home panels however is quick and it brings up the traditional leap screen that we're accustomed to with other HTC Sense phones it not only lets you jump to another panel really quickly but it lets you add and remove panels as well and is very intuitive adding icons and widgets to the screen however there's a little bit different than what we're used to and it's a little bit laggy the HTC One S comes with Beats Audio you don't have to do anything to take advantage of it if you're listening through the front speaker or even the included headphones Beats Audio doesn't do much for you at all just plug into a quality speaker and you're good to go bass was deep high notes were clean it sounded nothing short of beautiful Beats Audio definitely had something to do with that since one of the major things that we do with our smart phones is surfing the web how does the HTC One has to do with web surfing let's fire up pocketnow.com on both the HTC One S and the Galaxy Nexus both connected via Wi-Fi using 802 11 n notice how quick the 1s renders the page and how smooth scrolling is the Galaxy Nexus isn't bad but the 1s is definitely better the HTC One S is a good sized phone but it does a really good job not feeling big or bulky but how does it compare to some of the other bigger phones as far as size goes the 1s is a little thinner than the Galaxy Nexus and just a bit thicker than the Droid Razr screen sizes are about the same though the 1s has a qHD screen whereas the Galaxy Nexus is 720p HD that said text was just as readable on the 1s colors were sharp and vivid and the viewable area actually looks a little bit bigger on the 1s because of its translucent status bar unfortunately the 1s sheds the Ice Cream Sandwich soft buttons for capacitive buttons that we've become accustomed to with pre Ice Cream Sandwich phones that's not really a problem and they work really really well except when you launch apps that have a menu button in that case all the space that you just saved is now taken up by one menu button overall the HTC One S is a fabulous phone with great specs it does really really well in the benchmarks but it doesn't really play out well when you're using HTC Sense it slows things down where they should be fast and responsive it's a bigger phone but it doesn't feel big and bulky so it gives you plenty of on screen real estate without getting an awful lot of bulk in your pocket overall we love the phone but we've got to give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars for the little bit of lag enos that is well everywhere and the few other nuances that we noted throughout the review if you liked this video make sure you give it a thumbs up tell your friends about it and head on over to pocketnow.com for the full review for pocket now I'm Joe Levi