REVIEW: HTC Sensation

 

The appearance of HTC Sensation is an important event in the world of Android-smartphones. Not because the Taiwanese company showed its flagship later than its Korean rivals represented by Samsung and LG, but because Sensation at the time is the most technologically advanced smart phone based on Android. At least, if you look at such things as processor speed, amount of RAM, screen resolution and other. Announcement of the flagship in the spring can be interpreted in different ways.

However, HTC Incredible S had to be known for a while before HTC Sensation is announced. And maybe HTC where just finishing their UI Sense 3.0?

It does not matter, because Sensation brings us a year ago, when HTC has pioneered the market of Android smartphones and where true leaders in their class. So HTC Sensation is now the best Android smartphone in the world, I think we can excuse them for the delay for that.

Design, materials, case

Design of the HTC Sensation is somewhat unusual I think. This chopped battery cover is a controversial decision, which I didn’t like since the days of cheap WP7 smartphone - HTC Mozart. But this is my subjective impression if you own it your opinion is surely quite the opposite. On the other way the design of HTC sensation is surely calm and classic. The device looks simple and unassuming despite the mix of plastic and metal on the battery cover. It has a universal design: "gray" on one hand and futuristic on the other, it looks brilliant except the back cover. You can love its design or it can leave you irrelevant but you will surely will not hate it.

Materials used are almost entirely metal, except for two plastic inserts on the back cover and Gorilla Glass on the screen. By the way the screen surface is unusual. It is slightly bent inwards; imagine a large screen surface with the edges bent slightly upward. This way HTC tried to save the screen from scratching when you put the phone screen down on the table.

Dimensions and build quality

The smartphone is relatively thin but it can’t compete with Sony Ericsson Arc in thickness, and is heavier than Samsung Galaxy 2. HTC Sensation dimensions are: 126.1 x 65.4 x 11.3 mm. In my opinion significant weight for the phone is only an advantage, you really feel a good device in your hands not just some plastic toy.

Build quality is good for a smartphone and the point here is not so much in exact fit but also the construction of the body. The front part (the screen and all the "insides") are inserted into the box, which is represented by battery cover. The whole design looks really solid.

Controls

HTC Sensation uses the same sensor unit below the screen as in all their other new smartphones. It is comfortable to press them as they are well spaced and backlit. Power button is located on the top near 3.5 mm headphone jack. Volume control buttons are on the left edge.

There is no camera button; the camera is activated from the menu. MicroUSB socket is situated on the left side of the device. There is not HDMI output so if you want to use HTC Sensation to watch videos on your HD TV you will have to buy a special cable.

Screen

This cool gadget has 4.3" capacitive touchscreen. It is also S-LCD screen; same as the other new models of the company. HTC Sensation is one of the few Android-devices that has qHD resolution of 960x540 pixels which makes it 16:9 aspect ratio. Here are a few other smartphones with the same resolution, the models from Motorola and HTC for the U.S. market however, Apple iPhone 4 and Meizu M9 both have a screen resolution of 960x640 pixels.

The quality of display is very good if not the best. I am a fan of the classical TFT displays so Sensation is the best there is in terms of display in my opinion. But we must understand that its display is just normal there is no crazy brightness or super colors like those on AmoLED displays. The display has excellent viewing angles and good brightness.

Camera

HTC Sensation has an 8-megapixel camera module and two LED flash. Based on the increasing power of the device in comparison with previous models the company added support for videos in FullHD (1080p, 1920x1080 pixels) as well as simple photo and video editors.
Interface and platform

The smartphone runs on Android 2.3 with the latest version of HTC Sense which has just appeared on their devices. Let's briefly go over some of the most notable things about the new Sense.
New screen lock. Now instead of dragging an arc down to unlock the screen, you need to pull a ring from the bottom to the center of the screen. There are also four customizable icons (you choose what to put there); for example address book, call log, email and message. If you pull the icon into the central ring it will unlock and automatically launch the application you have chosen.
Virtual desktops are now rotated as a three-dimensional carousel and it looks impressive but has no practical use. There is also a new task manager from HTC as well as new Wi-Fi printing feature.

They implemented well known Swype technology in basic keyboard and called it HTC Trace.
There is also a new Weather widget; when you click on weather it opens a window with full screen effects. They also removed restriction on the number of simultaneously open windows in basic browser which is especially good news for me.

Platform

The device is built on a Qualcomm MSM 8260 platform; this new platform from Qualcomm has a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor. Yet it is hard to say if HTC Sensation is better in performance than other devices based on NVIDIA Tegra 2 we have wait for the final samples and stable firmware. The smartphone has 768 MB RAM and 1 GB of storage. In addition Sensation has a slot for microSD cards. It also has all the standard wireless connectivity for the modern smartphone Android: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Impressions

The new smartphone is made by the principle of "faster, higher, stronger" HTC preferred such an approach for many years and only in 2010 the accents were a bit skewed towards services and the expansion of the range. However, Sensation returns these principles and personally I am very glad. New platform with dual-core processor, new high-resolution screen, new version of HTC Sense and support for higher resolution of video recording all fit in HTC Sensation. The Company is not flirting with separate areas of the device but simply increases the overall bar for Android-smartphones. Of course, we all realize that today champions’ time is very short; a couple of months is the period that any top-end smartphone spends on the top step. But HTC Sensation does not become less attractive and interesting. If you are wondering what Android smartphone will be one of the most technologically advanced this summer one of the options is HTC Sensation. Hands on video next.