The other notable change is the connection speed, with the HTC One XL taking advantage of a 4G LTE modem. Like the HTC’s 4G Velocity released earlier this year, the speeds on offer for accessing the web are insanely fast, offering speeds up to 40Mbps in a metropolitan area. The highest speed we reached in our tests was a downlink of 39Mbps and an uplink of 22Mbps, much higher than any other handset we’re reviewing can reach.
These speeds won’t necessarily be the same all across the city, but we found excellent performance in most places we traveled to.
For the most part, HTC’s new handset proves itself to be superior to the original One, even with the change to a lower speed processor.
About the only thing that seems to have changed for the worse is the keyboard responsiveness, and we’re not sure why that’s suddenly lagging.
While the processor isn’t quite the same speed junkie as what can be found in the One X, it shouldn’t have provided the keyboard slowdowns we experienced, with letter presses often resulting in slow downs here and there.
And like the previous model, there’s still no microSD slot, meaning you’re stuck with just 32GB of memory, and much of it lost to you, with only 24.49GB available for use. That should be more than enough for most people, but as applications get larger and people rely more on their phones for listening to music, you may find the amount of memory on this handset slightly constricting, especially as many other handsets offer expandable microSD storage.
Conclusion
HTC’s second handset under the “One” brand to be released in Australia seems to be the real winner, although it will only be useful to those on the Telstra network, bringing excellent performance, a solid build, and some of the best mobile connectivity Australia has to offer. Highly recommended.
Andrew
Had One XL for a week
As a phone works great, cell coverage is just shy of nokia 6720(blue tick) which is very impressive.
Screen is fairly visible in sunlight for phone and camera.
Used only as a phone battery life is more than adequate approx 5 min talk time 5 min screen time over 9 hours used 20% of battery.
Runs smooth on the net and in its own osÂ
htc one xl is nothing different from HTC one x both are the same no difference of screen, camera ,etc
Different processor, different connection capabilities (4G in the XL, 3G in the X), different battery life.
The silver dots? They’re a charging mechanism used by a specific charger type that HTC was rumoured to release, but never did. Not for this phone, anyway.
You can see the same sort of thing on the HTC Rhyme, a handset that – while it wasn’t 4G – used the same sort of charging technology and came with the dock. For more information, see our review on the Rhyme: https://gadgetguy.com.au/product/htc-rhyme/
You don’t. The One XL doesn’t have a removable back, last we checked.
Rather poke the pin hole with the SIM ejector tool and pull the tray out.