#“The HTC Sensation is……..no I’m not going to say it”
It's been three weeks since I won a HTC Sensation in some Vodafone Ireland competition I don't remember entering. Thanks Vodafone! I thought I'd do a quick update about it.
Overall? Fabulous! Seriously, it's an awesome phone. If you don't drink the Steve kool-aid (hell, even if you do), this is the joint best phone on the market (along with the Samsung Galaxy S II).
Headline specs are very impressive:
- Dual Core 1.2GHz CPU
- 4.3" non-AMOLED Screen
- Lots of memory
- Usual WIfi, Bluetooth HSDPA
- 8 Megapixel dual LED-flash camera
- Graphics co-processor
- Capacitivebuttons only
- Decent battery
The phone is extremely fast and the screen is gorgeous. However, with my girly hands, the screen is almost too big to hold. It's very hard to stretch to press the home button with your thumb.
Of course, I headed straight over to XDA Developers to see if I could unlock it, root it and remove the pointless Sense Skin that HTC overlays on Android. My timing was great and they had just managed to do all of that. However, it looks like the non-Sense ROMs aren't quite stable enough yet.
Then I found Android Revolution HD which is a modified version of the standard software with better kernel, lots of tweaks and improvements, and most importantly, it allows the CPU to run at 1.5Ghz, which is the speed it was designed to run at. The CF Bench App shows that the phone with that firmware blows everything else away and is the fastest phone on the market.
HTC did a bit of a marketing stunt with the Sensation. They launched it at 1.2GHz. Now they have announced the XE version at 1.5GHz and "Beats Audio". How funny is it that the hackers on XDA already have a version of Android Revolution HD which is at 1.5GHz and has Beats audio! i.e. HTC are basicallyreleasingthe same phone again, with different software.
Any disappointments? The lack of NFC is the only major one I can think of. It'd be great if HTC released an updated back cover with NFC added. Also, the bundled Class 4 8GB Card is rubbish and you can see the phone visibly stutter when accessing big audio files on the card. I've ordered a 32GB Class 10 from 7 Day Shop. I already have a spare battery which I haven't needed much.
For fun I also bought an MHL cable for it. This plugs into the USB port on the phone and accepts a HDMI cable at the other end. You can then play HD video from your phone on your LCD TV. I've used this several times when travelling and it works brilliantly.
If you are in the market for a new smartphone, this is the one you want.