HTC One SV Review

Interface:

There's a lot to like about the pretty HTC Sense 4.1 if you ignore the fact that it is running on Android 4.0.4 instead of anything newer. For starters, there's the lock screen capable of fitting four shortcuts to apps of your choice. Pull the ring up and you'll arrive at the home screen, where HTC's quite functional weather widget is situated. And speaking of widgets, there's a ton of them to pick from – clocks, bookmarks bar, favorite contacts, email and text message viewers, and more. The on-screen virtual keyboard is also quite pleasant to use regardless of its orientation – with large, easy-to-reach buttons and built-in word prediction.




Software:

First of all, kudos to HTC for pre-loading the complete, 206-page One SV user guide in PDF format. There's also a simple PDF viewer app on board, along with Polaris Office, a Movie Editor, database of How-To guides for users that are new to smartphones, and a Stocks app powered by Yahoo! Finance. We should also mention that the HTC Rescue application comes pre-loaded. Powered by the LogMeIn service, it allows an HTC Care representative to provide technical assistance by accessing and diagnosing the user's smartphone remotely.


Processor and Memory:

There's a dual-core Snapdragon S4 system-on-a-chip inside the HTC One SV, equipped with a pair of 1.2GHz Krait CPUs and Adreno 305 graphics. One gigabyte of RAM has also been thrown in for good measure. Overall, the smartphone's performance is flawless 99% of the time, free of lag or dropped frames, no matter what you choose to throw at it. Naturally, demanding 3D games are also playable and they run at pretty high framerates, we should note. The immaculate real-life performance of the HTC One SV is also reflected in the benchmark scores that we got.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
HTC One SV	4456	11211	60
HTC One X	4848	11024	47,4
Samsung Galaxy S III	5335	12016	58,6
HTC One S	4867	7012	60,7

Most users might find the on-board storage available on the HTC One SV insufficient. There are 8GB total, out of which 1.1GB are allocated for apps and an additional 4.15GB may be used for storing files and media. Expanding the smartphone's storage using a microSD card is recommended. Note that with the One SV you get 25GB of Dropbox storage for two years, courtesy of HTC.


Web Browser and Connectivity:

The web browser on the HTC One SV is, how should we put it... twitchy. And that's not because it is slow or anything. Quite the contrary – it loads pages pretty fast and its very responsive in general. However, pinching to zoom causes the text reflow feature to rearrange text paragraphs. As a result, the area of the page, which you're trying to view, gets shifted to the side, sometimes out of the user's scope of view. Thankfully, double-tapping to zoom in and out works flawlessly and we recommend that you get used to using that gesture instead on the HTC One SV.

Other than that, the 4.3-inch screen is, for the most part, comfortable for surfing the web as it is pretty spacious, but the relatively low resolution will force you to zoom in more than you might like to. Fortunately, if you're reading an article or a blog post, for example, you have the option to clear the entire web page from non-essential content, such as ads and pictures, leaving only the text of the article.


Among the most significant stand-out features of the HTC One SV is the LTE support. Note, however, that the smartphone isn't compatible with all LTE networks throughout the world, so make sure it works with your carrier in case you're buying one SIM-free or if you plan on using it abroad. Based on data provided by HTC, the LTE radio on the One SV should work in Asia on 1800/2600MHz, Europe on 800/1800/2600MHz, and North America on 700/AWS/1900MHz. For all other markets and carriers there's the HSPA+ radio reaching download speeds of up to 42Mbps. Further down the list of connectivity features we see NFC, Wi-Fi at both 2.4 and 5GHz, GPS with GLONASS compatibility, and Bluetooth 4.0 with support for the apt-X codec for increased audio fidelity.