HTC One X review MWC 2012: Does HTC's quad-core phone come with the X Factor?

HTC has gone for a bit of a rebrand this Mobile World Congress. Gone are the hyperbolic product names and the quiet brilliance: instead it's all about a new One family of phones with the HTC One X the daddy of them all.

That's because it's rocking a quad-core processor – what else? – as well as Ice Cream Sandwich, some Sense upgrades and 32GB of internal memory (as well as some cloud storage thanks to a new partnership with Dropbox).

Hardware

When it comes to first glance looks, the HTC One X isn't a million miles from the HTC Sensation range, sharing most aesthetic mannerisms with the Sensation XL.The company has gone for a mix of materials while keeping the unibody design: the side panels are a high gloss plastic while the back of the handset is a soft-touch affair.

It's an interesting combination; we're not sure it works brilliantly though. The shiny sides feel a bit cheap and weird to touch but you'd probably get used to it quite quickly.It's a pretty big handset – that 4.7-inch Super LCD touchscreen may pale in comparison to the Galaxy Note's 5.3-inch panel but the small-handed will still struggle to use it comfortably.

The updated Sense software takes advantage of the screen tech too, rocking optical lamination to improve the viewing angles – and it's done its job, as you can turn the phone whichever way you like and still get a good quality view of the screen (unless you turn it on its front, obviously).

Considering the size and spec, HTC has done a good job of keeping the weight down – in fact, the weight difference between the HTC One X and an iPhone 4 is negligible to feel, despite the iPhone being much smaller of screen.

You'll notice there are no buttons to speak of on the One X – well, aside from the power button and the volume slider. Although Ice Cream Sandwich can survive without them, there are three soft buttons at the bottom of the screen which are used for multitasking and organisation and that kind of thing.Port-wise, there's a microUSB slot and 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as pogopins for docking (HTC promises it'll have more to show us on this over the course of MWC).

In its quest for ever simplified design, HTC has also done away with the speaker grille on all its HTC One family phones; instead it has gone for micro drilling speaker holes which is subtle but can look a little tacky when you notice it

The camera on the reverse is an 8MP snapper, which has an updated lens (at f2.0, which HTC hopes will revolutionise your low-light photography) and a smart flash. More on that later, although it's worth noting that we're not sold on the camera hardware: why does it stick out so far? Is that a design thing? It doesn't look great.