HTC One S Battery Life

Ok I have had my new HTC One S for 9 days now, so I have been using it quite extensively. Between playing games, my current favourite is Temple Run, I finished all the current stuff for angry birds space which is also very cool.

So on to battery life, I am used to charging my phone nightly, the Nexus One wasn't particularly good on battery life. Over all I have been quite impressed with the battery life, I missed charging it one night and it lasted through the next day till about 7pm. My usage pattern is fairly heavy, with lots of stuff going on. Emails, games a little bit of video and a blog post or two when I was testing out the swype beta (very very big improvement over the standard keyboard).

I'm sure that once updates come out for the phone battery life will improve some more. I am happy with my purchase, sense 4 is not really my cup of tea, but it is very polished.

So I got an HTC One S

I have had my new phone for a week now.over all it is really nice. The hardware is really good, I love the feel of it.

Having the bigger screen is great, it is super clear and bright compared to my old nexus one.

On the software side it is a bit of a learning curve coming from Cyanogenmod 7 to sense 4. Sense isn't bad, but I'm used to the more open nature of CM. My brother had the nexus S, android 4 is really nice and I want something close to that. I also feel that sense of slowing the phone down, the animations are nice but I always prefer function over form.

Once there is an official Cyanogenmod port for the One S I will install it, this phone is a bit new for that yet. I really like that HTC makes unlocking the bootloader quite easy. Just go to www.HTCdev.com and follow the instructions.

I also just got the Swype beta, out is absolutely awesome. It makes typing on my phone fast and easy, I have typed this whole post on my phone, I would never have done this with the standard keyboard.when Swype comes out of beta I will buy it. The link below will take you to the Swype website, follow the instructions to install it.

http://www.swype.com/get-swype/how-do-i-get-swype/

Galaxy Note

I had a few minutes with the Samsung Galaxy Note today (5.3" screen). I was surprised by how "small" it felt in my pocket. I guess it was because I expected it to be massive and unwieldy, where I was hoping the HTC One X would feel small. It didn't, it felt not much bigger then the HTC One S, I guess perception plays a big roll in how we experience things.

Would I buy one? The prices have dropped since the SGSIII came out. Probably not, it is certainly a phone you need to use a bluetooth headset with, you look like a tool holding something that big to your ear. It is still super huge in the hand, and is the perfect phone for those that consume a lot of media on their phone.

The screen is very nice, the little stylus is kinda cool but gets old quite quickly.

I do wonder what size the Note 2 will be, if the screen will grow like the Galaxy phone did.

Am I asking too much from phone manufacturers?

I have been watching the press and tech sites quite closely since the SGS III release, the numbers being stated (benchmarks) for the SGS III vs HTC One X vs HTC One S are all very impressive.

Fans and haters alike would have you believe that either the SGS III kills the One X or visa versa, turns out that in different ways both are best. Surprisingly the One S with the Snapdragon S4 does very well in some of the reviews even coming out on top in a few. This will make for some interesting devices come the S4 Quad which is slated for release sometime in Q4 2012.

I have read most of the reviews (Engadget has a good one) that are available on the net and discounting the obviously biased ones, the new Exynos Quad is a fine chip powering its way through the benchmarks giving some seriously impressive numbers (supercomputers passed 150MFLOPS in about 1975-76).

Super computer speeds (10^8 = 100MFLOPS) (thanks Wikipedia)

From the various reviews, it looks like the Mali400 GPU in the SGSIII isn't really a match for the Tegra 3, but the Exynos is a better CPU. There is a lot to like about the SGSIII but not more so then the One X.

I feel the main thing holding back the SGSIII is the stupid TouchWiz 4 skin. HTC Sense 4 is no longer the bloated pig that the older versions were, it is much closer to stock android (why the manufacturers don't just ship stock is beyond me). TouchWiz is clunky and old looking where Sense looks sleek and polished. 

Well that and the fact that it is f-ing huge, these are supposed to be portable 

computers, and not in the way that a laptop is portable, but a pocketable computer.

I want a hybrid of the SGSIII and the One X in the form factor of the One S, and this is probably asking too much. Maybe when the Snapdragon S4 Quad arrives. I want the microSD slot from the SGSIII but the proper ICS buttons from the One X/S. I want the user replacable battery from the SGSIII (or bigger) and the forward looking UI from the One X/S, or better yet stock android. I want the IPS screen from the One X at 1280 x 720 but in the size of the One S but it should be Gorilla Glass 2 like the SGSIII.  Both phones have 1GB of RAM, this is probably enough, but by year end I expect to see phones coming out with 2GB.