Just Upgraded From a Domino HTC 8S to a black 8X

[Motor_Mouth]

Boy, what a difference! I was pretty happy with my 8S, my only real gripes were that the screen wasn't the best and pressing the button on top to unlock the phone was getting harder and harder. But I just got a big lump of back-pay, I was looking for something to blow part of it on and discovered that I could get a brand new 8X for just over $300! I'm starting to think it might be the best $300 I've spent in a long time because the jump up from my 8S is astounding. Everything feels twice as fast and looks twice as good on the screen. I had resisted going to a larger device but this 4.3" screen makes reading tiny text, like phone numbers or email addresses in my Contacts list, so much easier. I got the 8S free on a 2 year contract and I was happy to go that way because it looked so nice but this black 8X looks even better. Sitting on my desk or in it's cradle it looks impossibly thin and the slight inward curve on the edge of the glass makes it look really classy. I think it is easily the best looking phone money can buy.

It's a 4G device but I think I'll have to get my telco to do something at their end because it's not using 4G at the moment. The fixed 16Gb of storage is the other issue I have but I knew that going in and the microSD card in my 8S was flakey when trying to load stuff into it - most of the time I ended up removing the card and putting stuff on via Explorer, which was a bit of a hassle. Anyway, 16Gb is plenty of storage for a good range of music and now it will be much easier to load new stuff on as I buy it, so overall I think it is actually an improvement. The stupid PC app even seems to be getting to a point where it might be useable so it's all good overall.

When I got the 8S free on a $29 plan, an 8X would have cost me $5 on a $59 plan so the 8S was the right choice at the time. But now that 8X prices have come down so much (provided you are not fussy about colour), it is the outright purchase bargain of the year. I was thinking about a Lumia 720 but it would have been around $100 more for very little improvement over my 8S. My last phone was a Lumia 800 and as I haven't missed the Nokia apps at all, there was no compelling reason to spend more money so I am really glad I decided to stick with HTC.

 

[AngryNil]

Count me in on being a huge fan of the black model. I got a decent deal on one myself, and these seem to be far better value that a midrange Nokia. I just hope an other storage fix is coming ASAP, and that I'll get some 4G coverage in my area!

 

[LMZR]

If the "other" storage issue is fixed, i'm getting the HTC 8x over the Lumia 820.

 

[Pete]

Having the 16Gb helps to minimise the effect of the "other" bloatage. I've found that if you don't load the phone to capacity with songs/videos, then the phone stays perfectly usable. I can see how people with 8Gb phones have big problems unless they're really careful about use of the SD card.

Personally, I've loved my 8X from the day I bought it on launch day.

 

[Motor_Mouth]

One week on and it gets even better. I've got the 4G working now and it is lightning fast, even though I often have only two bars of reception at home. I am also really impressed with the battery life of this phone. It seems to be as good as the 8S - two days minimum between charges - despite the high-res screen and 4G radio. The screen also seems to be amazingly resistant to smudges and marks compared to my previous phones. Maybe there is a coating on the glass or something? Whatever, I am really impressed with this device.

 

[papahood]

" I had resisted going to a larger device but this 4.3" screen makes reading tiny text, like phone numbers or email addresses in my Contacts list, so much easier."

I grabbed this out of your first post. I don't know if you know but you can also change the text size by going into settings and then ease of access and change it in there.

 

[Motor_Mouth]

Buggeration! This is the other thing that drives me insane with Microsoft - there is nowhere to learn all this stuff. I spent months going into settings every time I want to mute the ringer until one day I accidentally discovered I can do it from the lock-screen. Ditto for tapping on the top of the screen to see your signal strength. I really don't understand why they refuse to create manuals for their products. It makes learning them absolutely infuriating. I think it is possibly the biggest single reason for the failure of Zune. Go to amazon.com and read all the one and two star reviews of Zune HD and most of them complain about things users weren't aware of or couldn't work out. Often that was because they tried to overthink things but a simple PDF manual could have eliminated most of those issues.

But thanks heaps for pointing that out, I had just assumed it would make all the text bigger like it does in Windows (should have read it more closely).

EDIT: After looking around for a while, I've noticed it makes a lot more text large than I want, so I've put it back to normal/small. It's probably my colour scheme that makes it a problem in Contacts.