The HTC One Makes Android Realize Its Promise
I am the relatively new wner of an HTC One phone and I like it a lot.
I cannot evaluate it in comparison to other contemporary Android phones, but I can say I like it t much better that the HTC One X+ I have had for the past eight months or so.
The HTC One X+ suffered from a number of problems:
- Slow task switching (despite a dedicated button)
- Unresponsiveness that would require a reset every day or two on average.
- An Sense email client that could spend over a minute updating if I just wanted to check my emails.
- A battery that would last a business day if I was lucky.
- A phone that would get hot to the touch in back when used extensively.
- Bluetooth audio controls that were at best a crapshoot as to whether they would pause or start up the audio file I was listening to.
But the HTC One X+ had a bunch of good qualities too, especially in comparison to my old Windows Phone 7 device and iPhone:
- Almost any application was available for it.
- Its 64GB of memory was more than enough.
- I never had any complaint about wireless speed with its LTE.
- The screen was a nice size.
- I liked the rubbery feel of the case.
I feel like the HTC One is a significant improvement over the One X+. I don’t have enough experience to know if it is the result of clean installs, new apps or the phone itself, nut I can say my experience is an improvement over the One X+ in a bunch of significant ways:
- The Enhanced Email Client is quite quick and responsive. My only complaints are (i) no access to shared calendars in Exchange and (ii) the Sense email interface is a little nicer. Fortunately I can use it in combination with the Sense Calendar and Contacts apps that don’t suffer from the same problems as the Sense email client.
- This phone is really responsive. Task switching works much more quickly than with the One X+ and apps start much more quickly. This makes a big difference in how nice the phone is to use.
- The BeyondPod podcast app works well and has not caused any of the issues that I has with the One X+ (something I suspected and caused me to try using DoggCatcher for a while as an inferior substitute).
In combination these make me enjoy using this phone enough to inspire me to make this (relatively rare) post on the subject!
