HTC Windows Phone 8S

HTC WINDOWS PHONE 8S REVIEW

HTC's second Windows Phone 8 device follows the same design as its bigger brother, the 8S, with a unique look and feel that's separate to the company's Android devices. It's another big bet on Windows Phone 8 for HTC and one that the company hopes will appeal to the masses as Microsoft continues its push to get Windows Phone devices into consumer's hands. A run-of-the-mill 4.0” 480x800 display is what HTC graced the 8S with, and the 233ppi pixel density, while nothing exemplary, is still decent for your everyday tasks. The display sports good color presentation, and is sufficiently bright for comfortable outside viewing, with nice viewing angles, both horizontally and vertically. As it stands, HTC's 8S includes a 5-megapixel rear camera that isn't particularly notable. I found the results were fairly noisy. Low light performance is reasonable, but some images have an odd haze on them that's more akin to an Instagram filter than anything else. The 8S shoots at 4 megapixels (2592 x 1556) by default, but you can bump this up to 2592 x 1944 in the settings. Alongside resolution settings, there are also options to control white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpness, ISO, and face detection. An effects menu provides grayscale, negative, sepia, and solarize filters, but other than that it's a fairly standard affair. On the video side, the 8S doesn't capture 1080p video, but it can at least manage 720p. The results are what you'd expect from a smartphone: the audio pickup isn't particularly great, especially when you're in environments that include music from speakers. The continuous focus works well, but there's no option to disable it in the settings. There doesn’t appear to be any attempt to stabilize the footage, so things will be a little shaky if you're walking along or recording from a car. HTC's 8S runs Windows Phone 8, but the handset maker hasn't really put much effort into building additional apps for the OS. A special HTC section in the Windows Phone Store has just six apps, including a flashlight, a connection setup tool, and a "make more space" app that provides storage information. A built-in HTC app provides access to weather, stocks, and news, but the most useful part is the large Live Tile it installs to provide local time and weather on your Start Screen. HTC has included Beats support on the 8S, but the app is limited to just On or Off options, without any greater control over the output. Windows Phone 8 performance and features are fairly standard on the 8S, which makes entry level devices very enticing. HTC is shipping this particular device with a more recent software version of the OS. Noticeable changes include an option to keep the Wi-Fi on after the screen times out, SMS drafts, and the ability to reject calls with a text message. This update has started rolling out to the 8s too and will be available to other devices in a future update, but it's a handy option to ensure you're always using the Wi-Fi connection instead of cellular data, and it's arguably one that Microsoft should have shipped as standard in Windows Phone. On the Windows Phone 8 side it's still early days, but the Store isn't showing any signs of quality app improvements just yet. The default Twitter and Facebook apps still lack the polish of iOS and Android counterparts and the same level of game support is absent right now. There are encouraging signs this will change over the course of the next six months, but for now it's hard to recommend Windows Phone if you're an app addict. There's a lot of things to love about Windows Phone, but the apps are holding the platform back. Call quality was fairly good on the 8S. I never experienced a dropped call during my testing and recipients of calls could hear me clearly. The output from the earpiece is more than enough too and the loudspeaker is good for calls. I had some issues connecting to my home Wi-Fi network without a SIM in the 8S, as it simply wouldn’t find the access point, but connecting to other access points worked fine and tethering to other devices worked too. Battery life is great, and this is where the WP optimizations really show. I am getting a solid full day and a half every day with no signs of slowing down after a few months of solid use. Every day I listen to podcasts for at least 3 hours, with heavy web usage, app usage, and background tasks all day. My day starts at 8 and I end at 9 with about 46% left on average. That's incredible. The processor is fast, the screen looks pretty good, and even if other specs are a couple of steps down from HTC's 8s, and there aren't as many apps as you'll find on Nokia's Lumia series, this is still a very capable entry into the world of Windows Phone 8, which is looking and feeling better with every incarnation.

SPECIFICATION & FEATURES