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HTC One X+ hands on

We get our hands on the HTC One X+ with its faster processor, bigger battery and greater storage

Owning a One X is very much like being in a long-term relationship with an anaemic 7-foot supermodel. She’s big and strong, but she’s very attractive, drawing admiring glances wherever she goes. Until she gets tired, which she does a little too easily. You want to take her gaming in the Tegrazone, but all too often she nods off on the bus. Taking this analogy (or possibly just the feedback from its customers) to heart, HTC has announced an upgrade that smoothes out the One X’s niggles.

With the One X+, HTC has done absolutely nothing to change the physical design of the One X. It’s the same smooth, attractive curve of matte plastic, although now it’s black, with a few little red accents. What has changed are the insides: a 2100mAh battery (the same as the one in the Galaxy S3) that HTC claims will add 6 hours of talk time. When Apple added a higher capacity battery to the iPad, the weight gain was (just about) noticeable but if there is weight gain here, it’s imperceptible.

The One X+’s display is the same as that of the One X, too, but the interface has changed: Jelly Bean is on the One X+ from the start (it’ll be landing on the One X and One S soon), and HTC Sense has received a number of tweaks. There’s a video hub that incorporates a new version of HTC Watch, putting your local video files and downloadable movies in the same place. If you’re thinking of buying into HTC’s video services then the MediaLink HD, the nifty wireless HDMI adapter that HTC launched with the One X, will definitely be worth a look: a three-finger swipe sends what’s on your phone’s screen to your TV.

Can you tell that the Tegra 3 quad-core processor has been clocked a little faster, running at 1.7GHz rather than the One X’s 1.3GHz? Neither could we, but if you can find something really CPU-intensive to do on it then you might.

Aside from battery life, the other big issue we had with the One X was storage: no microSD slot meant that the phone’s 32GB of onboard memory got used up pretty quickly. HTC was never going to saw a hole in this phone’s unibody construction, but the One X+ bumps the space up to a roomier 64GB.

From an early fiddle, it looks as if the One X+ is… well, it’s a slightly upgraded One X. If it were any other phone being upgraded this wouldn’t be big news, but the One X is among the best you can buy. If this refined version does everything HTC promises, it might even nudge the Galaxy S3 off the Android top spot.

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Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home

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