Phones HTC One X

[mrbutters]

In addition to the internal and phone storage question I raised in my last post, I'd like some clear understanding of the recent apps button in ICS. I've researched this online with various answers. This article seems to be the most detailed and accurate, and still it leaves me a little confused.

From what I gather, even if you hit the home button after being finished with a specific app (for example the browser, camera, Facebook, music player, etc) the app does not actually close. And when you tap the recent apps button (lower right button on the G Nexus and One X) it pulls up a screen tile of what has recently been open (for easy access or to swipe the tile away entirely). From what I gather, people believe that swipping said tile kills the app entirely, but I guess that isn't the case.

Android does this so that you don't have to wait for a recently used app to open again. If I open my task manager right now, I probably have 30 apps on there. If you look at what its doing, its not using any of the cpu, its just sitting there in a sleep mode basically. That way when I go to open that app again, it opens instantly. If I were to close that app out entirely, I would have to wait as it re-opened when I wanted it again. Just because there is an app on your recent list doesn't mean that its active and running.

 

[wgonzvega]

Just sit and wait...

I have a 4S.... Thinking of switching to the HTC One X... Am I insane?

Have fun waiting for your OS updates, you will end up with great Hardware waiting for the new OS to get to your phone. Beleive me Android is not worth it.

 

[blairh]

Android does this so that you don't have to wait for a recently used app to open again. If I open my task manager right now, I probably have 30 apps on there. If you look at what its doing, its not using any of the cpu, its just sitting there in a sleep mode basically. That way when I go to open that app again, it opens instantly. If I were to close that app out entirely, I would have to wait as it re-opened when I wanted it again. Just because there is an app on your recent list doesn't mean that its active and running.

Thanks so much for you answer. That clears it up.

Could you also clear up the internal storage versus phone storage question I had earlier? Is it simply a matter of Android adding apps to your internal storage first and then using your phone storage once the internal is full? I was watching a YouTube video on the One X and the video author was saying how he might have to soon delete some apps because he was running low on internal storage, yet he had tons of phone storage remaining.

 

[Sedrick]

Have fun waiting for your OS updates, you will end up with great Hardware waiting for the new OS to get to your phone. Beleive me Android is not worth it.

I was just admiring how this thread was relatively free of flames, considering the subject matter. People actually answering questions about the HTC One X.

Thank you for single-handedly reinforcing the idea that you can't have a conversion about Android here without needless bashing.

 

[naths]

Have fun waiting for your OS updates, you will end up with great Hardware waiting for the new OS to get to your phone. Beleive me Android is not worth it.

silly little boy....

 

[mrbutters]

Thanks so much for you answer. That clears it up.

Could you also clear up the internal storage versus phone storage question I had earlier? Is it simply a matter of Android adding apps to your internal storage first and then using your phone storage once the internal is full? I was watching a YouTube video on the One X and the video author was saying how he might have to soon delete some apps because he was running low on internal storage, yet he had tons of phone storage remaining.

In Android's early stages, everything you downloaded went to your phone. Obviously this took up a lot of space if you had many apps and it slowed some phones down. Froyo (Android 2.2) was the first to let apps be downloaded directly to your SD card as long as the dev of that app allowed it. Some devs don't allow it because for whatever reason, it was making apps behave oddly. However, you can still move the app to the SD card once its been downloaded, so its not a big deal.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Could you also clear up the internal storage versus phone storage question I had earlier? Is it simply a matter of Android adding apps to your internal storage first and then using your phone storage once the internal is full?

Somebody corrects me if I'm wrong since my experience isn't with One X. But how Android works is that the memory is partitioned so you get a dedicated space for apps, and another block of space for everything else.

For example, an Android with 16G memory might only have 2G or less dedicated for apps and the rest for data. If your apps partition is full, then you cannot install app even if you have space left on your data partition. You can install apps on the other partition using work around but often it's not recommended or not allowed, although you could probably work around those issues if you try hard enough. (the actual partitioning is a bit more complicated than this. I'm simplifying things here)

To work around this issue, many Android apps store apps in the app storage, and store the big data, such as graphics, separately on the internal data storage.

Now with Ice Cream Sandwitch, this was supposed to be a thing of a past, putting everything in a single "drive". However I've read that HTC decided to stick with the older partitioning scheme for One X and thus you're still limited by the app storage. However this has the advantage of allowing the mass storage support through USB. The newer Ice Cream Sandwich phones generally do not support the mass storage USB mode like older Android phones because it cannot account for the newer single partition mode.

And..yes this is one of the reasons why I prefer iOS even though I do have an Android phone. (also a Windows Phone 7, but that's another story) But my cheapskate mind still cannot succumb to the long contract. My wife being one in the family is enough.

 

[Invincibilizer]

Have fun waiting for your OS updates, you will end up with great Hardware waiting for the new OS to get to your phone. Beleive me Android is not worth it.

Thanks I would rather have a new OS- Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense overlay rather than an iOS interface that has remained the same even with 10+ updates for several years now.

 

[lordofthereef]

Thanks I would rather have a new OS- Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense overlay rather than an iOS interface that has remained the same even with 10+ updates for several years now.

I've used various versions of Sense and have been happy with them. HTC started out pretty well with updates but have faltered since then. This seems to be a big flagship device so hopefully they don't drop the ball. I am pretty excited about this phone.

 

[cpuguy18]

True but the difference is you don't have to jailbreak an iPhone to get a stable OS without force closes and crashes, remove bloat ware installed by your carrier, fix launch day issues that otherwise take months to fix or just to get your battery to last more than 6 hours.

my 4s battery only last 6 hours. much worse than my xperia play.

 

[mrbutters]

Thanks I would rather have a new OS- Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense overlay rather than an iOS interface that has remained the same even with 10+ updates for several years now.

I have to agree here although I am one of the ones who think Sense has actually gotten worse. I miss how simple and unobtrusive the first few builds were. Same goes for TW although the Galaxy SII is a great phone. I really like MotoBlur on my Razr and don't know how I ever lived without Motocast. Being able to stream music and movies from my home computer and not having to take up space on my phone or SD card is just awesome.

 

[lordofthereef]

my 4s battery only last 6 hours. much worse than my xperia play.

That's worse than most. I'd get that thing swapped out if I were you.

 

[kdarling]

Froyo (Android 2.2) was the first to let apps be downloaded directly to your SD card as long as the dev of that app allowed it.

Some devs don't allow it because for whatever reason, it was making apps behave oddly.

When the phone boots up, it might have to run some downloaded code at startup, including apps like a replacement homescreen launcher app, widgets, live wallpaper, etc.

Sometimes this can happen before the SD card gets properly mounted.

Therefore any code that needs to be run at startup, needs at least its core pieces to be in main storage that's always ready to go, in order to not experience a delay and possible problems.

 

[Invincibilizer]

I have to agree here although I am one of the ones who think Sense has actually gotten worse. I miss how simple and unobtrusive the first few builds were. Same goes for TW although the Galaxy SII is a great phone. I really like MotoBlur on my Razr and don't know how I ever lived without Motocast. Being able to stream music and movies from my home computer and not having to take up space on my phone or SD card is just awesome.

I'm actually one of those people who is sadden by HTC's attempt to lighten up on sense. I miss the 3D animations and the carousel scrolling that is gone from previous versions, but Sense 4 did integrate with ICS very well. As for TouchWiz, to me it's one of the worst android overlays. The font is too big, aesthetics isn't there but the customization is decent with re sizable widgets.

I was actually settling on Galaxy S2 as my next device(first time moving to android) until I saw how different TouchWiz and Sense was. Sense although many consider it bloated, it has much more in depth features that TouchWiz didn't provide.

 

[blairh]

Somebody corrects me if I'm wrong since my experience isn't with One X. But how Android works is that the memory is partitioned so you get a dedicated space for apps, and another block of space for everything else.

For example, an Android with 16G memory might only have 2G or less dedicated for apps and the rest for data. If your apps partition is full, then you cannot install app even if you have space left on your data partition. You can install apps on the other partition using work around but often it's not recommended or not allowed, although you could probably work around those issues if you try hard enough. (the actual partitioning is a bit more complicated than this. I'm simplifying things here)

To work around this issue, many Android apps store apps in the app storage, and store the big data, such as graphics, separately on the internal data storage.

Now with Ice Cream Sandwitch, this was supposed to be a thing of a past, putting everything in a single "drive". However I've read that HTC decided to stick with the older partitioning scheme for One X and thus you're still limited by the app storage. However this has the advantage of allowing the mass storage support through USB. The newer Ice Cream Sandwich phones generally do not support the mass storage USB mode like older Android phones because it cannot account for the newer single partition mode.

And..yes this is one of the reasons why I prefer iOS even though I do have an Android phone. (also a Windows Phone 7, but that's another story) But my cheapskate mind still cannot succumb to the long contract. My wife being one in the family is enough.

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you can only store 2 GB of apps onto the One X? I know for a fact that the One X uses the internal and phone storage method, however I do not know for a fact if there is an app space limit like 2 GB or if your apps simply transfer over to your phone storage once the internal is at capacity.

I know it's iOS and not Android but as a reference I have over 2 GB of apps currently on my iPhone and I wouldn't want to delete any of them. I could never use a smartphone that limits me to 2 GB of apps.

 

[Invincibilizer]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you can only store 2 GB of apps onto the One X? I know for a fact that the One X uses the internal and phone storage method, however I do not know for a fact if there is an app space limit like 2 GB or if your apps simply transfer over to your phone storage once the internal is at capacity.

I know it's iOS and not Android but as a reference I have over 2 GB of apps currently on my iPhone and I wouldn't want to delete any of them. I could never use a smartphone that limits me to 2 GB of apps.

2GB of app storage is absurd. I'm fairly confident that once the 2GB partitioned area is filled, the rest of the storage can also be used for apps. So a total of 10GB for everything seems more likely even if parts of it are partitioned...

 

[mrbutters]

I'm actually one of those people who is sadden by HTC's attempt to lighten up on sense. I miss the 3D animations and the carousel scrolling that is gone from previous versions, but Sense 4 did integrate with ICS very well. As for TouchWiz, to me it's one of the worst android overlays. The font is too big, aesthetics isn't there but the customization is decent with re sizable widgets.

I was actually settling on Galaxy S2 as my next device(first time moving to android) until I saw how different TouchWiz and Sense was. Sense although many consider it bloated, it has much more in depth features that TouchWiz didn't provide.

Remember that you can always download a launcher to run over Sense or TW. I like Go Launcher

 

[Invincibilizer]

Remember that you can always download a launcher to run over Sense or TW. I like Go Launcher

Sense wouldn't need go launcher but I might just download it to experience the windows phone 7 theme. It can never be a full time OS but it would be fun to use it as well as showing WP7 users that windows phone can be had on an android device.

TouchWiz would definitely require go launcher, I'm impressed by the customization done on youtube by various users installing different things to turn a TW interface in to a stock ICS one.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you can only store 2 GB of apps onto the One X? ... and I wouldn't want to delete any of them. I could never use a smartphone that limits me to 2 GB of apps.

Sorry, no, you should be able to move the apps around to the other partition when one partition runs out of room. But it got confusing and frustrating as heck on my phone, almost mainly because I switched between ROMs and Android versions very frequently. (Also Samsung famously screwed up the NAND ROM configuration in my original Galaxy S, which didn't help)

It can never be a full time OS but it would be fun to use it as well as showing WP7 users that windows phone can be had on an android device.

Matching the superficial look is only part of the equation. As much flak as Microsoft gets, WP7 is usually impressively smooth - as long as 3rd party apps and IE aren't involved and my Android phone which while old is still faster in hardware than my WP7, doesn't even come close in smoothness.

 

[DAVIDUGLY]

love iPhone, still feel nothing comes close and will always use it for
our office line...we run the business on that device and couldn't imagine otherwise... but for personal off hours use, we LOVE our One X phones.
Had them for the last few days and can't stop,
really a lot of fun. Especially after moving everything non-work related, from email to calendars, over to G-Mail and Google.
Bravo HTC, highly recommend.

 

[Invincibilizer]

Sorry, no, you should be able to move the apps around to the other partition when one partition runs out of room. But it got confusing and frustrating as heck on my phone, almost mainly because I switched between ROMs and Android versions very frequently. (Also Samsung famously screwed up the NAND ROM configuration in my original Galaxy S, which didn't help)




Matching the superficial look is only part of the equation. As much flak as Microsoft gets, WP7 is usually impressively smooth - as long as 3rd party apps and IE aren't involved and my Android phone which while old is still faster in hardware than my WP7, doesn't even come close in smoothness.

WP7 isn't as intricate as Android though. With dual core processors in phones like the One X, it is also butter smooth which is impressive considering how it has ICS and Sense on top of it.

WP7 to me is a nice custom look, I'm not interested in total integration so if the basic interface is changed, I'm content. As for the true smoothness of WP7 devices, the same can be said about high end and soon to be released Android phones with ICS for optimized speeds and dual core processors to prevent lag.

 

[blairh]

Sorry, no, you should be able to move the apps around to the other partition when one partition runs out of room. But it got confusing and frustrating as heck on my phone, almost mainly because I switched between ROMs and Android versions very frequently. (Also Samsung famously screwed up the NAND ROM configuration in my original Galaxy S, which didn't help)

If someone can confirm this that would be great. Also I'm curious if apps simply are stored by default on the phone storage after the internal storage is full.

I have to think that if any Android device was limited to 2 GB for apps then I would have heard about this before.

 

[mrbutters]

If someone can confirm this that would be great. Also I'm curious if apps simply are stored by default on the phone storage after the internal storage is full.

I have to think that if any Android device was limited to 2 GB for apps then I would have heard about this before.

The One X has 32GB of internal storage. 26GB is actually useable for apps.

 

[Invincibilizer]

The One X has 32GB of internal storage. 26GB is actually useable for apps.

No the U.S One X(ATT and Sprint) only has 16GB of storage, the international version One XL has 32 GB.

 

[mrbutters]

No the U.S One X(ATT and Sprint) only has 16GB of storage, the international version One XL has 32 GB.

Either way, still beats 2GB