HTC at MWC 2012: One X, One S, and more

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 you're seeing in HTC One."

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."

The black version of the One S is where HTC has set itself apart, applying a process called "micro arc oxidation" that was originally created for satellites. HTC bathes the aluminum body in a plasma field, blasting it with 10,000 volts of electricity to turn the surface into a ceramic that's four times harder and more scratch-resistant than untreated, anodized aluminum. The result is a very dark black finish that feels a bit like a chalkboard — HTC calls it "feathery," but we'd say that's an overly euphemistic way to describe it. HTC showed a video of the process during its keynote, and it's quite a sight to behold:

Finally, HTC also had the black version of the HTC One X, which was a pre-production unit and felt very slightly rougher than the white version, but HTC tells us that both are made the same way and the final finish on them will be identical.

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 and so HTC kept it under glass next to a slew of cases it's planning for the One line. The dock was a pretty chunky affair, designed to hold the One X horizontally at about a 30-degree angle. HTC explained that the five pins on the rear of the One X can be used both for charging and audio-out to the media dock.

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 to stream content when it's not using DLNA, so we'll need to wait until it's released to get a better picture (so to speak). Unfortunately, the Media Link HD wasn't yet ready enough to be shown off at HTC's booth and there's no solid release date.

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.

See another show of the two flagships — this time in color-matched versions — below.

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 not split on the screen, which is a straight 3.7-inch LCD and looks great despite being only 480 x 800.

HTC has shortened startup time for the camera to 0.7 seconds and autofocus time to 0.2 seconds. Onscreen buttons for recording video and stills are now right next to each other (no more mode switching), there's an intelligent burst mode that lets you pick only the best shot, and you can extract stills from video with a single tap. The only thing that would've made this a more appealing phone to camera enthusiasts is a physical shutter button.

One of the other ways in which HTC diverges from the stock Android 4.0 experience is by omitting the trio of onscreen menu buttons and instead offering them to you as a set of capacitive keys below the display. That may seem like a retrograde step, but its practical impact is actually positive: moving those buttons off the screen gives you more real estate to work with. Only aesthetics snobs will find reason bemoan this decision. Less forgivable is HTC's decision to leave the One S without a microSD card slot or a user-replaceable battery. While ultrathin phones will necessitate compromises, I hate to see storage and power flexibility being among them.

HTC's new flagship is here: the HTC One X is in the vanguard of not just the new "One" lineup, but of HTC's mini-revival for 2012. Based on our brief time with it, we think the phone will manage to pull off both of those heavy tasks, though whether it will be enough to fend off Samsung's rumored Galaxy S III is sadly going to be an open question until later this year. For now, the HTC One X impresses on its own terms and specs, and what great specs they are.

The first and most important thing about the One X is its screen: a 4.7-inch 720p "Super LCD 2" panel that is simply better than anything we've seen on the market. It's bright and crisp, of course, but as we turned and twisted the phone we were literally unable to come up with a viewing angle that contained any distortion or discoloration.

Camera performance has been a real priority for HTC with the One series and all three of its newly launched Android handsets come with a selection of important optimizations. Firstly, a dedicated imaging processor has been added to allow the One phones to manipulate pictures before compressing them to JPEG format. HTC expects this to result in lower image noise, greater color accuracy, and higher overall quality.

Most of the improvements in the One cameras actually relate to speed. Startup time of the camera app is said to be 0.7 seconds and autofocus takes a blistering 0.2 seconds, making it quicker than the blink of an eye. Holding down the onscreen shutter button (you'll find no physical camera keys on these phones) automatically flips you into burst mode, with an intelligent selection menu then allowing you to pick the best shot of the bunch and discard the rest. There's no longer any need to switch between video and photo modes -- the software buttons for capturing stills and video sit right next to each other now, and HTC's neatest trick is that it also allows you to snap photos while recording video. And if you want to pull out a still from a video recording you've already made, HTC lets you do that too.

HTC has just announced a new app for in-car integration built into Sense 4 which will be available to all of the newly-announced One series, and any phone running HTC's latest Android skin. The app consists of three touch-friendly panels for contacts, navigation and media, and is triggered automatically when you dock your phone. The company will be selling a wireless clip alongside its One Series handsets which plugs into the 3.5mm jack of any car stereo to allow for audio passthrough. We're live at HTC's MWC press conference and will try to bring you a hands-on with the new interface soon.

Camera performance has been a real priority for HTC with the One series and all three of its newly launched Android handsets come with a selection of important optimizations. Firstly, a dedicated imaging processor has been added to allow the One phones to manipulate pictures before compressing them to JPEG format. HTC expects this to result in lower image noise, greater color accuracy, and higher overall quality.

Most of the improvements in the One cameras actually relate to speed. Startup time of the camera app is said to be 0.7 seconds and autofocus takes a blistering 0.2 seconds, making it quicker than the blink of an eye. Holding down the onscreen shutter button (you'll find no physical camera keys on these phones) automatically flips you into burst mode, with an intelligent selection menu then allowing you to pick the best shot of the bunch and discard the rest. There's no longer any need to switch between video and photo modes — the software buttons for capturing stills and video sit right next to each other now, and HTC's neatest trick is that it also allows you to snap photos while recording video. And if you want to pull out a still from a video recording you've already made, HTC lets you do that too.

HTC has just announced its Media Link HD wireless streaming adapter here at MWC 2012. We haven't heard too much on the product yet, but you can connect it to any television over HDMI and then stream video, photos, or music to your big screen. All you need to do to send a video or photo to the television is swipe three fingers up the on the phone's screen. The Media Link will support dual-display mode, so you can use your phone while streaming video to the TV. The whole setup sounds quite a bit like AirPlay and the Apple TV, but we don't have any pricing or availability info yet to see how this will compare. We also don't know yet if new Sense 4.0 devices like the One X and One S will be the only devices that can take advantage of the Media Link or if HTC will support older phones as well. We'll let you know when we find out more, but for now, be sure to follow our HTC liveblog for all of the company's announcements live from MWC 2012.

If you missed it buried in that paragraph, the AT&T version of the HTC One X has a different processer than the international version, a dual-core Qualcomm S4 instead of a quad-core Tegra 3. That's probably because Tegra 3 doesn't play nice with existing LTE chipsets, and doesn't have integrated LTE support of its own. For those worried that the LTE One X won't performs as well as its quad-core cousin, we're going to hold all judgement until we can get our hands on both. The Qualcomm S4 has held up fairly well against the Tegra 3 in some early benchmarks.

Update: While AT&T and HTC have only referred to the One X, HTC has just gone live with a website for the One XL, where the "L" presumably stands for LTE. The spec page confirms the dual-core processor and the LTE bands for both AT&T, Asian, and Australian carriers. Otherwise the HTC One XL looks to be identical to the One X.

Camera performance has been a real priority for HTC with the One series and all three of its newly launched Android handsets come with a selection of important optimizations. Firstly, a dedicated imaging processor has been added to allow the One phones to manipulate pictures before compressing them to JPEG format. HTC expects this to result in lower image noise, greater color accuracy, and higher overall quality.

HTC has exited its design comfort zone with the One X by trying out a new material, polycarbonate, and a new microdrilling technique. While still constructed out of one chunk of material and thereby earning the unibody moniker, the One X is now a softer, more tactile device than its metallic forebears. It'll be offered in either white or grey hues, with the move away from aluminum allowing the lighter version to be white all over. By drilling the speaker openings right into the polycarbonate, HTC has shed another chunk of metal in discarding the separate speaker grille.