First ten days with HTC One S

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I received my phone from Orange Spain. The phone itself is very nice, quick and smooth and everything you have read about it in general review is correct. It is a very good phone and I am happy with it. BUT here are the things I don't like:
1. Micro oxydation is very nice looking although it smells a little like dirty hair. And, unfortunately, like it has been reported I have a small edge chipped. I don't know yet if I will return it for that.
2. The default browser is new and some HTML5 games are incompatible with it or play very slow. Android is still behind Apple iOS Safari Browser and this is very bad since I work for a mobile game network. I suspect this is not a problem of the phone but the ICS browser.
3. I have installed the Chrome browser and it crashes almost everytime I use it. Not only Chrome crashes but the whole phone. The phone freezes and the only way to reboot it is to maintain the power button pressed for a while.
4. Camera is fantastic. I tested a few times and worked very well. But the first time I really used it I could take the first picture then the screen became black. I mean, everything I should see through the camera stayed black. The buttons and menu were visible but I couldn't use them. I shut down the app and reload it with same problem. I had to reboot the phone to fix it.
I have one app (Live TV from Lyric) with a shortcut on the homescreen. Everytime I reboot, the icon disappear from the homescreen and is replaced with the Android robot icon. I have to replace the icon every time I boot. The app doesn't disappear, only the shortcut.
5. Maybe this is the most important problem. Reception is not very good and many times I loose the GSM signal totally, then it comes back. My HTC Desire had better recepción. 3G and HSDP is veery slow when reception is weak (2 bars or under)

The doubts I had:
- When I read reviews about this phone I had my doubts about the screen resolution and pentile technology. This is bull****. The screen is great and more than enough for a high end phone.
- Battery and autonomy. I don't care about having a non removable battery. All my previous ones had removable battery and I never used a spare. The autonomy of this phone is good and much better than my Desire. I can keep it running with a lot of use during a full day and probably two days on light use.
- Non removable memory. It is advertised to have 16GB user memory but the reality is way different: I have "only" 10GB available and I feel ripped off. Although I know I will probably never use so much memory (I don't store music or movies).

Conclusion: I would probably buy this phone again even after knowing the limitations. But I hope some software fixes will come.

I haven't bought one yet but i'm the same as you having doubts about the S's screen. I have viewed the S and X side by side in a shop and obviously the X's panel is much better to look at, but in my opinion it's the only thing the X has going for it over the S.

The per-core performance of the S is better, it's easier to hold and use, feels better built, the battery lasts at least as long if not longer and it's cheaper. I don't really care about NFC and the better front facing camera on the X as I'll never use them (apart from maybe the mirror app!)

The X seems laggy to me even though it really shouldn't. I know it has a fair few more pixels to push around but the GPU is marginally better than the S so should breeze through. This is especially noticable on the world clock... tap the globe to make it full screen and spin/zoom it. The S is super smooth and the X is very choppy in comparison.

So in all I think I can deal with the pentile matrix... I just don't want to buy it and have HTC announce a One S "2" in a few months with a 720p display!

kadison;
that shouldn't be a concern. because at any given time there will be coming better and better phones
- so don't worry that this one will get outdated, because it's not. Just look at the Desire HD or the Galaxy S2 (which people still buying btw)

I'm superhappy with this phone, although I can't wait for the xda development to start working on replacements to Sense 4.0

Sent from my HTC One S using XDA

Originally Posted by kadison

I haven't bought one yet but i'm the same as you having doubts about the S's screen. I have viewed the S and X side by side in a shop and obviously the X's panel is much better to look at, but in my opinion it's the only thing the X has going for it over the S.

The per-core performance of the S is better, it's easier to hold and use, feels better built, the battery lasts at least as long if not longer and it's cheaper. I don't really care about NFC and the better front facing camera on the X as I'll never use them (apart from maybe the mirror app!)

The X seems laggy to me even though it really shouldn't. I know it has a fair few more pixels to push around but the GPU is marginally better than the S so should breeze through. This is especially noticable on the world clock... tap the globe to make it full screen and spin/zoom it. The S is super smooth and the X is very choppy in comparison.

So in all I think I can deal with the pentile matrix... I just don't want to buy it and have HTC announce a One S "2" in a few months with a 720p display!

Not many people will continuously look at a One X and a One S screen.

AMOLED displays have been impressive on my friend's Windows 7 device, and since I'm coming from a device from less than 200 PPI, it should be a great screen.

Been disappointed with my first few days with it. It seems to suffer from constant crashes where the phone reboots itself.

I've tried stock and some custom roms but am still getting random reboots.

Originally Posted by paulpenny

Been disappointed with my first few days with it. It seems to suffer from constant crashes where the phone reboots itself.

I've tried stock and some custom roms but am still getting random reboots.

Were you getting Crashes and Random reboots before you Rooted and started flashing other ROMS? or do you think it might be because you are flashing different ROMS that might have some minor bugs here and there?

Originally Posted by jmercil

Were you getting Crashes and Random reboots before you Rooted and started flashing other ROMS? or do you think it might be because you are flashing different ROMS that might have some minor bugs here and there?

I don't know about the original poster but this happens with my One S with the stock ROM. It seems to maybe happen when I'm at a wifi connection boundary (maybe?) but a couple times a week, I'll either:
1) notice the phone rebooting as it's just sitting idle on my desk
2) hear the "I just crashed and am rebooting" sound from the phone in my pocket
3) go to use it and notice the notification bar icon telling me it just recovered from a crash.

I'm sending the crash data to HTC every time, hoping they're prioritizing the fix because though it has never crashed on me like this while I'm using it (which is weird...), it's starting to get annoying.

I have not had a single random reboot, using WIP CM9.

Originally Posted by jipi

1. Micro oxydation is very nice looking although it smells a little like dirty hair.

I really regret smelling it now lol.

Agree about the display, reviews were making a big deal put of the pentile display but it's a non issue for me. Only issue I've had, coming off an iPhone 4, has been the size of the phone. Maybe I just have small hands but not finding it too comfortable to use with one hand.



Sent from my HTC One S using Tapatalk 2

My girlfriend had the One X and i have the One S. I can definitely notice the difference with the pentile matrix on my phone especially with small writing and horizontal lines. (the edge of the messaging icon for example looks like a dotted line) but honestly it's only noticeable if im using the phone in bed and using it really close to my face. The One X is crisper looking but it's a little washed out compared to the One S's screen. The blacks on my screen are way darker compared to the X.

I've had my One S for just over a week now and have yet to see any rebooting or crashing. The phone has been fantastic so far except that i get absolutely terrible reception. I had a Desire before this phone and in places where i used to get full bars i can now maybe get one, if it's not in emergency mode. The signal bounces around from really good to really bad (mostly hovering around -107dbm) which is not good at all. I took the phone back and got it replaced as well as the sim card and i still have issues.

Overall i really like it, but i think i might have to take it back and get something else that can keep good reception.