HTC ONE S

 HTC ONE S

FEATURES

Platform: Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4

Display: 4.3-inch with a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels

processor: 1.7 or 1.5 GHz dual-core

Camera: 8MP camera with AF, LED flash, BSI sensor and 1080p HD video recording

F2.0 aperture and 28mm lens

Memory: 16GB Internal memory,1GB RAM

Sound: Beats Audio

Battery: 1650 mAh battery

Wi-Fi, DLNA, micro-USB 2.0, HDMI

Display

The  black, glossy display on the front. Resolution wise, it keeps the Sensation's 4.3-inch display with a 540 x 960 resolution - qHD to users, meaning a pixel density of 256ppi .Its screen is based on Super AMOLED technology, and it’s good, not excellent. It delivers the intensely vivid look that’s OLED’s signature feature;  the sheer intensity of the color makes for an eye-popping experience.

The front features a curve design, with the edges falling off seemingly uninterrupted to the sides, like on the One X, but upon closer inspection the screen part is still very slightly recessed, so it's mostly an optical illusion.Its vibrant, yet quite over saturated colors and pitch blacks, resulting in an almost infinite contrast. When you tilt the phone from about 30 degrees onwards – white quickly starts to turn even more blueish. Otherwise the viewing angles are excellent, and the image doesn't fade or lose brightness almost until the end of the curve.

It's got a superb contrast ratios though. If you put the phone down and look at it from a couple of meter away, that screen looks even more incredible with hues just jumping out at you and finished off with the polish of the glass. It uses the PenTile RGBG matrix arrangement. PenTile somewhat improves brightness and power consumption, but some elements like icons, especially greens, and zoomed text might look pixelated to the trained eye, because of the honeycomb pixel structure.
 
Not an HD display, but still a very decent screen is what greets you on the HTC One S.

Design

 

The HTC One S is stylish and very well constructed. The thinnest phone HTC have ever produced, with a sleek, understated finish. Measurements come in at 130.9 x 65 x 7.8mm and weight wise, it's pretty insignificant at a shade over 119g.Not only beats most other phones on the numbers but feels like a featherweight. It felt comfy in my hand and didn’t threaten to burst trouser pocket at the seams.

 

It comes with aluminium body, and the ‘micro arc oxidization treatment’ finish means that it feels less like a metal phone, and more like a ceramic one. HTC claim that this makes it five times harder than regular aluminium; One certainly shouldn’t have any problems if they do drop this phone.

Up top is the power/lock button and 3.5mm headset jack, the right holds a volume rocker, the left gives us a micro USB socket and nothing at the bottom other than a tiny microphone hole. No accessing the battery here. It's sealed . At the back, you can only remove a small area, which allows you to add the (micro) SIM and do nothing else.

 

 

Processor(good)

The phone has a powerful 1.5GHz dual core processor, so games, apps and downloads are all pretty speedy. Internet use is especially good on the HTC One S, as Google Chrome runs on ICS, so pages load especially fast on the built in browser, even over 3G. Large pages reformat so that they fit onto the phone’s screen, and this works very well no matter how large the page is.  A feature called TextReflow adjusts the text according to the width of the display screen, making it easier for users to read.

 

Operating system

Although the HTC One S ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, it's decided to still include three soft keys beneath the screen and are fully responsive .

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is definitely the best-looking Android OS so far. This is overlaid by HTC’s new Sense 4 interface, which HTC have reworked for ICS, as they felt the previous version was overcomplicated. Unfortunately there are still a few too many widgets and animations, which can slow down the system slightly and just seem unnecessary.

The One S, which packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM, feels adequately snappy. And Sense does improve on stock Android in meaningful ways. The e-mail program, for instance, bundles related messages into threaded conversations.

Sense 4, like other Android modifications, is occasionally disjointed: when you skim between running applications, you go into a full-screen mode that’s so jarring that it could have been borrowed from another operating system. And HTC can’t do anything about the fit and finish of third-party Android apps.

Sense 4 is a respectable effort — never less than bearable, and pleasing at its best.

Camera(real selling point) 

HTC have installed a superb 8MP camera on board the HTC One S. Not only is the picture quality fantastic, and a bright LED.  It provides photos with rich and vibrant colors.

Features like Continuous shooting and Always Focus make sure that shots are accurate. LED flash makes sure that photos taken in the dark are also good quality. This gives  you a digital camera experience .

Flash offers good shots in low light, but the camera can also start up and be ready to snap away in about 2 seconds from standby. This is very impressive and a  for the One S, with the excellent 1080p video the camera records.

You can take still images even while you’re simultaneously recording 1080p video, and can hold down the on-screen shutter to capture photos in lickety-split burst mode. The One S, like some phones, should have had a dedicated camera button.

 

Battery

The HTC One S is a sealed unit, which means that the battery cannot be replaced by the user. This could be problematic if there is any serious deterioration of the battery over time. Holds a decent charge, and will easily last a full day of normal to heavy use.

On a 3G call, the HTC One S did really good – it lasted 9 hours and 42 minutes, which is very impressive considering the phone’s battery has only 1650mAh capacity. With the exception of the Samsung Wave III, the One S was beaten only by gadgets with huge batteries (the Galaxy Note has a 2500mAh battery, while the RAZR MAXX packs a whopping 3300mAh battery).

 

Storage(limited)

Unfortunately, one of the major drawbacks of the HTC One S is the limited storage. The handset comes with just 16GB of on board storage, but with no option for expansion. This is very disappointing, as this is a premium phone with excellent media capabilities (the music and video players are superb), but the phone will soon fill up, especially as the camera captures video at 1080p and hence stores large files. The one saving grace is that HTC offer 25GB of Dropbox storage, so users can upload their files to Dropbox and it is well integrated with the phone, but it is still a shame that HTC haven’t offered the option of expandable storage such as a micro SD slot.

It also includes 16GB of built-in storage for apps, music, phones and the like, but no MicroSD slot for memory cards.

 

Sound (rich)

Its Universal Beat Audio provides a rich sound experience and videos and movies look amazing on the HD display. Like other HTC phones, the One S sports Beats audio, a feature for headphone listening which the company says provides a “richer and more authentic sound experience.” It pumps up the volume and boosts the bass, and while I’m not sure if I’d call the results “more authentic,” I did like them, at least for music that benefits from an extra jolt of energy.

Good points 

High quality camera

Excellent screen

Thin and stylish design

Slim, svelte and beautiful

Built for Ice Cream Sandwich

Loads of widgets

Excellent battery life

Powerful processor

 

Bad points 

Very limited storage

Sealed battery unit

Limited memory, no SD slot

MicroSIM is a pain for some

Keyboard has seen better days