HTC One X
Unveiled at the Jump Experience Center in SM Megamall, HTC’s two new smartphones are slated to be released on Friday at the Bonifacio Global City in Taguig. They were first announced to the world during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February.
The HTC One X, the Taiwanese phone maker’s flagship phone, is considered to be the first Android smartphone to be fitted with the Tegra 3 processor that comes with four cores.
But Francisco Torno III, HTC Philippines’ marketing communications manager, told the local press that the One X actually comes with a fifth core, which acts as a battery-saving feature where minor tasks are offloaded to whenever high processing power is not necessary.
The One X comes enclosed in a polycarbonate composite unibody sealed with a Gorilla Glass in front that acts as a shield to minor damages during accidental drops. Torno demonstrated the One X’s mettle by throwing it on the floor without causing any hint of damage in its design.
The flagship phone’s crisp display is attributed to the 4.7-inch Super LCD 2 screen technology that provides ample display backlighting at any condition, whether it be indoors or outdoors.
HTC One V
It is powered by a 1GHz single-core processor, fitted with a 3.7-inch WVGA Super LCD display, and comes with a 5-megapixel camera.
Both smartphones come packed with Android’s latest version, the Ice Cream Sandwich, modified to reflect the trademark HTC user interface that has come to be known of its previous mobile offerings.
What sets the two phones apart from competitors, Torno said, are the multimedia features that have been included in its manufacturing. For one, the two phones come with Beats Audio, a sound technology platform that came from HTC’s acquisition of the Beats by Dr. Dre line of audio equipment.
The camera application is also unique in that both feature a simultaneous HD video recording and image capture, so users wouldn’t have to toggle between the two settings anymore when they want to capture a moment.
The camera is also capable of capturing photos in burst mode, snapping images at a rate of four photos per second with a maximum of 99 photos taken in a single long press of the shutter button.
Torno said every purchase of the One X or the One V comes with 25GB of space through the cloud storage service Dropbox for two years, in the interim that the company has yet to unveil the overhauled look of its HTCSense.com service.
The HTC official, however, refused to disclose the official retail price of the two phones ahead of the official launch, although telecom firm Smart Communications said interested parties can pre-order the phone at the Jump Center in Megamall. The phones, though, will not be exclusively carried by the two major telcos in the country.
The HTC One line of smartphones is the company’s attempt to recover from a disappointing year of mobile phone sales in 2011. In February, the firm anticipated a step 36-percent drop in revenue for the first quarter of the year, well below analyst expectations.
HTC is currently at fifth rank in the overall mobile phone market with a 6.5 percent market share at the end of 2011, trailing behind Research in Motion, Nokia, Samsung, and the dominant Apple, according to IDC.
