If you are planning to buy HTC One X, know what exactly you are buying. I was about to finalize on HTC One X and realized that there are different models with different hardware configruations under the same name. I wish you are reading this blog before buying one so that you can avoid unplesant shock. If you are reading this late, my condolences are with you.
I feel frustrated to see HTC selling different hardware configurations under the same phone name, in this case, HTC One X. In USA, HTC One X has a dual-core processor whereas the international version is quad-core. The US version has LTE but not the international version. The CPU, GPU, storage are different.
It is common that the frequencies are different for the same phone (same name) in different regions. For e.g In HTC desire, the 3G frequency is 900/2100 in India while this is 850/1900 in USA. So, even if your phone is a quad band phone, it may not get 3G in all networks. You will get calls though as "quad-band" indicates only to the voice section of GSM. The frequencies may be different for different providers in the same region. For e.g. AT&T vs T-Mobile uses different 3G frequencies (850/1900 vs 1900,1700/2100).
I dont understand the reasoning behind this by HTC. Imagine the poor souls who saw quad-core specs and bought the phone in USA. I am not making this up. There are comments in amazon product reviews saying that they were expecting a quad-core phone but got a dual-core (Thanks to this guy. I can say that my confusion started with that comment which saved me). See the table in the wikipedia article which nicely shows the differences.
Offtopic... I was curious to know the naming convention of HTC phones. They have their models suffixed X, S, V etc. It was not easy to find but I finally found one link which explained it. X-Extreme, S-Sense, V-Value, XL-Extreme with LTE.
3 comments:
In the US, I have seen my friends buy phones directly from the carrier. If you buy from a generic store (ex:- walmart, amazon) then it is better to check with the carrier for compatibility.
For example, same phone might be sold from Verizon and Sprint and AT&T. But there is no guarantee that it works with all three networks. This is so because a lot of phones are sold at a subsidy by the carrier. The carrier recovers the cost through a 1yr or 2yr contract. So (I think) they deliberately make the phone incompatible across the networks.
There might be some corner cases... but this is what I have seen. I could be wrong though...
I seen your blog using google and I must say, this is probably one of the best well prepared articles I have come across in a long time. I have bookmarked your site for more posts.
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Interesting post. I've definitely noticed a trend in recent years, with technology widely differentiating from region to region. It can be frustrating and confusing for consumers like us! I work for a new social blogging site called glipho.com, and was just wondering if you would be interested in sharing your posts with us? It wouldn't affect anything with your existing blog, and I know our community would love to read your work here. Let me know what you think!
All the best,
Teo
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