Features & Specifications Proudly showing off the latest OS, HTC even managed to fit it in the
name of the phone – HTC Windows Phone 8X. It may look the same on the
outside as the 7.5 and prior versions it is succeeding, but there are
considerable changes on the inside.
For starters, Microsoft has taken a cue
from Apple and kept the OS fairly locked up. This means the likes of HTC
cannot customize the UI, like they have done on Android phones with
their Sense UI. Only very minor tweaks can be achieved, like the weather
widget that doubles up as the lock screen. Additionally, there will be
notifications for missed calls, new mails and messages on this screen,
but this can be customized to be on or off, for individual applications.
It is truly brilliant. There are additional apps that HTC has
preloaded, like the stocks app, but unlike Android offerings, the OS is
fairly untouched. Additionally, HTC has slotted in its apps in the
Special section on the application store, but that’s about it.
As with the previous editions of the
Windows Phone OS, there are no multiple home-screens – something we are
delighted about. What you get past unlocking the display is a bunch of Live Tiles,
which are basically blocks that take you directly to an app, and with
the Live capability showing you some relevant information right on the
homescreen. They can also just be fun to look at, like the Pictures tile
or the People’s tile. Swipe and the application list opens up from the
right side. The tiles can be rearranged, resized, added and removed as
per your requirement. The background on the tiles page and the app list
remains black or white, with still no ability to put any wallpaper
there. The theme colours do have some options, but that basically just
changes the icons and the tile colours.
The notification bar is still rather
half-baked, like in the previous version. The time shows up on the right
corner at the top, but information like signal status, Wi-Fi etc.
remain hidden. The battery icon also remains hidden for the most part,
until the battery level starts running low. You need to swipe down on
the display to open the notification bar, but it itself doesn’t do any
more than be a viewer.
There is a sort of a task manager to be
had, a task viewer if you may, when you long press the return key.
Swiping right and left lets you see which apps are open. To exit an app,
you still need to use the return key when inside the app, but pressing
the Windows logo (which is the Home key) sends the app into the
background.
Like with the desktop versions of
Windows 8, Microsoft has made the Search feature fairly central to the
experience. Press the search touch sensitive key, and you can directly
search and open apps from there. Quite useful if you have downloaded a
lot of apps, and the particular one you want to open now seems to be
lost in the clutter.
As a reviewer, I was rather miffed at
the inability to take screenshots. This is now a built-in feature with
the new Android OS, but is still missing in Windows Phone 8.
Microsoft has preloaded the device with
the complete Office suite, but surprisingly misses out on SkyDrive out
of the box. You just need to go to the Store to download it. Rather nice
to offer the complete productivity suite with the OS, rather than
leaving the option with the consumer to download later, something that
surely would have cost money.
Speaking of which, syncing with your
Windows Live account is rather seamless. Sign in, and the contacts get
synced immediately, as does the mail account. Once SkyDrive is
downloaded and signed into, the integration becomes deeper. Open a doc,
edit on the fly, save it back to the cloud and share it from there, if
needed. The People’s app is where the contacts go, with any images you
may have stored for them. You can set up groups for your contacts.
However, it is fairly diplomatic of the fellows in Redmond to allow an
almost similar experience with even Gmail, at least as far as mails and
contact sync is concerned. Those being the two primary bits of data you
immediately need in a smartphone, you are pretty much sorted. Office
functionality does not take a hit either, because you may sign up for a
Microsoft account later for SkyDrive, to add the cloud storage
functionality as well.
If you are into messaging a lot, then
the HTC Windows Phone 8X’s on-screen keyboard will be a delight to use.
Yes, it does have its faults – hardly any key spacing and the keys
themselves are thinner than ideal, but the precision of this touchscreen
is much greater than the sum of the negatives. Typing quickly will be a
fairly precise experience.
Returning back to the issue of apps for a
minute, and to Bing Maps specifically. Navigation software has been in
the limelight ever since Apple screwed up Apple Maps with the iOS 6 update,
making Google Maps the undisputed leader in the segment. Users in the
U.S. are fairly impressed with Bing Maps, but here in India, they are
just plain useless. Maps themselves are weak, with important locations
not mapped properly, and address search is best not expected.
Speaking of the Windows Phone 8X’s
hardware, it runs on a 1.5GHz dual core processor on the Qualcomm S4
chipset, coupled with Adreno 225 graphics and 1GB of RAM. Admittedly, it
will be fighting off the quad-core Android phones in its price bracket,
but a smoother OS experience is in offer with these specifications than
some of the geekier rival OSes. The HTC 8X comes with 16GB of internal
storage, but unfortunately no expandable memory card slot. The 4.3-inch
S-LCD2 display has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, but the most
impressive thing is the colour vividness and the fact that text feels
sharp enough that it may actually look like it is popping out at you.
The 8MP camera is fairly good for use outside during daytime, but
struggles as the ambient lighting goes down. Even during daytime
however, colour handling is a tad inconsistent, with some smudging or
some colours being washed out.
Performance For a phone that has the specs of an Android phone just a peg below
the current top-end ones, the 8X along with Windows 8 Phone combine well
to offer a rather tasty experience. The benchmark scores not
surprisingly put it well ahead of the Nokia Lumia 900,
the best Windows Phone of the previous generation. However, what we
really like is the ability of this package to not get bogged down, even
if you have a bunch of apps open in the background. That is not
something most Android phones can boast of, honestly speaking.
Call quality is rather good, when you
are in a good signal area. The earpiece is soft but yet is quite loud
when you need it to be. It blocks out ambient noise at both ends of the
calls rather well, with even disturbances like wind noise pretty well
blocked out. However, as even with the Nokia’s previous generation Lumia
phones, call quality decreased quite a bit or the call just drops when
you are in a low signal area, like in an elevator.
Battery life is a bit of a
disappointment. The HTC Windows Phone 8X will just about last a day of
usage, with 3G connected, a bit of voice calling, lots of Whatsapp and
FB Messenger chats and a generous dose of Facebook status and Twitter
updates. The 1800mAh battery, on paper, should have been enough to get
it through a day more easily than it did, pointing to what is
essentially a bug that can be surely fixed with a future software patch.
At the time of writing this, the phone has not received any such
update, or a notification for the same.
The display is clearly among the better
ones in all smartphones out there. The black level depth and the overall
colour vividness and handling is impressive. If the same was to be
replicated on an AMOLED family display, the S-LCD2 would lose out in
terms of colour warmth, but does have a lot of advantage in making the
overall screen sharper and crisper. Edges look well dealt with, with no
noise visible even from up close. Text is very comfortable to read and
videos are smooth and vivid.
During testing, we were a tad surprised
to find certain apps (which we downloaded from the Store) crash or
refuse to respond at times, including a couple of the benchmarks. Return
back to the home screen and the OS itself is running smoothly. Not a
fault of Windows Phone 8 then, but with the apps individually. Updates
should solve that problem.
Bottom Line
With HTC’s phones of late, it has always been a case of promising the
world, but not delivering it later. Samsung has comfortably taken the
top spot in the Android ecosystem, with the Galaxy S III
trouncing what was a fairly impressive HTC One X. The moment that
happened, the One X+ always looked like a desperate attempt to claw back
the gap to the leader. Which is why the Windows Phone attempt became
very crucial for HTC. As a brand, they need to take the early advantage,
before the Nokia Windows Phone handsets hit the market. With the 8X,
they seem to be hitting the right notes.
The brilliant build quality is something
that Nokia offering will surely rival, but might not be able to compete
with the slimness and the lightweight package HTC has come up with for
the 8X. The phone blends distinct design elements rather brilliantly.
The performance is rather good, and we like the simplicity of the entire
operating system. This is the perfect OS for someone to consider if
they want a phone working properly straight out of the box, without the
need of a hundred tweaks to optimize it.
But the Windows Phone 8X does have its
faults. The first is the poor battery life, which HTC needs to solve
immediately with a software update. The second is the issue with the
unibody design, which crosses out the ability for the user to replace
the battery. The third is the limitation of the storage space – 16GB
built-in, but no expandable memory slot. Yes, there will be additional
free Dropbox storage, and you have SkyDrive as well, but with limited 3G
plans, how often cloud storage can be relied on for pictures and music
is something that is unclear.
Quite clearly, the Windows OS for the
phone is evolving. And for the better! While some may crib about missing
features, we give it generous points for being simple to use and easy
to get accustomed to. If you make an OS that doesn’t come along with a
steep learning curve, you probably deserve a party in outer space for
that! Microsoft has done exactly that. Sure, a couple of things don’t
work as well as they should, but as with any new platform, the first
couple of updates should iron out whatever niggles users point out.
Windows Phone 8 is on the right path, and if you want to give it a try
while not restricted by a budget, the HTC Windows Phone 8X is possibly
the best smartphone to try it with.
A Japanese robot designed to withstand high
levels of radiation and extreme heat at damaged nuclear plants such as
Fukushima froze on Wednesday on its first public demonstration.
Despite being home
to the largest number of industrial robots in the world, Japan did not have a
device capable of entering the damaged Fukushima nuclear facility after last
year's devastating earthquake and tsunami.
Instead, Japan
brought in U.S. robots to survey the extent of the damage inside the reactor
buildings.
Toshiba Corp
unveiled Japan's own nuclear-proof robot on Wednesday, a four-legged device
able to carry up to 20 kg of equipment and capable of lifting itself up if it
falls over on uneven surfaces and amid debris.
During the
demonstration, the robot experienced a case of stage fright. The shuffling
Tetrapod locked up and suddenly froze after it tried to balance itself, forcing
technicians to carry it away.
It is the second
time such Japanese robotic technology has experienced problems. Last October, a
crawling robot developed by the Chiba Institute of Technology lost connection
with operators and was abandoned inside Fukushima's No. 2 reactor building.
Reviewing an operating system is
one of the most difficult to do, as the full power of an operating system can
never be unleashed and review its detail through only one post. Actually people
don’t use OS (operating system), they use various applications and OS
distributes all resources as they need. If pc is to be compared to the earth, then
OS will be surely ecosystem.
After grand-success of Windows
7 Microsoft took a heavy risk to release Windows 8, probably only compared to
the release of Xbox.
First Sight:
At the first sight, when I started
moving mouse, I was stopped by the outstanding graphics and theme setting. Truly
at first I could not use all the apps properly and I could not even access ‘My
Computer’, which is the most common access point to the Windows users.
Touch Sensitivity:
If you are one of the touch
screen enthusiastic then Windows 8 is definitely for you.
In touch screens, start-up
menu is combined with swipe function, which is fun to use.
Also the corners of the
desktop is called hot corners, in which many useful shortcut are given.
My Computer:
Start button has been an integral
part of Windows so since the mid-90s, and removing it has attracted some negative
criticism of loyal customers. My computer is also can’t be found in the
desktop. But actually you can bring it to desktop.
Task Manager:
Task
Manager, in its default view, is more simplified and focused, showing you
running processes and anEnd
Taskoption with
which you can quickly cut a process’ life short.
Processes
gives you nice details about each process such as how much of your CPU / Memory
/ Disk / Network it is using. Performance lets you see overall CPU,
Memory Disk and Network usage. Start-up lets you enable / disable programs that
try booting on start-up. Details is essentially the old Task Manager.
Desktop
Graphics Enhancement:
The
most evolved part of Windows 8 is its powerful graphics and new features. As an
example transparent glass chrome in windows 7 is removed but the new graphics
is visually more powerful than previous. It helps to improve overall system
performance.
The
windows aero graphics is also more powerful.
Windows 8: Metro vs Normal Desktop
Conclusion:
Windows
8 is the most advanced and awesome version of
Windows yet and it definitely deserves your attention.
For
power users, there’s enhancements to the desktop and significant performance
improvements. For others, there’s the much more user-friendly (once yougetthe idea behind it, that is) Metro
Start screen and Windows Store apps.
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