Camera, Music, Battery, Conclusion


Camera

Improving upon HTC's previous efforts is the Awareness'southward 8 megapixel autofocus camera, complete with dual LED flash. This is probably the best camera I've experienced on an HTC handset, and photos captured by the Sensation were generally quite vibrant and pleasing to the middle. Photos taken in low calorie-free could be a little more striking and miss, with some mistiness creeping in if the telephone wasn't kept perfectly still, but you can judge the results for yourself by checking out the sample images below.

The usual white balance, exposure, and ISO settings were all yet present, plus some bang-up extras similar geo-tagging, self timer, effects, and face detection. Once you're washed snapping, photos can be institute in the Gallery, which tin be quickly accessed from a button in the bottom left corner of the viewfinder. Within the Gallery app there are options for cropping or rotating images and adding effects, which is neat. Users tin share photos via Bluetooth, email, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, or MMS, or show them off on a DLNA certified TV.

The Sensation'south camera also has video recording capabilities, and tin record video in 1080p resolution at 30fps. These videos generally looked pretty good, although the microphone was hugely susceptible to wind dissonance as yous'll meet in our sample video. Videos can also be viewed in the gallery, and switching between the nonetheless photographic camera and video photographic camera is quick and like shooting fish in a barrel thanks to an on-screen push. You can even switch to the forward facing camera for low quality VGA resolution self portraits, if that'due south your thing!


Music

The Sensation comes with the standard music actor that we've seen many times before on HTC'due south handsets, and that'southward not a bad thing. The player displays album art, and playlists can be created straight on the handset. SRS audio enhancement shows up for some other visit, or there's an equalizer with various presets if y'all adopt a different audio. Music can be filtered by artist, anthology, playlist, vocal, genre, or composer, and shuffle and repeat settings are available, besides. This fourth dimension, even so, there doesn't appear to exist integrated Amazon MP3 store access, although users are free to download the separate Amazon MP3 app if they wish.

The audio quality from the Sensation was perfectly good with a decent gear up of headphones, though HTC's usual set are also included in the box, should you desire a low quality set with an in-built microphone and bones in-line remote. A neat characteristic of the music thespian is the control widget that appears on the lock screen when a song is playing, featuring album art and bones controls.


Battery

The HTC Sensation has a 1520mAh battery that is rated for 7 hours of 3G talk fourth dimension and 22 days of 3G standby time. In existent-globe use I establish myself charging the phone daily, although it would terminal around ane.5 days if left to run apartment, maybe 2 days with very bourgeois use. I'd imagine that about people would find the battery lasting betwixt 1 - two days, depending on their usage.


Final Thoughts

The HTC Sensation is a great handset, in that location'southward no doubt about that, and in my opinion information technology is the proper successor to the original HTC Desire. With a spec heave in most every area it'southward a more disarming upgrade than the Desire S was and feels similar a proper step forward both in terms of hardware and software.

If I was looking for a new handset right at present I'd seriously consider the HTC Awareness, forth with the Samsung Galaxy S Two that we too recently reviewed. Both offering big displays and fast dual-core processors, putting them at the top of the wish list for many gadget fans, and with good reason.

Pros:
  • Speedy 1.2GHz dual-core processor
  • Large qHD brandish
  • New HTC Sense 3.0 UI
  • 8MP camera with 1080p HD video
 Cons:
  • No metal unibody
  • Only 1GB internal storage
  • Possibly too large for some people

Russell Jefferies is a contributing editor at MobileBurn.com.MobileBurn focuses on cell phones, smartphones, tablets, and related hardware. Republished with permission.