Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC has just welcomed two
of the newest members of its Windows Phone family. Directly opposite the HTC
One X and One S from the company’s Android lineup are the HTC Windows Phone 8X
and 8S. The company has been in the fore front of the Windows Phone race with
the company representing over half of all the WP7 phones in the past two years
or so.
And even though Microsoft is now favoring Nokia over other
manufacturers when it comes to the use and development of the Windows Phone
operating system, HTC hopes to still retain its fan base with the arrival of
the 8X and the 8S. And with the announcement of the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820,
the stakes are now even higher for HTC to attract more consumers to buy their
handsets. But are the features 8X and 8S enough to win over Windows Phone fans
from Nokia’s camp or even Android and Apple fans?
Here’s a quick overview of the features and design of the
two WP8 devices from HTC.
HTC WINDOWS PHONE 8S
The 8S is the WP8 equivalent of the HTC One S Android smartphone.
The phone has a two-toned body around 10.3mm thin with a 4.0-inch S-LCD
capacitive display protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass. It has an internal
memory of 4GB and 512MB of RAM.
It has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and v2.1 Bluetooth. The 8S is
powered by dual-core 1GHz Krait processor on a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset.
The S-LCD screen is able to produce around 16M colors with a pixel density of
233 pixels per inch. The phone has a rear facing camera able to capture images
at 5MP resolution and video at 720pixels at a rate of 30 frames per second. The
camera is equipped with autofocus functionality, geo-tagging, touch focus and
face detection plus a LED flash for taking pictures in low light conditions.
Furthermore, the phone has an Adreno 225 dedicated graphics
processor, an accelerometer and a proximity sensor. It also has A-GPS support and GLONASS as well
has HTML5 native support for browsing. Just like the iPhone and the Lumias, the
8S will support MicroSIM cards only.
The device will be powered by 1700mAh Li-ion battery and
will come in a variety of colors including: domino, fiesta red, atlantic blue
and high-rise gray. HTC has also brought the Beats audio sound enhancement feature
on board the WP8 phones so no more Beats-envy for WP8 users. J
HTC WINDOWS PHONE 8X
Just like the 8S is for the One S, the 8X is of course the
WP8 counterpart of the HTC One X. Unlike the 8S, the 8X has a unibody design
and has a thinner profile at 10.1mm and a larger screen at 4.3 inches. This
phone also has a higher screen resolution set at 720x1280 pixels compared to
the 480x800 pixel resolution of the 8S.
It also has an improved GPU, an Adreno 225 to be specific.
And on top of that, it features an 8MP camera with autofocus, geo-tagging,
touch focus and can capture video at 1080p at 30 frames per second with continuous
focus. The front facing camera has a resolution of 2.1 megapixels. The 8X also has NFC capabilities and a beefed
up 16GB of internal memory and 1GB of RAM on a Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon
processor.
For the similarities, this phone also feature the same Beats
Audio sound enhancement feature that improves bass and treble for audio files.
It offers the same support for Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and v2.1 Bluetooth with A2DP,
EDR. A-GPS support and GLONASS are also available in the 8X as well as a built
in accelerometer, proximity sensor and compass.
The phone also supports MicroSIM cards only. The display is
also protected by Gorilla glass from Corning and the processor is a 1.5 GHz
Krait with two cores. The phone’s browser also supports HTML5 just like in the
8S. In terms of colors, the device will come in California blue, graphite
black, flame red and limelight yellow.
So what do you think of the two WP8 phones from HTC? Do you
think they can win Windows Phone fans and other smartphone users to make the
switch? Your guesses are as good as mine. For now, only time can tell if these
two phones will be a hit to smartphone users.
