HTC Sensation XL
Beats drums up another Android
Review Following on the Sensation XE, HTC’s other Beats Audio-enabled handset is certainly bigger, but it comes out looking the weaker of the two in almost every criteria except size.
Beat dis: HTC's Sensation XL Android smartphone
With a 4.7in display, the Sensation XL is the last stop before Samsung’s mammoth 5.3in Galaxy Note which sits just outside the city limits of tablet-ville. The display has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, which isn’t bad, but it’s the kind of spec that’s already proved itself more impressive on smaller screens.
Indeed, the XE’s 4.3in screen has a superior resolution of 960 x 540 pixels, giving it a significantly sharper look and even that’s outdone by the high-end eye massagers of the Galaxy Note or the iPhone 4S. Even so, the sheer size of the XL’s screen gives it an immersive effect, and movies, some of them perhaps downloaded from HTC’s Watch service, still manage to look pretty impressive.
Single core CPU, but still fairly snappy
The single core 1.5GHz processor is a step down from the XE’s dual core version, and responded accordingly in our benchmark test, delivering an AnTuTu score of 3784 (behind the XE’s 4241). It’s certainly no slouch though, and showed little sign of lag when changing between apps.
Slim and stylish
The Sensation XL runs Android 2.3.5, Gingerbread, so just one behind the very latest, and on top of it is the rather gorgeous 3.5 version of HTC Sense, with its swishy 3D-style graphics and genuinely useful widgets.
Next page: Sound thinking?
COMMENTS
Sensation XL?
Having checked the specifications, it has EXACTLY the same Chipset/Processor as the DHD's MSM8255; same RAM amount -768MB and the same Camera - probably the same sensor (but I can't find the part no. anywhere).
Sensation XL, nope its a Desire HD XL with a factory overclocked processor; Front facing Camera... oh and a beastier screen. All available (with the exception of the latter two) with a nice looking optimised custom Sense 3.5 ROM (or better yet vanilla CyanogenMod 7 if that's your thing.)
HTC should have done better and loaded this thing with a bit more power.
Why so large
I'm looking to replace my HTC Desire in a couple of months and have been looking around - however all the phones I see with a decent bit of oomph (the official measure of a phone's power!) are huge.
When I got the Desire I thought it was a bit big and I prefer the size of my mother-in-law's Wildfire. Most of the phones I see now are 0.5 - 1 cm wider and/or taller.
Looks like I'll have to put up with the wife's "I told you so's" and get a bloody iPhone!
Thanks for nothing HTC/Samsung/Motorola.
Nonsense
Ditch HTC-nonsense, supply an open bootloader, and start to publish the source to device-specific code on release-day and I'll consider the product.
I don't like Sense either
I have an HTC desire and there is a lot of crapware on there. My own opinion is that if I absolutely wanted Facebook or some crappy Twitter client then I could install it from the market. The phone should restrain itself to the basic apps and no further. Or at least refrain from baking crapware into the firmware so it wastes storage and cannot be removed. Even Sense should be optional, as in if I don't use it then don't waste space holding it.
The sense UI in general is okay but I cannot stand the phone app. It's far too easy to dial numbers by accident, or hang up by accident. Simple example - I hit hangup, slide the phone back in my shirt pocket and discover I've gone and rung someone by accident because the app reverts to show a list of recent numbers which it calls with one tap. Or I'm fiddling with the phone and mid-tap the incoming call screen replaces what I was on and my tap ends up hanging up on the call. It's very annoying.
"Solution, hit once and actually wait for it to complete the call teardown rather than repeatedly poking the screen."
That's more of a workaround. The correct solution would be to redesign the UI so that undesirable actions can't occur as the result of double-tapping the screen during a UI state change.
