The Verge - HTC at MWC 2012: One X, One S, and more

HTC finds its way: Sense 4 and the One line

2012-03-06T19:25:01Z

HTC's new One series of Android smartphones garnered much of the attention and praise at Mobile World Congress this year. That's partially because the One X, One S, and One V are each compelling phones, but mainly the attention came because the One line represents a significant change in strategy for HTC. For the past few months, HTC has been a company adrift, losing marketshare and mindshare to its competitors.

The One series represents HTC’s attempt to get back on course, both in terms of hardware and software. HTC's AVP of User Experience, Drew Bamford, explains that all of HTC is aligned behind the new strategy: "Over the past year there's been a desire across multiple teams to become more focused. [...] That's the result...

HTC says Sense UI 'got cluttered' before latest redesign

2012-03-03T01:01:03Z

HTC's Sense Android skin was revamped at MWC with Sense 4.0, a lighter version of the UI that focuses on the phone's camera and audio. Now, HTC chief product officer Kouji Kodera admits that the redesign was meant to fight the creep of unnecessary clutter into Sense. "From the original Sense up to Sense 3.5 we added too many things. The original concept was that it had to be simple and it had to be easy to use and we had that philosophy, but over time it got cluttered," said Kodera. "Even on the home screen we had four or five icons before consumers got a chance to add things themselves. For the HTC One range we have taken it down to Sense 2 again."

Kodera also said that HTC was trying to incorporate more of the original Android design...

HTC's dark materials: hands-on photos with the gray One S, black One X

2012-02-28T16:20:20Z

HTC is touting the design quality of the One X and One S heavily and one major focus isn't the shape of the phones, but the materials that they're made of. The One X has a polycarbonate body that we like almost as much as the Lumia 800, but it's materials on the One S that really stand out. The One S has an aluminum shell with one of two finishes: a straightforward, gray aluminum body with a "gradient anodized" finish that has a very subtle light-to-dark shade. Android Central first spotted the gray version and so we swung by Google's booth to check it out for ourselves. It has a slightly cleaner, simpler feel compared to the complex feel of the black version, with a blue ring about the camera instead of a red one.

The black version of...

HTC One X car dock and media dock hands-on photos

2012-02-28T14:52:32Z

Sense 4.0 on the HTC One line of phones has a very excellent car mode, which gives "fat finger" access to contacts, navigation, and music. All that goodness isn't much use if you're keeping the phone in the cup holder, so we took a quick look at the car dock for the One X. It is a straightforward charging affair with no extra frills, you click the phone in and charge it via microUSB. Hopefully its simple nature means it will be fairly low-cost, but we wouldn't have minded seeing a car dock that utilized the charging pins instead of the microUSB port, but sadly that wasn't the case.

Those charging pins will also come in handy when HTC gets ready to sell its media dock for the One X. Unfortunately, it's not quite ready for prime time yet...

HTC Media Link HD will stream DRM movies from HTC Watch

2012-02-28T14:32:13Z

We spent some time at HTC's booth here at MWC and learned a few new details on the Media Link HD. Like its predecessor, the HTC Media Link, it acts as a straightforward DLNA receiver if your television doesn't support it. The HD version adds a few extra HTC touches, including the ability to stream movies wrapped in DRM from the HTC Watch movie service. HTC says that is had to put together a proprietary solution in order to get around the fact that DLNA doesn't support the DRM on streaming video, not to mention Sense 4.0's ability to stream a video while still using the phone to do other tasks. HTC may open up the protocol to other app developers so they can support that feature.

It's not entirely clear what wireless protocol HTC is using...

HTC One family portrait

2012-02-26T22:54:54Z

HTC has graced MWC with three new Android smartphones, forming its all-new HTC One series. The One X, One S, and One V all run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with a Sense 4 skin on top. They all feature a significantly enhanced suite of camera software and slim unibody designs. Unfortunately, HTC wouldn't let us see the One V turned on — the software isn't yet final — but you can get a better sense of what the trio look like by seeing them side by side in the galleries and video below.

HTC One X and One S thickness comparison

2012-02-26T22:05:42Z

One thing that really struck us when we first approached the hands-on area at HTC's press conference today is that it's genuinely difficult to tell the difference between the One X and One S at first blush, particularly if you don't have both of them handy at the same time. Thanks largely to a lower-res AMOLED display, the One S is supposed to be considerably thinner — 1.1 millimeters thinner, to be exact — but in reality, you really need to be looking for the variance. HTC has a long reputation of making thick devices seem thinner than they actually are through creative use of contoured edges (the Sensation, for instance), and the One X's sloped polycarbonate shell seems to pull off the same magic trick.

See another show of the two...

HTC One V pictures and hands-on preview

2012-02-26T20:52:41Z

HTC's One V is the "budget" offering in its 2012 lineup and has the specs to match: a WVGA screen, 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera, and 4 gigs of storage. There's nothing embarrassing about a phone that's not featuring the latest specs or the thinnest body and that goes double for the One V, which takes the classic HTC Legend form factor and updates it for 2012.

The aluminum unibody frame curves around to a glass screen that is not quite flush, at least on the pre-production model we tried. The phone actually felt small and particularly narrow, at least by the "new normal" of super-sized phones in 2012. The prominent chin at the bottom remains as divisive as ever — we're split as to whether it still works as a design choice. We're...