HTC One VX (AT&T)

A year ago, the $49.99 HTC One VX for AT&T would've been a top-of-the-line superphone. Today it's just a beautiful smartphone?with solid specs and a budget price. The HTC One VX gets you a lovely display, plenty of power, and good battery life, all wrapped up in a phone that's very comfortable to use. Thing is, there are so many good phones out there right now that the HTC One VX isn't quite good enough unseat the Pantech Discover, our current Editors' Choice for budget smartphones.

Design and Call Quality
The HTC One VX may be inexpensive, but it looks like a million bucks. HTC's eye for design is on full display here, from the silver plastic rim around the display, to the matte white polycarbonate backing. Peeling it off gives you access to the microSD and SIM card slots, but alas, the 1800mAh battery has been sealed in. There's a volume rocker on the right side of the phone and a power button on top, but minimalism is the name of the game here.

The One VX measures 5.26 by 2.66 by 0.36 inches (HWD) and weighs just 4.37 ounces. Compared to many of the gargantuan new smartphones out there, it fits comfortably and naturally in the palm of my hand.

The 4.5-inch Super LCD 2 screen features 960-by-540-pixel resolution. It's bright and sharp, though not quite as impressive as the 4.8-inch, 720p display on the Pantech Flex. Still, the One VX is easier to hold. There are haptic feedback-enabled touch buttons beneath the display, which I find a little easier to use than the onscreen buttons on many new phones.

The One VX runs on AT&T's EDGE, HSPA+, and LTE networks. You also get 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, which includes support for the faster 5GHz band. I got very good reception and LTE data speeds in New York City, which has been true for most new AT&T phones. As we discovered in our?Fastest Mobile Networks?survey, AT&T's LTE speeds can exceed Verizon's, though Verizon and covers more of the nation. You can use the One VX as a mobile hotspot as long as you're using (at minimum) AT&T's $50 monthly 5GB data plan.

Call quality is pretty good. Voices sound full in the earpiece, though there's some fuzz and hiss. Calls made with the phone are very loud and clear, with average noise cancellation. Calls were fine through a Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset and standard Android voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth. The speakerphone sounds good and is loud enough to hear outside. The 1800mAh battery was good for a whopping 14 hours and 21 minutes of talk time.

Hardware, Android, and Apps
Inside, the One VX is running on a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8930 processor. That isn't quite as fast as the 1.5GHz chip in phones like the Pantech Flex and Samsung Galaxy S III. But the One VX has a lower screen resolution, so it evened out in many of our gaming benchmarks, though the Flex is faster for browsing and in general. Still, at this level of processing power, you'll be able to run any app from the Google Play app store.

The One VX is running Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), which is a little disappointing, since other new HTC phones like the One X+ are running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). HTC promises an update, but as usual, there's no timeline for when. You also get HTC's Sense 4.1 overlay, which is a step behind Sense 4+, though it's similar enough.

(Next page: Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions)

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