Beyond Samsung Galaxy S2 - Review of HTC Sensation
The HTC Sensation 4G is another smartphone in the long series of Android handsets being churned out these days, but does that make it just another run-of-the-mill Google smartphone? It has a vivid 4.3-inch qHD touchscreen display, runs on the latest version of Android – 2.3 Gingerbread – and utilizes HTC’s Sense UI 3.0. Armed with a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, an 8MP camera and T-Mobile’s fast data speeds, the HTC Sensation just might be my favorite Android handset yet.
Key Features
- 1.2GHz dual core processor
- Curved 4.3in screen
- Android 2.3 Operating System
- 8 megapixel camera with twin LEDs
Camera
The 8MP camera on the device is paired with a dual-LED flash, which is incredible in low-light or no-light performance up to about 12 feet away. In extremely dim light, the flash was able to detail everything within a 10 to 12 foot radius without drowning out color or casting harsh shadows. It's impressive for a camera phone. Standard image quality itself, however, is OK. Colors and contrast are good, but the picture details can get a little muddy. For sharing on the phone or on the web (like blogs and social networks), the quality is just fine. But if you get anywhere over 50% scale, you'll begin to see degradation in sharpness and quality. At the full 8MP, any sharpness is almost entirely lost, making 100% crops not ideal for most use. Video recording is pretty good, however, and records at 1080p HD. Video is crips and smooth, and sound is recorded very well, too.
Multimedia
The Sensation, like the G2x, comes with an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording. And like the G2x, it doesn't match the quality of a good handheld still or video camera. Still photos with good light were sharp, but had murky shadow areas. In low light, photos got very soft and compressed-looking , but at least they weren't blurry.
Indoors, video recording at 1080p, 720p or 960-by-540 resolution was a bit jerky at 20 to 22 frames per second. Outdoors I got a smoother 30 frames per second, with blown-out bright areas but generally decent quality.
The phone also has a poor-quality, VGA camera on its front which consistently made my face look orange, and couldn't achieve more than 15 frames per second indoors. It's for video calling, which is a touch-and-go affair on Android anyway.
Pros:
- Large, high resolution screen
- Super fast dual-core processor
- Good camera with bright LEDs
- Beautiful chassis design
Cons:
- Poor battery life
- Screen quality could be better
Design and Features
The HTC Sensation is something of a latecomer to the dual-core smartphone party but the wait has been worth it. Packing in a 1.2GHz processor, 8 megapixel camera, high-resolution screen, and a stunning design, it most definitely lives up to its name.
In-hand, the Sensation feels solid at 148 grams. Unlike the Desire HD, you can't feel any metal surfaces, giving the Sensation a slightly lower-quality feel. The qHD screen means that text is extra crisp and clear. The Sensation is a very capable web browsing machine, second only to the Galaxy S 2 when it comes to page rendering speed and smoothness of browsing.
Processor and Apps
The Sensation is the first U.S. phone with a dual-core Qualcomm chipset, the 1.2GHz MSM8660 processor with the new Adreno 220 GPU. Since most of the other dual-core phones I've seen so far use Nvidia's Tegra 2 (except for the Samsung Galaxy S II), I decided to benchmark this against a Tegra 2-powered G2x to find the differences.
The results are a bit dizzying. I ran a slew of free benchmarks from the Android Market: BenchmarkPi, Softweg, CaffeineMark, Linpack, Neocore, Droidfish, and Nenamark, as well as the Sunspider Javascript benchmark, the GUIMark Flash and HTML5 benchmarks, and hand-timing a bunch of Web page loads.
The latest version of HTC's interface for Android is nothing short of impressive. Sense 3.0 enhances almost every aspect of the operating system. It starts on the lock screen where you can now have live information shown to you before unlocking the device: you can see social network updates, the weather, stock quotes, a photo slideshow, or a clock. There are four shortcuts on all lock screens that allow you to launch pre-specified apps right from the lock screen. Unfortunately, four is all you get, even if you use five, six, or more apps on a regular basis.
Should i buy this :
Well this phone is almost faster as compare to Galaxy s2 , and great look and very sleek. It's based on Android os and With HTC Sence 3.0 which makes it different from Galaxy s2 and if you don't like Galaxy S2 due to it's long and broad look you can go for this and absolutely is a Value for money Deal