HTC One S Review - International and T-Mobile
by Brian Klug on July 17, 2012 9:30 AM ESTThe One S display is a 4.3" SAMOLED panel with qHD (960 x 540) resolution. If that sounds really familiar, it’s because it’s the same as what was in the Motorola Droid RAZR series, including PenTile RGBG.
What’s different, however, is how well HTC has controlled the color temperature and gamma compared to Motorola in the RAZR. As shown in the HCFR galleries below, gamma is pretty close to 2.2 until you get to the high end, and color temperature is pretty close to 6500K, except at the two darkest grey points. This is so much better than any other OEM calibration of an AMOLED panel I’ve taken a look at, which is rather humorous because the panel is undoubtably Samsung’s. HTC is also letting the panel go pretty bright, up past 350 nits, instead of clamping it way down around 200 (I’m looking at you, Galaxy Nexus) to save power. I also haven’t noticed blacks not being totally off on the One S like I have with some others. Of course, colors are still massively oversaturated if your source color space is sRGB.
I’ve griped about PenTile RGBG before on this panel and other SAMOLED displays, but I find the One S to be completely enjoyable in spite of having it thanks to two things. First, how well HTC has controlled the panel (no awful hues, weird white points, or dramatic shifts as you change brightness) - this is basically the best I’ve seen this particular panel, and until SGS3, the best I’ve seen AMOLED in general. Second, because HTC doesn’t appear to be applying any processing that applies sharpening (like Samsung’s mDNIe) to text.
How you feel about PenTile really is the final factor: it’s there, but I’ve slowly become accustomed to it after staring at it for so long. If you go back to the Nexus S days, I was one of the most outspoken critics because of how large those subpixels were. With small enough subpixels (below visual acuity), PenTile starts to make sense. In other news, HTC moving back to Samsung AMOLED for phones is an interesting move after supply issues forced HTC to SLCD with some earlier phones, here on the HTC One S however, it looks great.
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michael2k - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
How is the coming on 10 months old iPhone 4S still getting some of the best battery life?What is going on in Android land?
GrizzledYoungMan - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Faster processors + LTE.Next.
ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
I don't think it's that simple. Yes these recent Android phones have newer, faster Krait SoC which could draw more power compared to the Cortex A9 based Apple A5 in the iPhone 4S, however Krait has the advantage of the latest 28nm process to offset this while the A5 is still on the now more than 3 years old Samsung 45nm process. While the CPU portion of newer SoCs is faster than the A5, the A5's GPU is still faster than the GPUs in every other SoC except the recent Exynos 4412. The A5 is also known to be a large die, high transistor design, which won't do it any favours in reducing power consumption. I don't see a faster processor as being a clear disadvantage to battery life in recent Android phones compared to the iPhone 4S.LTE's contribution also probably isn't huge considering these battery tests are specifically done on 3G and WiFi allowing the LTE portion of the baseband to remain idle and power-gate. While hardware choice contributes, I do think software plays a role since Apple can spend all their time optimizing for one specific hardware configuration whereas Android manufacturers don't really have that luxury.
OCedHrt - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
GPU's are power gated when you're not gaming. A powerful GPU doesn't kill battery life unless all you do is gaming.LTE kills battery life whether you use it or not. Just look at those 4 hour LTE phones from last year. The reason is because the LTE radio is a separate chip - it isn't controlled by the SoC and likely cannot be power gated.
The current generation of 28 nm w/ LTE on chip does have much better battery life - however with Android's multitasking, background syncing, Android simply isn't going to get longer battery life than iPhone 4s unless you turn it all off - and you can turn it off.
Then, as many iPhone 4s users will tell you, many of them also get shitty battery life - it probably depends even more so on how you use it.
amdwilliam1985 - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
"Then, as many iPhone 4s users will tell you, many of them also get shitty battery life - it probably depends even more so on how you use it."Totally agreed, a coworker here with iPhone 4 has battery drained from ~85% to ~55% overnight in "standby" mode.
My SGS2 can go through 2 normal days easily now that I enabled wifi calling and using edge(~10k/s, it's more than enough for texting and syncing).
OCedHrt - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
My One S's wifi calling drains more battery than 3G with strong signal.leexgx - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
what stands out is how can the Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx have such poor web 3G browsing (unless the USA version test was done with LTE then i would cida under stand then) and Wifi Hotspot Battery timethat seems impossible with the 3200mha bat at its disposal i cant see how them results are correct for that phone
what also surprises me is How you manage to get most of these phones to last more then 4-5hrs of constant use (that lacks an secondary Clip on battery like i just got for my HTC One X or an bigger battery like i had for my HTC Desire phone) any phone i see cant seem to last the day of Light use half an day if used in the day unless power is supplied in the day
one thing i hate about the HTC one X an little is Power button really could do with been on the side like the Samsung S3 (phone is to long for 1 hand power button at the top) not sure if its me but phone seems to have been made for Left handed users, the answer and hangup icons have been switched (answer should be on the left and hang up should be on the right) sure that's how my HTC desire had it (guess i should turn on on before i look dumb :) )
other thing as well WiFi and Data go into Forced power saving mode after midnight to about 8am (it turns Wifi off and data Off Even if its Plugged into power after 15 mins screen off, comes back on screen comes on)
OCedHrt - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I easily get 5+ hours of constant use on my One S. The screen uses up most of the battery, and the on time is always over 5 hours. Sometimes more than 6.name99 - Tuesday, July 17, 2012 - link
Was the coworker using Skype?Skype is notorious for draining the battery rapidly, even while in the background. It's one of the few apps that CAN do so because it's a VoIP app so gets background time (and it basically proves Apple's point that if you allow background apps time, they WILL be written by crappy engineers and they WILL do a crappy job.)
Without wanting to make a big deal about it, I'd point out that under normal circumstances (ie Skype NOT running in the background) my iPhone4 drains by around 5% or less overnight. With Skype running it will drain by 30% or so --- which basically matches what your co-worker was seeing.
OCedHrt - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Skype is pretty crappy, but there are other, better, VoIP apps available on Android.