HTC One V Android smartphone
High five?
Review In the beginning was the Hero and then came the Legend, and now the Legend has sired the One V. Yes, the V is the runt of the One litter but its forebears had a solid following and, as a one-time Hero owner, I’m hoping the bloodline is in good health.
Another one: HTC's One V
With the One V, HTC’s design has reached its purest form thanks to the chin finally being freed from any superfluous navigation controls. Now it just gets on with the job; getting the microphone closer to your cake-hole and feeling good in the hand.
The One V is wrapped in an aluminium unibody much like the Legend though it’s both thinner and lighter than its forebear. It’s wider and taller but since the screen is half an inch larger, that’s to be expected. Like the other One series phones, the V is beautifully screwed together.
Sense UI and web browing
Slide of the cover on the reverse of the chin and you will find slots for a regular size SIM and microSD memory card. Like the other two One models, the battery – here it's 1500mAh – is fixed in place.
The One V relies on a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255 chip – the same one used in the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray – and while it doesn’t set the world alight, it does a decent enough job of keeping the show on the road even with only 512MB of RAM.
Run the AnTuTu benchmark and you get a score of over 2700 which is a few hundred points better than my old 1GHz Desire HD. In the real world, even a game as demanding as Shadowgun ran fluidly and 720p MP4 video played back without a hitch. While the UI is slick enough it’s not always quite as ultra-slick as that of the quad and dual-core One phones when multiple apps are running.
Next page: Camera shy
COMMENTS
Re: How many
I got a sim-free OneX and it's been perfect. Maybe the problems have been overrated, maybe certain networks were given a bad batch or maybe I've just been lucky. Either way I'm happy but sympathise with everyone who has a friday-afternoon handset as a working one is fantastic.
Re: Downgraded Desire S or upgraded Wildfire S ?
HTC is now becoming the nVidia of smartphones; re-releasing last years tech as a "new" product.
Actually, that position is already taken by Apple.
Not enough flash
940MB sounds a lot but games and apps are getting increasingly chunky and you'll soon fill it even if you know how to move app data to SD card.
Knowing HTC they probably bundled apps and assorted crapware like Facebook, Dropbox, Flash etc. into their phone's readonly firmware. What that means is that when an update arrives for these apps, which it will, you eat up double the space for the app. The update resides in flash and masks out the one in firmware.
"Both have the telephonic basics "
except proper 2-way call recording... so the basics are NOT covered!
Godamnid Google, implement systemwide 2-way call recording and you'll have me (and a lot of symbian costumers being able to turn over). As this is the ONLY feature that keeps me on a Nokia Symbian phone.
Stop fooling around. We KNOW that the OS has some parts of the code build in. It's just not completed or not functional. Make it work and crate a true SMARTPHONE!
512B of memory?
512 bytes? Seems a little low for the price!
