Do you think HTC dropped the ball on the 8x?

[a5cent]

As if I didn't have respect for Samsung, I have a tad bit more now taking it that your post is in fact true.

I think you can look up almost all of what I've mentioned on the internet. It's just a matter of putting in the time.

 

[cp2_4eva]

I think my initial thoughts about 8x being looked over probably stems from the lack of airplay that wpcentral is giving it. It would seem that everywhere I turned, the 920, 820, and 822 was being mentioned. I'm glad that you guys enjoy your 8x phones.

a5cent you seem to have some pretty good insight to the direction of HTC, but do you really think they will fall into obscurity like that? I don't think a company like HTC will fall of the map like that though.

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express

 

[cp2_4eva]

I just got my black 8x this morning and I have to say I am amazed. Build quality, sound and call quality alongside overall looks. I do not think by any means HTC dropped the ball. I have to say my friend brought over his l920 and I was jealous until... My 8x came in. I was pretty bummed I could not get the 920 on Verizon, but after testing out the both of them I surprisingly prefer the 8x. That being said, 920 does have better built in apps and better camera (slightly) in our comparison photos, but if both were made available to me on Verizon I would still go with the 8x. Black slick case with stand, high contrast mode look like Darth Vader had a love child with a Ferrari.

pics! Wanna see pics

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express

 

[Smg-Uk]

I think my initial thoughts about 8x being looked over probably stems from the lack of airplay that wpcentral is giving it. It would seem that everywhere I turned, the 920, 820, and 822 was being mentioned.

I have already suggested that they change the name to Nokia Central.

Daniel Rubino the "Editor-in-chief" replied with:

How about you go to ****? Worthless commentor...

So much for professionalism.

 

[Daniel0418]

Ever stop to think that maybe new technology issues played a small part in the rolling out of those devices? There were numerous reports that Thunderbolts were blowing through batteries in 5-6 hours and my Droid Bionic wasted 75% of its battery in 3 hours while sitting in my pocket on a few occasions.

With regards to the Nexus 4, AT&T and Verizon use different frequencies for their LTE and most of Europe doesn't even have it yet. They did the smartest thing they could and produced a quality handset at a VERY attractive price that will run on the vast majority of networks. While Verizon may be the largest carrier in the United States, and yes it's disappointing that we'll likely never see the Nexus 4 on it, the rest of the world has a much larger number of subscribers.

Go ahead and leave Verizon if you want to, nobody's stopping you. As long as the company you go to has reliable service in your area, you can get exactly what you want.

The Nexus line will never be on Verizon again. Google won't play the game again because of Verizon. Unless Verizon opens up LTE, there is no benefit in Google creating a 3G only Nexus device. So mark my words, Verizon will NEVER see Nexus phone again. On top of that, no it is not hardware issues, because these devices are coming out on other carriers just fine. 8X is on multiple carriers in multiple countries, the Thunderbolt was an EVO 4G with an LTE radio, it got messed up because of Verizon. The Galaxy Nexus was released unlocked and buyable more than a month before Verizon, the phone worked fine, but Verizon wasn't done "testing" AKA ruining it. Verizon is late with the 8X, they are late with the 822, they were late with announcing both phones, they ruined the HTC One S on Verizon, they never came out with the Galaxy S 2, the Galaxy S 3 was extremely late compared to other carriers. The Galaxy Note never came to Verizon, the Nexus One never made it to Verizon when it was supposed to, the Galaxy Note II was super late to Verizon and they put that horrid logo on the home button. The Ativ will be for sale and available on multiple carriers long before Verizon. Everything Verizon dips their fingers into gets ruined, delayed, or buggy. All of these devices work perfectly on other carriers, then they come out on Verizon much later and are MORE buggy or have WORSE battery life. It just doesn't make sense. You can defend them all you want but they are the ones making the mistakes.

 

[romeze]

pics! Wanna see pics

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express

Sorry for the quality, taken from old Trophy

 

[a5cent]

a5cent you seem to have some pretty good insight to the direction of HTC, but do you really think they will fall into obscurity like that? I don't think a company like HTC will fall of the map like that though.

I still haven't found my crystal ball, so take that prediction, like all predictions, with a grain of salt I can give you this to consider though:

1)
The fact that HTC is big doesn't protect them from failure. In fact, many companies that were much larger than HTC just a decade ago have become almost irrelevant or disappeared completely since then (Eastman Kodak, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo and many more).

2)
Even if size did protect HTC from failure, it wouldn't be of much help as HTC is actually rather small. With a market capitalization of only $7 billion, HTC is still worth $3 billion less than Nokia... even though Nokia's stock value was pummeled and shriveled to almost nothing during the last two years (a twentieth of what they once were). Both HTC and Nokia are tiny compared to the towering giants Samsung and Apple.

3)
HTC has been in steady decline for a long time now, but as far as I can tell, HTC still doesn't have any turnaround strategy. They've traditionally attempted to compete on specs and that is what they continue to do. They continue to release new devices and hope one of them becomes a hit. Unfortunately, that approach hasn't served them well as of late (they have no chance of out-marketing Apple or Samsung), and the time in which competing primarily on hardware specs has any chance of working is coming to an end. Smartphone commoditization is approaching fast. Anyone can buy the same parts HTC does and assemble them... most manufacturers can get the same parts cheaper than HTC can... you tell me what HTC's sales proposition might be at that point, when competition starts to revolve mainly around price. What will it be?

I'm not predicting HTC will disappear completely, but if they don't drastically shift strategies soon I doubt they will be relevant five years from now.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with the 8X which remains a good device regardless.

 

[cgk]

Same with the lumia's / Nexus 4 / iPhone etc but look at how popular they are.

Of course there are over 200 reasons (all marked with the queen's head) why someone might buy the Nexus and be happy with the compromise - I'm sitting here looking at my other half's new nexus and it is a beast of a phone for the money.

 

[Davidkoh]

For me the 8X was disqualified since they:

- HTC, like Apple, didn't care to include proper support for LTE (meaning they support too few frequencies so it cannot be used in Sweden)
- The camera performs worse in low light conditions, if I ever take a picture 9 out of 10 will be at a restaurant with friends/family or outside somewhere (but since I work during the day it will be evening when that happen)

Then there were the benefit of the Nokia Maps/Nokia Drive. The one thing that the 8X had going for it was the amplifier, but since I heard nothing about the DACs in any of the units I suspect they are both built in with the Snapdragon S4 which means crap, so the amp won't add much.

 

[TaliZorah]

Personally I was all about the 8X when I first started to decide what WP8 on Verizon to get. The 822? What that inferior phone? I thought. I just blindly went with 8X love for a few days and then I decided to check out the 822 specs.

The screen has less ppi and is AMOLED. I am more a fan of LCD2 than AMOLED so I am still thinking 8X.

Then I noticed the battery is the same size (1800mAh) and I thought well, AMOLED and less ppi means it will use less juce to run the screen so now I am thinking thats a point for the 822.

I went on to check out processor, ram, wireless charging... etc. and they were identical. Both have the same processor and ram. So that was a tie.

Then I dug deeper and found that the 822 had expandable memory and of course gets Nokia apps. Now I am starting to lean 822.

Then I look at pictures of the phone. The 822 looks ugly and the 8X looks sexy! Also the 8X has a larger HD resolution!. Back leaning towards the 8X.

Then I starting thinking about what was more practical and the 822 just wins this category.

Now that I have an 822 in my hand, the pictures do NOT do it justice, its a very solid, good looking phone - even the branding isnt as ugly as it looks in pictures. Completely happy with my choice. I don't think I will miss out on the 8X.

 

[Joelist]

The irony will be when the 8X totally outsells the 920 and so does the 820/822.

Why? Because of Nokia's foolish decision to give AT&T an exclusive. The 8X and 822 being on Verizon with its much larger and more robust network will outsell the 920. Just another dumb Nokia decision.

BTW, the 8X is a top tier smartphone in every sense. It uses the same display as the One X which is considered VERY high end and in fact best of breed in many quarters. CPU? It uses Krait with the on die LTE - again best of breed. 16GB of storage is plenty. On average a song is about 3-5MB - so each GB can hold about 200 songs. When I see people acting like they need 32 or more GB just for music it leaves me shaking my head - what on earth do you need to have 6000+ songs on your phone for?

The battery life is also very good by all objective tests - Krait is known for its battery life.

 

[Gken]

If we are going into cost, deciding between the 920 and 8x, 100$ for the phone and wireless charger was a no brainer for me. I love the 8x but equally loved the 920 so with free stuff the choice was obvious.

 

[shinygerbil]

I don't know how anyone could survive on the old WVGA resolution - after using the 8X, I don't think I could go back

The great thing is though, there are a great choice of phones out there for everyone - this is something Nokia have done well since the dumbphone days. But the flipside of that is that there are always caveats or trade-offs of some kind; there is no one single phone that combines *all* the good things. And this continues even with the 920 - whether or not you may think it is a perfect size and weight, there are plenty of people who find it enough of a turn-off to go pick up the 8X on that alone.

The trouble is, the market doesn't seem to want these "unique" phones; everyone wants an all-singing, all-dancing wunderphone like the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy S3. If it isn't super-fast AND super-thin AND super-big AND full of ALL THE APPS then it will find it hard to pass the test of the general public. Sites like Techradar will blabber about inconsequential flaws like non-removable batteries and lack of SD card slots and give a phone 4/5, then praise the iPhone for the same things. And people who don't really care about tech will visit sites like Techradar and what they read there will inform their decision. (I even caught my girlfriend once saying "Well, Techradar said...")

Until we have a phone - whether it be from Nokia, HTC, Samsung or all three - which ticks all the boxes, then there will be people who think that these companies are 'dropping the ball' on WP8. And, well - in the eyes of the general public, they may well be. Enthusiasts can banter back and forth about what makes a flagship, and this is fine and well and good - we like discussion because we are passionate about these things. We like the phones because they are truly great phones, whether they have their trade-offs or not. I'm incredibly happy with my 8X. But the fact remains that to a fairly large proportion of the populace it looks as if HTC and Nokia could do better.

 

[cp2_4eva]

Oh, those are the same mold Verizon always uses for their new products right? Those case are decent. ATT doesn't supply us with good cases, so I am waiting on incipio or seidio to come out with one. Incipio usually come out with the "feather" line that I like.

 

[Coreldan]

I think it is a stopgap phone, just ready in time for the launch of WP8 phones. I fully expect to see an updated version announced within 6 months.

Don't get me wrong, though - I love the 8X and I think it is a great phone. There is plenty of room for improvement, though - and this is true for the 920 as well. Think of them as a great foundation to build upon.

While I was deciding between the 920 and the 8X, one of the main factors was the fact that (imo) both of these phones will be obsolete within 6 months. Nokia will release a new "flagship" with maybe a smaller form factor (or at least thinner!) and HTC will release another 8X-type phone (8XL anyone?) with probably a bigger screen, to compete with the Android willy-wavers.

Just my opinion of course - but in the end I chose the cheaper 8X, assuming that whichever phone I get it'll be outdated within 6 months, so I'm not really missing out on anything if I don't get the 920.

We'll see.

I personally don't think 920 will be made obsolete in 6 months time. 920 is almost just like the N8 back in the day. Sure, they are gonna make new models maybe even in that 6 months timeframe, but chances are they will not be direct upgrades to the 920. If nothing else, the wannabe-successor phones will probably lack in camera, even if improving something else. I don't think we will see a direct upgrade to the 920 in good while from Nokia. I don't even know if the 808 Pureview can be totally see as a successor to the N8, as they are quite different in their focuses.

Sure, the N8 had N9 for example coming within a year or so, but by no means was that a direct upgrade, cos it simply did not have all the same features and had a whole different OS (one can argue that a much better one, though), but N9 was never an option for me as an avid N8 lover.

 

[PDFierro3]

Personally I was all about the 8X when I first started to decide what WP8 on Verizon to get. The 822? What that inferior phone? I thought. I just blindly went with 8X love for a few days and then I decided to check out the 822 specs.

The screen has less ppi and is AMOLED. I am more a fan of LCD2 than AMOLED so I am still thinking 8X.

Then I noticed the battery is the same size (1800mAh) and I thought well, AMOLED and less ppi means it will use less juce to run the screen so now I am thinking thats a point for the 822.

I went on to check out processor, ram, wireless charging... etc. and they were identical. Both have the same processor and ram. So that was a tie.

Then I dug deeper and found that the 822 had expandable memory and of course gets Nokia apps. Now I am starting to lean 822.

Then I look at pictures of the phone. The 822 looks ugly and the 8X looks sexy! Also the 8X has a larger HD resolution!. Back leaning towards the 8X.

Then I starting thinking about what was more practical and the 822 just wins this category.

Now that I have an 822 in my hand, the pictures do NOT do it justice, its a very solid, good looking phone - even the branding isnt as ugly as it looks in pictures. Completely happy with my choice. I don't think I will miss out on the 8X.

The 822 is more practical. I was all-in for the 822 before pre-orders started, but then they began and I really liked the 8X. But after stepping back from it for a week now, I think the 822 is the smarter choice. I need good battery life, and Nokia Transport is the main reason I would get this over an iPhone or Android.

Glad to hear you are loving yours!