HTC One S - The new Sensation

While the HTC One X and One XL (LTE version of the HTC One X) is the HTC flagship, the most interesting HTC phone announced by HTC at the Mobile World Congress 2012 is the the HTC One S. Why the most interesting? I think most will find it good enough to forego the higher end HTC One X, and give the size of the HTC One X, I think the HTC One S will be the more mainstream choice. 

Lets talk about size. The HTC One S has a 4.3-inch QHD (540 x 960) display, similar to the one on the current HTC flagship, the Sensation XE. But the new HTC One S goes one step up, with a Super AMOLED display. At the same time the new HTC One S is thinner and lighter at just 7.8 mm thin and 119.5 grams compared to 11.3 mm and 151 grams of the Sensation XE. While it is not Motorola RAZR thin, it is close. In order to achieve this, HTC uses a new aluminum-ceramic case.

Inside, the HTC One S was also upgraded with dual core 1.5 GHz Krait processors and Adreno 225 graphics making it much faster than HTC Sensation XE which runs at the same 1.5 GHz clock speed. This will allow it to do battle better with the new dual core Exynos units Samsung phones. The HTC One S also gets 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. The HTC Ones S does not have a MicroSD card slot so the 16 GB is not expandable. HTC does give each of its new phone 25 GB of Dropbox cloud storage for two years. The battery is a 1650 mAh unit. We don't know how power efficient or power hungry the new Kraits are, so it will be hard to estimate the battery life. The Super AMOLED display is more power efficient than the S-LCD display on the Sensation though.

The HTC One S comes with a 8 MP camera, which is also upgraded from the 8 MP unit on the HTC Sensation and Sensation XE. The new camera a a F/2.0 aperture which should bring improved low light performance and packs a special Dual Shutter camera module, which allows you to take photos while shooting 1080p video at the same time. The front camera is a 1.3 MP unit.

The HTC One S comes with Android 4.0 installed with Sense 4.0 and Beats Audio. HTC chose to retain dedicated capacitive buttons. 


The HTC One S is really a new, substantially improved Sensation. We expect it to be available in the Philippines late Q2 or early Q3 this year priced somewhere between Php20,000 to Php25,000.