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HTC Sensation XE full review: inches away from perfection

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Last week I decided it really was time to look into a new phone. I’ve had my trusty Nokia 5230 since April ’10 and, in all honesty, it’s served me very well – but recently it’s started to show it’s signs of old age. The battery isn’t lasting as long as it used to, crashes are becoming more common and it’s started shutting down all by itself. Enough is enough.

But I faced a tough dilemma. Ever since I got my 5230, I’ve been a very loyal member of giffgaff. They’ve been great to me – and their £10 per month goodybag was perfect for my everyday needs. However, I’ve always fancied an Android phone – and they’re expensive – so a contract of some form was inevitable.

Sadly, I am about to close my giffgaff account and transfer my number to my new O2 account – a sad farewell but never mind! Anyway, on to what you want to read about – the phone!

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed by the phone. Compared to the 5230 I had before, this is a gigantic step up with new features left, right and centre. Here’s a quick run-through of the tech specs:

  • 1.5Ghz dual core Snapdragon processor
  • 768MB RAM
  • 8MP dual flash & autofocus camera with 1080p 30fps video recording (plus dual microphones for stereo recording)
  • 4GB internal memory (1GB usable)
  • Up to 32GB microSD expansion (mine came with a 16GB card)
  • Android 2.3.4 (with HTC saying an upgrade to 4.0 coming in early 2012)
  • GPRS/EDGE/3G/HSDPA
  • WiFi b/g/n
  • GPS, bluetooth
  • 4.3″ multitouch display @ 960×540 pixels

That’s the most important stuff covered – and as specs go I’d call that a pretty high end phone. And these specs do play a good part in the phone – with fast boot enabled the phone will boot in around 5 seconds.

Anyway, let’s have a run through most of the key features.

Look and feel of the device

I personally happen to feel that this is one of the best looking HTC devices I’ve seen in a long time. The device is reasonably flat on the front with no hardware buttons at all – just four touch sensitive keys. The screen is very is a beauty to look at – colours are crisp and resolution is excellent. On the side, you get a volume rocker on the left and a sleep button on the top-right of the device. The back of the device has a firm plastic-type feel – it doesn’t look too bad but more importantly it wipes out the potential problem of scratching the body.

Weighing in at around 150g,the device does actually feel quite heavy in the hand – but this is normal for a device of this spec. It’s not uncomfortably heavy to hold, but I think my arm would tire after half an hour or so on the phone.

Camera

The 8MP camera on the phone does a fine job of taking crisp photos. The autofocus works well and also responds to pinpointed focus on screen, whilst the dual flash does a brilliant job of brightening up the darkest of scenes. However, I wasn’t hugely impressed by some low light pictures – and whilst the flash is great it sometimes over-saturates the picture.

The camera is also capable of filming 1080p video at 30fps – and videos recorded look well focused and consistent (little or no dropped frames). The device also packs two microphones for stereo recording – although I found that there was sometimes a worrying amount of background noise picked up by the microphones.

Android and bundled software

I’ve never properly used an Android device before – so this was a great opportunity to start.  The device comes with Android 2.3.4 (and a promised upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich early next year) and it packs a punch. Most of the bundled software works very efficiently and loads up in lightning speed (partly thanks to the dual core 1.5Ghz processor).

There are a couple of pieces of software that do disappoint me, however. For one – the music player; which seems to lack many key features. For example, it fails to remove the word “The” when alphabetising artist names which can be very frustrating. It also fails to group albums in many cases – which is incredibly frustrating at times.

Another piece of software that annoys me a bit is the Mail app. It’s great for receiving emails and will render them very well, but it does a poor job of sending mail out. It doesn’t seem to be capable of inserting line breaks to emails and also doesn’t copy sent mail to an IMAP server. There doesn’t seem to be any option to change these settings – so if anyone can enlighten me here that would be great.

Battery life

If I have one major complaint about the device, it’ll be for battery life. It really is pretty poor (I’m told most Android phones are like this) if you play on your phone a lot. I had the battery from full to flat in 7 hours after quite a lot of app downloads and web browsing. However, if you take it steady and use it normally, it should get you through a day or two without recharge. Still, I’d like to think it’d last a bit longer at this spec of phone.

Bundled “Beats” earphones

I actually really like these – and it was a nice bonus to the phone to have a decent pair of earphones included. With the beats software running on the phone, you’ll get pristine bass and treble from the earphones. However, bear in mind that the “beats” software only really works with the music player – so other apps won’t be able to make use of it.

Overall thoughts

Overall, I’m really happy with the device and glad to have it as my companion for the next 24 months. It’s not perfect – and there are clearly some software issues that could well be solved in Android 4.0 – but overall it does a fantastic job of providing a fine balance of entertainment and practicality. With pricing for the SIM free model around about £430, it makes a great competitor to the iPhone – as it has much better tech specs and a larger screen. However, it’s down to the opinions of the person using the phone – and some would rather use iOS than Android.

If you’re interested to know the contract I got for the phone – it was the o2 200 DATA Bonus contract purchased from Dialaphone. Coming in at £536 for the entire 2 year contract, it makes great value. The plan comes with 200 minutes, unlimited (3000) texts and 500MB data every month. If you’re a data junkie, you can get the plan extended to 1GB data for an extra £4 per month (change it after you’ve started your contract and received the phone).

Saying goodbye to giffgaff…

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Unfortunately, I’m going to be saying goodbye to giffgaff in the New Year. I’ve absolutely loved being with giffgaff for the last 18 months and for what I’ve needed recently they’ve been the perfect company. When I do leave, I’ll miss a lot of things like payback, free g2g calls/texts and the extremely good value goodybags.

However, I’m going to be leaving giffgaff in favour of a contract deal – which, unusually, I think is a pretty good deal. It’s with O2 (so I’m not going that far astray!) but I’ve bought it from dial-a-phone (who are owned by phones4u so can’t be too bad).

I’ve just ordered the new HTC Sensation XE with the beats earphones (never used a beats product before, but I’m told they’re very good). The phone has a 1.5Ghz dual core processor, 8MP camera with flash and autofocus, wi-fi, GPS, 1GB flash storage and micro-SD expansion, the latest version of android with the probability of an upgrade to ICS, 4.3" qHD screen, and various other cool things. In terms of specs, in a number of ways it’s better than the latest iPhone 4S (I’m astonished by the 1.5Ghz dc CPU in a phone). Big step up from my current phone – Nokia 5230.

With the contract I get 200 minutes, unlimited (with FUP of about 3000) texts and 500MB data. The minutes should be fine for me, texts no problem at all (rarely use more than 300 texts in a month), and the data SHOULD be ok. Whilst I’d like to have 1GB or more, I can suffice with 500MB and will just have to watch the usage. I will miss the unlimited internet on giffgaff!

For this package, I’ve paid £19.99 upfront and agreed to pay £21.50 a month for the next 24 months. Bit steep, you say – but when you work it out it isn’t actually that bad at all.

To buy the phone SIM free (for use with networks like giffgaff) it would cost me around about £420 (link). Then you add the fact that with giffgaff I’d spend £10 per month on a goodybag – over 24 months that’s £240. So grand total comes to £660 over 24 months. To be fair, one could argue I could make a lot of that back with payback – but that involves extra work so I’ll ignore that for now.

With the contract it’s £19.99 + (£21.50 * 24). Also, minus the fact I’ve earned £50 cashback with quidco for the contract purchase. This means the total cost comes to £485.99 if my maths is right, over a period of two years.

Obviously I’m loosing out on some things – and the giffgaff goodybag is better (in terms of the monthly allowance) than the contract. My biggest loss will be the truly unlimited internet – but right now I’m told in my giffgaff statement that the maximum data I’ve used in a month is 570MB – so I could easily trim that down. Obviously I know my data usage will increase slightly with a proper smartphone – but I’ve got wi-fi to counteract that.

I also have added bonuses – because I can’t take out the contract until I’m 18, a parent has taken it out for me and agreed to pay it until my 18th birthday as my Christmas present (next April), so the actual cost to me is slightly less (about £120).

So overall, it works out better to go with the contract. I’ll be very sad to leave giffgaff – but it just comes down to the sheer cost in the end. When you do the maths, pay as you go isn’t always the best way! I hope that giffgaff have a really bright future ahead of them though – they’re doing really well so far.

In any case – stand by for an HTC Sensation XE review in a couple of weeks time!

Orange gets the iPhone

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It has been announced today that Orange will get the iPhone 3G and 3GS in the UK, after Apple reaches a deal with a further company. This means that O2 will no longer be the only UK provider of the iPhone.

Orange is saying that it will hopefully have the iPhone in its stores before Christmas, which will hopefully boost their sales quite dramatically. It will also hopefully mean that prices for the iPhone will fall as a price war initialises.

Personally I think it is great news that we finally have a second operator in the UK to provide the iPhone. I am not a great fan of O2 (mainly because their 3G and HSDPA coverage is pretty dreadful) and am glad to see that Orange are going to be taking a share in UK iPhone profits.

Bring on the price war!