HTC Desire X: One of the First Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Play Smartphones
by Stefan Constantinescu on August 30, 2012 3:26 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Android
- Mobile
- Trade Shows
Today HTC announced the Desire X, a device that resembles their higher end One S, but is targeted at budget minded consumers. According to The Verge, it has a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Play inside. Unlike the Snapdragon S4 SoC we're familiar with, the 28 nanometer model with a pair of 1.5 GHz Krait cores and an Adreno 225 graphics processor, the S4 Play (MSM8x25) is a 45 nanometer SoC that uses a pair of 1 GHz ARM Cortex A5 cores and Adreno 203 graphics. Performance wise, ARM says that a Cortex A5 can deliver 1.57 DMIPS/MHz. To put that into some perspective, the Cortex A8 delivers 2.0 DMIPS/MHz, and the Cortex A9 that's inside many of today's devices can pump out 2.50 DMIPS/MHz. Update: The HTC Desire X has shown up in RightWare's Powerboard, confirming MSM8225.
Qualcomm's Krait core can do 3.30 DMIPS/MHz, more than double the performance of ARM's Cortex A5.
But back to the Desire X, it has a 4 inch 800 x 480 pixel Super LCD, it runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense 4.0, there's a 5 megapixel rear facing camera that uses a backside-illuminated sensor and a f/2.0 28 mm wide-angle lens, 768 MB of RAM is inside, along with a 1,650 mAh battery, and there's even a microSD card slot. We sadly don't know much about the baseband. The phone is also a tad on the thick side at 9.69 mm, and we'd like to tell you the other dimensions, but we don't have an official spec sheet yet.
When will this thing hit store shelves? It'll land "in selected markets across EMEA and Asia Pacific" at some point in September. No word on pricing, but HTC says it'll be "affordable".
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lowlymarine - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
I'm just going to take this opportunity to lodge my obligatory complaint about the insanity of Qualcomm's part numbering "methodology" (if it could really be called such). We have here a "Snapdragon S4" MSM8225 that shares absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with the other "Snapdragon S4" parts, including the maddeningly similarly named MSM8227. Things have never been particularly decipherable in Qualcomm's numbering schema (see: APQ8060 and APQ8060A being completely different architectures, process nodes, etc.), but at least until now you could deduce the process node by the "S#" generation. Now even that modicum of sanity has been hurled out the window.S_Constantinescu - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
I'm in 100% agreement with you.powerarmour - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Thrice agreed!dishayu - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
This will be a huge marketing ploy. I did not know that there were non-krait S4 chips as well.Unsuspecting customers will be tricked by "dual core" and "snapdragon s4" and will be stuck with sub-par performance. Really sad/
aegisofrime - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
IMHO, people who know what a Snapdragon S4 is and what makes it good (the Krait architecture) will likely know to double-check when they check the price of this thing.yankeeDDL - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
It puzzles me why HTC keeps forking phones that are so similar one another.I have the HTC sensation: a phone which has a slightly larger screen, slightly higher resolution and a dual-core Cortex A8 cpu, 768MG of ram ...
Yes, Sensation was "high end" in May 2011, but this DesireX seems spec'd lower, and yet so close.
Why not keep the Sensation in the product line and give better/faster support (like Jelly bean, Sense 4.0/4.1) instead of making a new phone so similar?
I don't like Apple's one-size-fits-all strategy, but 4~5 well designed products, ranging from small to large screens, should cover the vast majority of customers: no?
powerarmour - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
There's no money to be made in free updates though unfortunately :PWhy update an old phone to a similar level of performance to a newer one, when you can sell somebody a new phone...
That's basically why I stick to the Google Nexus's (Nexi?)
yankeeDDL - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
You know, there's a certain company that sells only 1 type of phone and is making boatloads of money with it.It's true that you make money with free SW updates, but you make even less money if your products are all "blah", look about the same, and if the phone you released 15 months ago is "better" than the one you are releasing today.
Not to mention cost of support: hoping that my sensation will be supported still a few years down the road, now HTC is "stuck" having to support two nearly identical phones, which happen to be quite similar to many other already around (Rezound, EVO, ...).
They should one small size (like the Wildfire, only with enough memory to be usable), a mid range with 3.7" screen, a high end with 4.3" screen and the top of the line with whatever screen size can fit 720p.
Update each line every 2 years with more memory, storage. power and maybe higher resolution, and guarantee at least a couple of Android revs.
My Sensation is more powerful than the Desire X, yet I don't know if I'll get Jelly Bean (I am currently on ICS but with Sense 3.6 ... because instead of supporting only Sense 4.0 with ICS, they decided it was better to make a half-ass release of their 4.0 and call it 3.6: more work for them, one more customer lost)
andrewaggb - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
I would have to agree with all of you. As an owner of several htc phones, and knowing others with them as well, I find the overall lack of software support to be a deal breaker for future purchases. I've installed custom roms on all my htc phones (even when I had an htc windows mobile before my androids).Personally I think 2-3 smartphone models, refreshed yearly, is probably enough for any smartphone company. Focus on quality, polish, and support. As others have said, apple releases 1 phone a year, and they're doing great. The market will certainly sustain more than a single model, but currently it seems to be.
iPhone size 3.5-3.7" no keyboard
iPhone size with a slide out keyboard
4.3" size
4.8-5" size (possibly stylus)
Blackberry style (half keyboard, half screen)
Isn't that just about the entire smartphone market? And then we have variations of all them with better screens, faster chips, LTE etc.
Seems to me that blackberry style and slide out keyboards seem to be losing popularity, 4.3 could be ditched and people would either buy slightly smaller or slightly larger, and you could just have a 3.7" and 4.8" offering updated yearly with excellent build quality and user interface.
I think these companies just release new devices to get new reviews and hype. The problem is, if they made excellent devices, they'd keep customers and be used as industry benchmarks. Instead they make good enough devices that quickly are forgotten when the next thing comes along. And they change the names so frequently you have no idea how one relates to another.
Eg the Galaxy, Galaxy S/S2/S3, Iphone 2/3/4/4s are pretty easy to figure out.
How about Desire, Desire HD, Desire Z, Desire S, Desire C, Desire X
Do you have any idea how they relate to one another, which is better, newer, etc? It's a marketing fail in my books. Either advertise it so well that people know, or name it in a way that's obvious so you don't have to educate people.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
AAAHH!!"It's true that you make money with free SW updates"
should read
"It's true that you DON'T make money with free SW updates"
Where's the Edit button when you need it?!?