HTC Sensation XL Android smartphone review – 4.7 inches of touchscreen!
Summary:
The HTC Sensation XL is yet another iteration of HTC’s high-end Sensation handset. This time, however, the processor is single-core only, and the screen resolution has dropped to WVGA, despite being larger in size than the regular Sensation’s display. The XL comes with Beats Audio integration, as I imagine most of HTC’s handsets in the future will going forward. This pushes it towards music lovers, and suggests that it’s a multimedia powerhouse, despite it lacking a microSD slot for expanding its storage.
Still, the Sensation XL is a handsome device, and hums along nicely with its single core processor and it comes with a decent set of Beats Audio earbud headphones for blasting out your tunes. The 4.7-inch display is also bright and colorful, and works well in bright sunlight. You even get a new back side illuminated 8 megapixel sensor in the camera, which offers up 720p HD video as well. So it’s not all bad, but is it better than the other Sensation models? Read on for my full low down and impressions.
You’ll find a video tour of the HTC Sensation XL after the Table of Contents, below.
Hardware :
The HTC Sensation XL isn’t a small device, by any means. However, at just 9.9mm thick, it feels smaller than it is, and doesn’t bulk up pockets too much. The actual dimensions are a significant 132.5mm x 70.7mm x 9.9mm (5.22in x 2.78in x 0.39in), with the handset tipping the scales at a portly 162.5g (5.73oz) including the battery.
The first thing you’ll notice with the Sensation XL is it’s huge display. At 4.7 inches, it’s not far off from becoming a tablet. Yet the display only has a WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution, lower than the qHD resolution displays found on the other Sensation family members. Whilst that’s certainly a shame, for the most part it wasn’t a huge issue. Text and images on web pages weren’t as sharp, but other than that, you don’t notice it an awful lot. In fact, it’s nice to have the extra screen real estate for more accuracy when tapping on-screen buttons, due to their increased size. The display is also bright and colorful, and does well in low light, thanks to its design.
Above the display you’ll find the XL’s earpiece, 1.3 megapixel forward-facing camera, and a notification LED. Below it are four touch sensitive keys, providing staple Android functions; home, menu, back, and search. Round back is the 8 megapixel camera’s F2.2 lens and dual LED flash, plus the loudspeaker grille and both HTC and Beats Audio logos.
Up top you have the usual power button and 3.5mm headphone port, with charging and data being issued via the micro-USB port on the left side, and volume control being offered by the rocker switch on the right side. The Sensation XL appears to be available only in white/silver, so it’s tough luck if you wanted black. That said, I quite liked the XL in white and its build feels altogether very high quality, with no squeaks or creaks.
Usability:
The HTC Sensation XL is running the same Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS as its siblings and features the same HTC Sense 3.0 user interface, for a bit of extra eye candy. This makes the handset fun and easy to use, and some of the widgets have been tweaked to make better use of the screen real estate. With 7 home screens available to customize with widgets and app shortcuts, plus weather animations and animated wallpapers on offer, the Sensation XL is a very characterful handset.
One of HTC’s main strengths is their social networking integration, and as you’d expect it’s present in the Sensation XL, keeping users connected to their friends via Facebook and Twitter, with updates appearing in contact entries and when making/receiving calls. A nice touch is being able to flick through friends’ Facebook and Flickr albums from their contact entry, as well as seeing all emails, messages, and call history for that person in one place.
The Sensation XL comes with a task manager pre-loaded that can be accessed from the drop-down notification bar. This allows users to monitor running applications and close any that don’t need to be open, and saves downloading a third party task manager.
HTC has also thrown in an active lock screen that can show weather information, FriendStream updates, photos, stocks, or one of HTC’s pre-loaded clocks, as well as four user-customizable shortcuts.
Despite the HTC Sensation XL’s 1.5GHz processor being a single-core unit, most everything loaded up very quickly and ran without any hiccups. If I didn’t know the specifications of the handset, I doubt I’d have noticed the lack of dual-core in my everyday use.
Calling / Data:
In terms of call quality, the Sensation XL was quite average, with little distortion at full volume, but not a great deal of volume available, either. The speakerphone was also not hugely impressive, but on par with many smartphones these days. In terms of reception, however, I felt that the Sensation XL didn’t hold a signal as well as other recent HTC handsets, and I had the odd occasion where I lost signal altogether, which is unusual in my area of the UK.
The Sensation XL is a quad-band GSM(INFO) device that also works on the 850/900/2100MHz 3G bands for HSPA(INFO) data connections, and during testing I averaged download speeds of around 5.3Mbps and upload speeds of around 2.5Mbps on the Vodafone UK network.
The Sensation XL has Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP(INFO) for use with stereo Bluetooth headphones, and includes the ability to send files wirelessly via FTP/OPP. Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n is also on board, as is DLNA compatibility for streaming media to a DLNA certified TV or computer. You even get the handy Wi-Fi hotspot capability that most HTC smartphones offer these days.
Messaging :
The HTC Sensation XL’s huge 4.7-inch screen offers up a massive on-screen QWERTY keyboard, allowing for fast and accurate typing. SMS and MMS are taken care of in a single inbox and are displayed in a conversation view. Twitter, Facebook Chat, and Google Talk come pre-loaded and work well, and Tango’s video chat app comes pre-installed to make use of that forward facing camera.
The Sensation XL’s email client works well and caters for IMAP, POP, Microsoft Exchange, and Gmail accounts, including synchronization of contacts and calendar entries. The Mail application can also draw multiple inboxes together, so you can view all your emails in once place, although Gmail has it’s own app, so is excluded from this.
Apps / App Store :
As with any Android handset, the HTC Sensation XL has access to hundreds of thousands of apps and games via the Android Market. The Market application is easy to use and now offers books and films to download. It has also undergone some cosmetic surgery in recent months and is now more attractive and fun to navigate and browse content with.
usual Android/HTC suite of apps, including a calendar, calculator, voice recorder, and alarm. The usual Teeter game is still present as is the SoundHound music recognition app, a flashlight, a book reader, and a copy of Polaris Office file viewer.
On top of all this, you also get HTC’s “Locations” offline mapping app and Google Maps Navigation, with the latter offering turn-by-turn navigation for free and the former demanding a subscription fee. HTC Watch is present as well and offers the purchasing/renting of movies and TV shows directly on the handset. New additions include a “Usage Monitor” app that monitors mobile data, call minutes, and message usage, a “Voice Dialer” app, and a “Notes” app that simultaneously records audio and time stamps when each written note is made.
Browser :
The HTC Sensation XL features the standard Android WebKit browser, which offers pretty snappy performance when coupled with its 1.5GHz processor. A big benefit of this browser is its ability to display flash content, and the Sensation XL has no issues with this. YouTube videos play directly in the browser and, for the most part, look as you’d expect it to on a regular PC, proving that the lack of a dual core processor doesn’t hamper it too much.
It’s possible to have up to four windows open at once, and both pinch and double tap zooming are present. Text is automatically re-flowed when zooming and pages can be viewed in either portrait or landscape orientation by simply rotating the phone. Unfortunately, in the fully zoomed out view text is mostly unreadable, due to the lower resolution of the XL’s display when compared with that of its qHD-wielding siblings.
Camera :
Bringing a few new tricks to the party is the Sensation XL’s 8 megapixel BSI (back side illuminated) camera, with a fast F2.2 lens, autofocus, and a dual LED flash. While these technologies are supposed to improve the camera’s low light abilities, there’s no getting away from the fact that cellphone camera sensors are tiny, so improvements were marginal.
The XL’s camera also suffers from many of the other faults that plague camera phones, such as blown out highlights and poor white balance control, resulting in photos with bright white skies, and blueish tints. I also found there to be a reddish hue in the center of most shots, which was even visible in the viewfinder whilst taking photos. Still, the image quality is perhaps a little better than HTC’s non-BSI sensor camera phones, though you can judge the results for yourself by checking out the sample images at the end of this review.
As usual, there are settings like white balance, exposure, and ISO, plus things like ego-tagging, self timer, and face detection. Once you’re done snapping, photos can be found in the Gallery, which can be quickly accessed from a button in the bottom left corner of the viewfinder. From here it’s possible to share photos via Bluetooth, email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, or MMS, or show them off on a DLNA certified TV.
Unlike its siblings, the Sensation XL cannot record video in full 1080p HD resolution, but instead only offers 720p. This is one of the downfalls of the single core processor, which restricts the phone from sucking in full HD content. The 720p videos weren’t really anything to write home about, either, and exhibited the same red hue in the center of the image as found in the XL’s photos. The XL does have one party trick up its sleeve, though, with a fun slow motion video setting that records slow motion video in WVGA resolution.
Music :
Unlike the Sensation XE with Beats Audio that we reviewed recently, the Sensation XL’s music player has been changed from HTC’s usual offering, and provides a different layout. Whilst most of the functionality remains the same, the new music player makes use of drop down boxes and menus to help navigate your music easier. Unfortunately, HTC has decided to not include a microSD card slot in the XL, limiting the amount of music you can carry to just 12.64GB, providing you don’t load anything else on the phone. That’s a pretty shocking limitation for a handset aimed at media consumers.
Still, album art is supported as before, as is playlist creation and shuffle/repeat, and the player has an option to find YouTube videos related to any given song, or update the album art via Gracenote’s music database. However, the Sensation XL loses the usual selection of equalizer presets in favor of just one; Beats Audio sound enhancement. This did at least improve the sound for certain music, and if you connect a non-Beats Audio set of headphones you also get the option of HTC Sound Enhancement.
The sound quality from the Sensation XE was pretty good with the included in-ear headphones, and they even feature a microphone and basic in-line remote. However, they weren’t as great as I had expected, and my relatively inexpensive Sennheiser earbuds produced a far superior sound when used with the XE. Still, the included headphones have the advantage of acting as a hands-free kit and also looking the part, with matching red cables and a neat pouch to keep them in when you aren’t using them.
Battery:
The HTC Sensation XL has a 1600mAh battery that is rated for almost 6.8 hours of 3G talk time or 19 days of 3G standby time. In real-world use I found myself charging it daily, as I did with the original Sensation, although I could just about manage two days on a single charge with careful use.
