HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,614 words · ~13 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at
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nothing actually no there's something this is the Windows Phone 8X from HTC
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this is a Windows Phone which basically means that you already know a lot of
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what there is to know about the device that's inside because Microsoft locks
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down the platform in a big way compared to what other manufacturers do so on
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Android you can find any configuration Under the Sun whereas for Windows phone
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you can find I mean okay it's better than it was with Windows Phone 7 so you
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know they've locked down certain things like what kind of a you know processor
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you can use um here this guy right here
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has 16 gigs of storage and unfortunately does not actually uh give you the option
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to upgrade it with a Micro SD 1 gig of RAM okay it's got a Qualcomm S4 1.5 GHz
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dual core so this is the S4 plus platform this isn't nearly as fast as
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the S4 Pro which is in the Droid DNA
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that we also took a look at recently but it should still be fast enough because
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of the optimizations that Microsoft has done on Windows 8 phone to make it
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extremely fluid to use so we're sort of
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taking this off this is a very strange box it's like a I thought at first that
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it was foam but it's actually like a cardboard paper carton thing ah there we
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go ecofriendly packaging got it uh Beats
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Audio is included with ex exclusive built-in app 4.3in super LCD 2 screen
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720p so this is not super LCD 3 which is
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just an a new iteration of the technology in the Droid DNA and it is
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not 1080p unlike the Droid DNA but I'm still really excited to try this one out
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just because I'm super stoked on trying out Windows phone what else we got here
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8 megapixel camera with an f2.0 aperture
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lens autofocus LED flash Ultra wideangle front camera so this is part of H HTC's
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whole image image sense sort of uh
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platform here so they've added a lot of that technology in here so it's got
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their dedicated image chip which is basically just fast uh video and photo
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processing the 2.0 aperture lens makes a big difference this is important because
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the lower the aperture the more light the lens actually allows to pass through
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it this gives you automatically better photos compared to if you did not
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compared to if you had a higher aperture lens because the techn the way the
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technology works is you've got a sensor on the other side that's as bigger or as
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small as it is and physics dictates sort of how much light you can hit it with
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and then the lens either allows more light through or doesn't allow as much
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light through the higher quality of lens the lower the aperture it's capable of
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running at so they're basically just saying yeah we're going to use an
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awesome sensor and we're going to throw an awesome lens at it as well as the
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whole Beats Audio branding thing so I don't know I haven't tried it yet the
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whole Beats Audio Paradigm thing that they've got going on this phone but what
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I do know is that having an amped uh an
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amped 3 12 mm Jack on it will make a difference compared to having a non-
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amped one especially if you have higher quality headphones or higher quality
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imem this is mostly relevant for headphones though guys so dual core
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crate ah yes it uses an adreno 305 GPU
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which is not the most powerful that's available on that platform it's actually
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weaker than a 225 but the 225 is sort of
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a last generation souped up one in the adreno 305 is sort of a less powerful
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current gen one there's not there's not that many games on the Windows app store
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yet but hopefully that will change and we will need that GPU to uh to be
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capable of more in the meantime let's have a look at what's inside the
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eco-friendly box so this is please do
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not misplace this label and attach to the device to claim service or repair
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got it then we have a micro SIM removal tool we have your Windows Phone 8X quick
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guide getting to know your phone front camera touchcreen ah yes the importance
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of the wide angle front camera lens that's cool because if you're going to
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be using the phone for things like um see I don't even know what see I'm such
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an apple person see iPhone 4 right uh
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for FaceTime or Skype okay all right okay
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other things uh then what you can do is you can point it at you and it'll
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actually so you'll get a little bit of fisheye but it'll see a wider uh a wider
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image so if you had a group of people you know crowded around it or whatever
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else then having a wide-angle lens there would actually be beneficial whereas if
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you didn't then it would not be beneficial so yeah front camera here
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proximity sensor here so that could be useful notification LED is built into
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the front grill here um the touch screen
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is this is awesome the touch screen is actually labeled on here touch screen
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got it and then camera button ah yes dedicated camera button this is a
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requirement on Windows phone so it's a two-stage button which means halfway for
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focus all the way to actually take a picture start buttons here with back and
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search dedicated buttons down there and
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you've got a micro USB for charging it
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should however be noted that this phone
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does include wireless charging but apparently it's uh not necessarily hold
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on let me just see is that this phone I have notes okay it's wireless charging but
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it's like not quite the same as other wireless charging Solutions guys you're
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going to have to leave a comment and let me know sort of if I'm wrong about that
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in fact we'll be back in a moment to put the Sim in and then
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yeah there's a micro USB for charging which isn't necessarily my favorite
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connector but it's not the end of the world so we stealthily installed a SIM
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card in it while we uh while we were off camera there so let's get started click
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get started I can tell the difference between the super LCD 2 and super lcd3
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already cuz I did just have a chance to check out super lcd3 how' you like your
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Windows phone and enable mobile data automatically download updates blah blah
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blah Wi-Fi connection oh this is speaking of what what's your home
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country United Kingdom where the heck was this phone intended to be sent I
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wonder if uh no yeah there we go look at that they have Canada on there send my
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location to Microsoft when my phone is activated that should be okay I'm sure
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Microsoft doesn't care a Microsoft account allows you to do that you know what we'll sign in
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later sign in later thank you few more
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apps still need to finish installing so what else can we say about it um well
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number one is the fact that the biggest
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complaint that people have generally had about Windows Phone 8 is the app
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ecosystem so there's even things like I mean Google only has one native app for
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Windows Phone 8 at this point in time um
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so yeah it's not as rich as something like iOS or Android but I personally
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believe that that will improve over time so I'm my intention as of sort of
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filming this video right now is to stop using my iPhone 4 out right and switch
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to using the adex from HTC and find out
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if I can actually survive the switch in the app ecosystem that exists so things
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like Maps I'm expecting to be using Nokia maps uh because uh Microsoft
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actually doesn't include Bing Maps as the default map application because
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apparently the Nokia one is excellent so even other handset makers have to use
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Nokia maps which I thought was sort of a weird thing but is I guess not the end
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of the world as long as you're Nokia um
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you know what let's have a look at the phone physically a little bit they they're calling it a human form which
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isn't the first time we've heard that as a way of describing sort of the way that
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a phone is uh got sort of naturally flowing lines there are no sharp edges
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on the phone whatsoever so everything is very curvy here if I actually hold it up
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right like this you'll see that the edges are rounded rounded edges hold it
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on this side it's hard to figure out the angling yeah there you go so rounded
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edges again uh even the edges of the glass are actually rounded slightly so I
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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
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into the yellow actually speaking of the yellow the yellow shell so I picked this
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particular color it's a very bold color but there are other colors available
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guys don't worry the 8X isn't only available in peel the retinas off of
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your eyeballs green which is definitely
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thankful because I have sort of a unique taste in terms of Aesthetics and not
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everyone necessarily shares it so I just
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want to see if I'm missing anything else here we'll have to do of course my
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obligatory iPhone 4 size comparison so
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the phone itself is wider than an iPhone 4 which you'll know if you've done any
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research on it whatsoever because it's significantly larger than an iPhone 4
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which most phones are these days Cu uh Apple seems to be falling a little bit
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behind in terms of phone sizes and uh
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and staying competitive about them people the trend right now seems to be
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larger screen sizes thickness is pretty similar but because of the curved shape
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it actually does feel more natural in the hand um compared to the Droid DNA
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which I had said in my unboxing is way too big for my hands cuz look at that I
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can barely reach across I have quite small hands and I that was one of the
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reasons that I always found the iPhone 4 quite comfortable to use I can actually
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reach the top Corner um it looks like because of the Dead Space here at the
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bottom with buttons I'm not quite going to be able to reach the top left corner
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but it's not that bad I can do bottom left bottom right top right and not
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quite top left so hopefully I won't have
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tooo much trouble with that UI seems very very Snappy so far and this is
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actually my first time with Windows 8 other than or not with with Windows
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Phone 8 other than a brief experience with it at the NCI Tech fair not that
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long ago so live tiles can be customized
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in a lot of different ways to actually give you live updates about things on
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the fly it includes Internet Explorer recommended Internet Explorer 10 which
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particularly for particularly for HTML 5 is supposed
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to be quite the Beast so let's just go somewhere where people like to go like
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oh yes Factory Direct oh no not what I meant to do allow no not facr that's not
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what we want oh look at that speech recognition go ahead oh
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facebook.com facebook.com okay then that
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worked in spite of all the sort of stuff that I was saying before that so that
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actually won't work that well because we want to go somewhere you know what let's
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just do our usual thing let's go to the ncx website I wish it would take you
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straight there like kind of a I'm feeling lucky search if you key it right
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into there so browsing feels pretty smooth not quite as good as the Droid
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DNA where I can see a little bit of I can see a little bit of pop in at the
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edges and then zooming yeah you can see you can see it a little bit there but
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the Droid DNA is running the pro chipset whereas this one is running the plus
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chipset set which is significantly less powerful so it's got NFC Kids Corner is
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kind of a neat feature that's included with Windows Phone 8 so it's not so much
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to protect your kids from doing anything stupid but it's to well yeah protect
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your kids from doing anything stupid that sends a bunch of emails to everyone
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in your contact list but it doesn't necessarily protect them from finding
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anything harmful on the
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internet I think that pretty much does
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it I'm looking through ah yes data sense so it's carrier dependent but it allows
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the data to be compressed on the carrier side so that you don't use as much data
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and it also is supposed to help you this is a Windows Phone 8 feature find local
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hotspots that are around you and connect to them so that any background Services
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can be running off that whenever you're in range of it it is an LG an LTE 4G
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phone it is not an LG phone LTE 4G phone
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but it is not going to be available in my region because I have the wrong
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carrier and this is the wrong phone and all of that stuff that makes it not work
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the media ecosystem is supposed to easily integrate with the Xbox store
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compared to sort of previous Zoom branding or whatever else is going on so
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if you buy something on here that's a song the minute you sit down at another
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Windows branded device or an Xbox it should all be available through the
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cloud there and that pretty much wraps it up so we'll just do a little bit more
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close-up in terms of size comparison I'd love for you guys to see it up against a
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couple of other phones so this is a Samsung uh Note
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2 so you can see that it's clearly absolutely ridiculous in size and has a
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Ben Q sticker on the back which diesel thinks is some kind of a fashion
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statement or something like that um then there's the Droid DNA so you can see
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it's quite a bit smaller than that and finally there's the iPhone 4 which
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you've already seen don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more
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unboxings reviews and other computer videos and I will see you guys again
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next time