welcome to my unboxing and first look at
nothing actually no there's something this is the Windows Phone 8X from HTC
this is a Windows Phone which basically means that you already know a lot of
what there is to know about the device that's inside because Microsoft locks
down the platform in a big way compared to what other manufacturers do so on
Android you can find any configuration Under the Sun whereas for Windows phone
you can find I mean okay it's better than it was with Windows Phone 7 so you
know they've locked down certain things like what kind of a you know processor
you can use um here this guy right here
has 16 gigs of storage and unfortunately does not actually uh give you the option
to upgrade it with a Micro SD 1 gig of RAM okay it's got a Qualcomm S4 1.5 GHz
dual core so this is the S4 plus platform this isn't nearly as fast as
the S4 Pro which is in the Droid DNA
that we also took a look at recently but it should still be fast enough because
of the optimizations that Microsoft has done on Windows 8 phone to make it
extremely fluid to use so we're sort of
taking this off this is a very strange box it's like a I thought at first that
it was foam but it's actually like a cardboard paper carton thing ah there we
go ecofriendly packaging got it uh Beats
Audio is included with ex exclusive built-in app 4.3in super LCD 2 screen
720p so this is not super LCD 3 which is
just an a new iteration of the technology in the Droid DNA and it is
not 1080p unlike the Droid DNA but I'm still really excited to try this one out
just because I'm super stoked on trying out Windows phone what else we got here
8 megapixel camera with an f2.0 aperture
lens autofocus LED flash Ultra wideangle front camera so this is part of H HTC's
whole image image sense sort of uh
platform here so they've added a lot of that technology in here so it's got
their dedicated image chip which is basically just fast uh video and photo
processing the 2.0 aperture lens makes a big difference this is important because
the lower the aperture the more light the lens actually allows to pass through
it this gives you automatically better photos compared to if you did not
compared to if you had a higher aperture lens because the techn the way the
technology works is you've got a sensor on the other side that's as bigger or as
small as it is and physics dictates sort of how much light you can hit it with
and then the lens either allows more light through or doesn't allow as much
light through the higher quality of lens the lower the aperture it's capable of
running at so they're basically just saying yeah we're going to use an
awesome sensor and we're going to throw an awesome lens at it as well as the
whole Beats Audio branding thing so I don't know I haven't tried it yet the
whole Beats Audio Paradigm thing that they've got going on this phone but what
I do know is that having an amped uh an
amped 3 12 mm Jack on it will make a difference compared to having a non-
amped one especially if you have higher quality headphones or higher quality
imem this is mostly relevant for headphones though guys so dual core
crate ah yes it uses an adreno 305 GPU
which is not the most powerful that's available on that platform it's actually
weaker than a 225 but the 225 is sort of
a last generation souped up one in the adreno 305 is sort of a less powerful
current gen one there's not there's not that many games on the Windows app store
yet but hopefully that will change and we will need that GPU to uh to be
capable of more in the meantime let's have a look at what's inside the
eco-friendly box so this is please do
not misplace this label and attach to the device to claim service or repair
got it then we have a micro SIM removal tool we have your Windows Phone 8X quick
guide getting to know your phone front camera touchcreen ah yes the importance
of the wide angle front camera lens that's cool because if you're going to
be using the phone for things like um see I don't even know what see I'm such
an apple person see iPhone 4 right uh
for FaceTime or Skype okay all right okay
other things uh then what you can do is you can point it at you and it'll
actually so you'll get a little bit of fisheye but it'll see a wider uh a wider
image so if you had a group of people you know crowded around it or whatever
else then having a wide-angle lens there would actually be beneficial whereas if
you didn't then it would not be beneficial so yeah front camera here
proximity sensor here so that could be useful notification LED is built into
the front grill here um the touch screen
is this is awesome the touch screen is actually labeled on here touch screen
got it and then camera button ah yes dedicated camera button this is a
requirement on Windows phone so it's a two-stage button which means halfway for
focus all the way to actually take a picture start buttons here with back and
search dedicated buttons down there and
you've got a micro USB for charging it
should however be noted that this phone
does include wireless charging but apparently it's uh not necessarily hold
on let me just see is that this phone I have notes okay it's wireless charging but
it's like not quite the same as other wireless charging Solutions guys you're
going to have to leave a comment and let me know sort of if I'm wrong about that
in fact we'll be back in a moment to put the Sim in and then
yeah there's a micro USB for charging which isn't necessarily my favorite
connector but it's not the end of the world so we stealthily installed a SIM
card in it while we uh while we were off camera there so let's get started click
get started I can tell the difference between the super LCD 2 and super lcd3
already cuz I did just have a chance to check out super lcd3 how' you like your
Windows phone and enable mobile data automatically download updates blah blah
blah Wi-Fi connection oh this is speaking of what what's your home
country United Kingdom where the heck was this phone intended to be sent I
wonder if uh no yeah there we go look at that they have Canada on there send my
location to Microsoft when my phone is activated that should be okay I'm sure
Microsoft doesn't care a Microsoft account allows you to do that you know what we'll sign in
later sign in later thank you few more
apps still need to finish installing so what else can we say about it um well
number one is the fact that the biggest
complaint that people have generally had about Windows Phone 8 is the app
ecosystem so there's even things like I mean Google only has one native app for
Windows Phone 8 at this point in time um
so yeah it's not as rich as something like iOS or Android but I personally
believe that that will improve over time so I'm my intention as of sort of
filming this video right now is to stop using my iPhone 4 out right and switch
to using the adex from HTC and find out
if I can actually survive the switch in the app ecosystem that exists so things
like Maps I'm expecting to be using Nokia maps uh because uh Microsoft
actually doesn't include Bing Maps as the default map application because
apparently the Nokia one is excellent so even other handset makers have to use
Nokia maps which I thought was sort of a weird thing but is I guess not the end
of the world as long as you're Nokia um
you know what let's have a look at the phone physically a little bit they they're calling it a human form which
isn't the first time we've heard that as a way of describing sort of the way that
a phone is uh got sort of naturally flowing lines there are no sharp edges
on the phone whatsoever so everything is very curvy here if I actually hold it up
right like this you'll see that the edges are rounded rounded edges hold it
on this side it's hard to figure out the angling yeah there you go so rounded
edges again uh even the edges of the glass are actually rounded slightly so I
really don't know if you're going to be able to see that but there's no there's no sharp edge to it it flows seamlessly
into the yellow actually speaking of the yellow the yellow shell so I picked this
particular color it's a very bold color but there are other colors available
guys don't worry the 8X isn't only available in peel the retinas off of
your eyeballs green which is definitely
thankful because I have sort of a unique taste in terms of Aesthetics and not
everyone necessarily shares it so I just
want to see if I'm missing anything else here we'll have to do of course my
obligatory iPhone 4 size comparison so
the phone itself is wider than an iPhone 4 which you'll know if you've done any
research on it whatsoever because it's significantly larger than an iPhone 4
which most phones are these days Cu uh Apple seems to be falling a little bit
behind in terms of phone sizes and uh
and staying competitive about them people the trend right now seems to be
larger screen sizes thickness is pretty similar but because of the curved shape
it actually does feel more natural in the hand um compared to the Droid DNA
which I had said in my unboxing is way too big for my hands cuz look at that I
can barely reach across I have quite small hands and I that was one of the
reasons that I always found the iPhone 4 quite comfortable to use I can actually
reach the top Corner um it looks like because of the Dead Space here at the
bottom with buttons I'm not quite going to be able to reach the top left corner
but it's not that bad I can do bottom left bottom right top right and not
quite top left so hopefully I won't have
tooo much trouble with that UI seems very very Snappy so far and this is
actually my first time with Windows 8 other than or not with with Windows
Phone 8 other than a brief experience with it at the NCI Tech fair not that
long ago so live tiles can be customized
in a lot of different ways to actually give you live updates about things on
the fly it includes Internet Explorer recommended Internet Explorer 10 which
particularly for particularly for HTML 5 is supposed
to be quite the Beast so let's just go somewhere where people like to go like
oh yes Factory Direct oh no not what I meant to do allow no not facr that's not
what we want oh look at that speech recognition go ahead oh
facebook.com facebook.com okay then that
worked in spite of all the sort of stuff that I was saying before that so that
actually won't work that well because we want to go somewhere you know what let's
just do our usual thing let's go to the ncx website I wish it would take you
straight there like kind of a I'm feeling lucky search if you key it right
into there so browsing feels pretty smooth not quite as good as the Droid
DNA where I can see a little bit of I can see a little bit of pop in at the
edges and then zooming yeah you can see you can see it a little bit there but
the Droid DNA is running the pro chipset whereas this one is running the plus
chipset set which is significantly less powerful so it's got NFC Kids Corner is
kind of a neat feature that's included with Windows Phone 8 so it's not so much
to protect your kids from doing anything stupid but it's to well yeah protect
your kids from doing anything stupid that sends a bunch of emails to everyone
in your contact list but it doesn't necessarily protect them from finding
anything harmful on the
internet I think that pretty much does
it I'm looking through ah yes data sense so it's carrier dependent but it allows
the data to be compressed on the carrier side so that you don't use as much data
and it also is supposed to help you this is a Windows Phone 8 feature find local
hotspots that are around you and connect to them so that any background Services
can be running off that whenever you're in range of it it is an LG an LTE 4G
phone it is not an LG phone LTE 4G phone
but it is not going to be available in my region because I have the wrong
carrier and this is the wrong phone and all of that stuff that makes it not work
the media ecosystem is supposed to easily integrate with the Xbox store
compared to sort of previous Zoom branding or whatever else is going on so
if you buy something on here that's a song the minute you sit down at another
Windows branded device or an Xbox it should all be available through the
cloud there and that pretty much wraps it up so we'll just do a little bit more
close-up in terms of size comparison I'd love for you guys to see it up against a
couple of other phones so this is a Samsung uh Note
2 so you can see that it's clearly absolutely ridiculous in size and has a
Ben Q sticker on the back which diesel thinks is some kind of a fashion
statement or something like that um then there's the Droid DNA so you can see
it's quite a bit smaller than that and finally there's the iPhone 4 which
you've already seen don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more
unboxings reviews and other computer videos and I will see you guys again
next time