HTC One XL Review

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Review: October 2012

Phone rating:

In a nutshell: This 4G-compatible phone is one of the most powerful smartphones available, with a 4.7 inch display, fast dual-core processor, an 8 megapixel camera with full HD video recording and fantastic Beats Audio sound quality.

The HTC One XL is a 4G version of the highly-rated One X. Hold the One XL next to the One X and you'll struggle to spot the difference. The One XL is ever so slightly larger, but a gram lighter.

Strangely, the One XL comes with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor instead of the quad-core of the One X. This seems a very curious decision, since this is supposed to be HTC's flagship model. However, benchmarking tests have shown that this new Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor is at least as fast as the quad-core Tegra 3.

The One XL has a lower resolution display than the original One X. It's 960 x 540 pixels instead of 1280 x 720 pixels. Again this is an oddity, especially since the international version of the XL has the full 1280 x 720 resolution. It seems to be only the UK that has the lower resolution version. When the Samsung Galaxy S3 is already crushing HTC in sales, why give consumers yet another reason to choose the Galaxy S3 4G LTE version over the One XL?

Pricing of the One XL will be the same as the One X. Initially, 4G will be available on the Orange/T-Mobile (Everything Everywhere) networks only, but the other UK networks will be launching their own 4G services in 2013. Download speeds on 4G will be up to 100Mbps, compared with the theoretical maximum of 21Mbps of the 3G One X.

Everything else is the same as the One X, so read our detailed review of that phone for more.

Features of the HTC One XL include:

8 megapixel camera with autofocus, f2.0 lens and smart LED flash plus 1.3 megapixel front camera
1080p HD video recording / 720p HD front video camera
Display: capacitive Super LCD touchscreen with pinch-to-zoom capability, 540 x 960 pixels (4.7 inches) with auto-rotate
GPS receiver with digital compass, Google Maps, HTC Footprints and geo-tagging
Music player (aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma formats)
FM radio
Beats Audio sound
Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, instant messaging
Internet: GPRS, EDGE, 4G LTE, HTML5 web browser with Adobe Flash support
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, micro-USB 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack, DLNA, NFC
Processor: NVIDIA 1.5GHz, dual core
Memory: 16GB plus 1GB RAM
Vibration alert
Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) plus LTE (800/1800/2600 MHz)
Size: 135 x 70 x 9.3 mm
Weight: 129g
Battery: 1800 mAh

HTC One XL User Reviews

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Average rating from 1 reviews:

Reviewed by tony from uk on 16th Oct 2012
Your facts are incorrect, the normal one x supports 21mbps not 14mbps.
Rating: Reply

Reply by Mobile Phones UK from UK on 17th Oct 2012
OK, tony, well spotted! Correction made.

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