The HTC 8X: A Windows Phone 8 Review

As I sat down to review my new phone, the HTC 8X, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and curiosity. The device had been touted as a sleek and powerful alternative to other smartphones on the market, and I was eager to see if it lived up to its promises.

One of the first features I noticed was the lock screen. I was able to choose whether or not to show my Facebook pictures, and even select Bing's picture of the day. This was a nice touch, as I had been looking for a phone that would allow me to easily customize my home screen. The settings were also easy to navigate, with options for changing the background image, choosing which applications to display on the lock screen, and setting up multiple languages.

Speaking of languages, one feature that caught my attention was the ability to use multiple languages on the device. I have friends abroad who would be able to appreciate this feature, as it would allow them to easily switch between their primary language and English. This was a nice touch, especially for those with whom communication is a priority.

However, there were also some quirks that I encountered during my time with the phone. One of the most annoying features was the power and lock button, which was almost flush with the device's body. This made it difficult to find and press, especially when using large hands like mine. It was a minor gripe, but one that I found frustrating.

Another feature that was not quite up to par was the battery display. While I could see how much battery life I had remaining, I wished that I could also see the actual percentage. This would be more convenient than having to go into settings to check it out. However, this was a minor quibble in an otherwise well-designed interface.

I was pleased to find that the live tiles were still present on the device, and they were incredibly easy to use. With just a few clicks, I could shrink them down to size or resize them to my liking. This feature added a nice touch of convenience to the phone's user experience.

The Windows Phone 8 interface also had some notable changes from previous models. One of the most noticeable was the lack of a black bar on the side of the screen. On previous devices, this bar served as a divider between apps and other features, but it has been replaced with a swipe-to-access feature. This allowed me to quickly access my apps by swiping over to the side of the device.

Unfortunately, multitasking on the 8X was not as seamless as I had hoped. While I could hold down the back button to access all of my apps, I couldn't close them like I did with previous devices. However, this was a minor complaint in an otherwise user-friendly interface.

Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with the HTC 8X. The device's sleek design and powerful specs made it a compelling choice for those looking for a new smartphone. With its intuitive interface and numerous customization options, it was clear that Microsoft had put thought into creating a user-friendly experience. Whether you're an Android or iOS user looking to switch over, or simply someone in the market for a new phone, the HTC 8X is definitely worth considering.

For those interested in purchasing the device, be aware that some apps may not be available on Windows Phone 8. However, this was a minor quibble compared to the overall quality of the device. Additionally, the ability to back up and store app settings offline added an extra layer of convenience to the phone's user experience.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend the HTC 8X to anyone looking for a fun and innovative new smartphone experience. With its sleek design, powerful specs, and intuitive interface, it's clear that Microsoft has created a device that is sure to please even the most discerning users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up everyone John reter from techno Buffalo here a few days ago our own mobile Head Todd Hazelton reviewed this guy the HTC 8X he had it all clad up in Black we've got the blue version right here he did an awesome job reviewing it I've had the chance to use it myself for about a day and a half two days I want to share my first impressions so we can combine my first impressions with Todd's review to get a good sense whether or not the HTC 8X is going to be right for you let's go and get started all right so here is the HTC 8X some of the stuff will be a duplicate of what Todd talked about and it's full review and again the link to that is also going to be down below some of it will be my first impressions uh for those of you guys that know my history or don't know my history you will know that before I started doing the tech reviewing thing I was in marketing and one of the toughest things that I ever found in marketing was way to analyze all the marketing data that came across uh well the folks at Adobe and adobe's marketing Cloud have found a way to sort through through all that business uh they put together a video called robot with a robot getting canned I check out a clip from it right here look this this isn't easy to say but we found a better way to analyze our marketing data better than me yeah a faster way to figure out what things mean I've worked here 5,732 days yeah if you want to see the full robot video check out the link down below and to commemorate such an awesome occurrence we are giving away two $500 gift cards hit the link down below to figure out what you got to do to enter and get some sweet sweet gift card action all right so the first thing you'll notice about the 8X when you pick it up is that it is incredibly thin feels like a razor blade like it can cut chicken or cheese with it uh really incredible it's not that the phone is actually uh that thin it's just the way HTC designed it um 04 in by the way on the thinness scale um but it's sloping design uh really sort of show um HTC's design chops again this is probably the best phone HTC has ever uh designed in my opinion I mean it almost feels like there's nothing there uh the 4.3 in screen here is absolutely gorgeous and we've got a HD screen 1280 x 720 so yay and look at all that stuff you can show I've got I think like 15 icons showing up here and I could you could have much more I could shrink this into four and Shrink that into four and really just have a ton uh showing up I love that you can do that and it really has been a nice addition to the HTC 8X uh so some cool stuff in Windows Phone 8 and some cool stuff with HTC let's go and start with the HTC business if you ever use a Windows phone you know that each manufacturer has its own sort of apps and hub that they've got HTC ain't no different let's go ahead and check out what those suckers got uh so we've got connection setup flashlight which is super handy when I take Luci out at night to poop and I wait for her to poop and I wait and I wait and she doesn't I can see what's going on with that flashlight that's probably more information you needed uh but it is all here connection setup is great if you're using an unlocked HTC device it automatically put in all your carrier settings uh which is pretty neat so one of the big questions people have about Windows phone is the apps hey John there aren't many apps the apps aren't going to work well to some extent that's true some extent it's not true the apps that I use the most pretty much got right here on the home screen Facebook Twitter LinkedIn and F all have native apps uh some of the stuff that's not here that I wish there was uh stuff like native Dropbox support uh Google Drive support and I use a program called sugar sync uh to keep my desktop um folders synced between different computers so no support for those hopefully that will come soon uh there are a lot of apps though in the marketplace and a lot of great options other than sort of those two i' really be able to find an equivalent for just about everything that I do uh including my favorite uh WhatsApp so there really cross messaging anything you need is going to be here um so from a design standpoint a feel standpoint uh I love the color options on the 8X you got crazy lime green blue black this one kind of looks purple uh it's got a soft touch feel to it it feels very similar to what we saw on the 1X with that little bit of a soft touch touch to it I absolutely love it I would have liked to have had some sort of expandable storage on this guy since hey Windows Phone 8 now supports it but that was not to be the case also not here's removable battery but you do get this really cool thin design I've tested pretty much every phone I've manhandled every phone that's come out over the past almost 3 years and this phone feels the thinnest it's not that it really is that thin it's not really much thinner than an iPhone 5 it just feels it so really hatsoft HTC they've learned a lot over the years with their design uh so some cool stuff going on here with Windows Phone 8 let me show you some of that uh first is in the lock screen all kinds of new stuff is going to show up in the lock screen so first hey you can see email is going to show up there uh so you get sort of full text that'll show up uh pictures you can choose whether or not it'll show your Facebook pictures it'll choose the bing picture of the day kind of neat we'll go ahead and scroll that off and I'll show you the settings there uh for lock screen something that I've actually really uh enjoyed we'll jump into lock screen you can pick your background whether you want photo uh bing HTC pictures or Facebook kind of neat and different applications you can have that'll show up there uh as well and you can see the ones that I have selected uh very very nice to have that um here as well I've got a lot of friends that are abroad and they've been happy to have multiple language support here uh one of my Gregs with Windows Phone 8 and this is sort of a silly thing is that you can't turn the phone off and charge it with every other phone I've used iOS or Android I can plug the phone in let it start charging and I can power it off uh not so here you got to put in AirPlay mode and turn the volume down so calendar alerts don't go off uh it's kind of an annoying uh Affair so that might bother you it does bother me it's definitely one of my quirks with the phone but the biggest gripe I have with the phone is right on top uh that power and lock button is almost totally flush with the phone and makes it almost impossible to find and to hit the phone is 4.3 in so it's kind of tall and I've got relatively large hands but to get up to the top to do it you got to sort of shim your finger on up or move your finger up there and it's hard to find and feel where it is uh more of a gripe with the 8X of course and not Windows Phone 8 um but it is something to consider uh other than that it's really the only big gripe that I've got uh the few things I had with Windows Phone are still here when I push this down it just shows me a visual indicator of how much battery I've got I wish I could actually see the number I know I can go into settings and see it but I like to see it right from my desktop I love the live tiles so you can shrink them down to size I've got you something like weather there uh it'll show you what the weather is in sort of tiny little tiny tile uh to resize is pretty easy you just go ahead and select it and you got a little arrow you can shrink it different sizes make it giant uh really whatever you want it's incredibly easy to use so on a previous windows phone I can maybe see six or eight tiles depending on the size of the screen uh but now I can just see a ton so really I don't have to do much scrolling down also Windows Phone 8 uh you don't have any more that sort of black bar on the side uh big chunk of the screen on previous windows phone uh was taken up by really just black to let you know there were apps there now you can just swipe over to the side and you can access all of your apps that way and go ahead and hit home uh still the same way that you multitask hold down the back button and you can scroll through all your apps pardon me kind of wish like I could close them like that uh but not the case unfortunately overall after just a couple days I'm really really crushing on Windows Phone 8 my Windows Phone love affair has been rekindled and for about a 100 bucks uh this phone really is uh steal you're going to want to be wary of the apps though and check to make sure that the apps that you want uh are available uh some other new additions here you can back up all of your application settings and store that stuff offline so it make switching devices a bit easier but overall I'm really enjoying h8x this is going to be my daily driver for a while um so if you're looking for a lower pric phone and you want sort of a fun New Experience uh really look no farther than the HTC 8X so what do you guys think about the HTC 8X is it the phone that you want to carry for the next 2 years a Windows Phone 8 looks to be pretty promising thanks to our friends at Adobe check out the Adobe marketing Cloud if you want to see the full robot video have an annotation just boom right here just click it click my chest and just get going uh and if you want to enter the giveaway to get those two $500 gift cards links also going to be down below and the full link to the robot video is also going to be down there uh be sure to check us out technobuffalo.com for ladies and greatest Tech news I am John ringer and I'll see you the next video bye-byewhat's up everyone John reter from techno Buffalo here a few days ago our own mobile Head Todd Hazelton reviewed this guy the HTC 8X he had it all clad up in Black we've got the blue version right here he did an awesome job reviewing it I've had the chance to use it myself for about a day and a half two days I want to share my first impressions so we can combine my first impressions with Todd's review to get a good sense whether or not the HTC 8X is going to be right for you let's go and get started all right so here is the HTC 8X some of the stuff will be a duplicate of what Todd talked about and it's full review and again the link to that is also going to be down below some of it will be my first impressions uh for those of you guys that know my history or don't know my history you will know that before I started doing the tech reviewing thing I was in marketing and one of the toughest things that I ever found in marketing was way to analyze all the marketing data that came across uh well the folks at Adobe and adobe's marketing Cloud have found a way to sort through through all that business uh they put together a video called robot with a robot getting canned I check out a clip from it right here look this this isn't easy to say but we found a better way to analyze our marketing data better than me yeah a faster way to figure out what things mean I've worked here 5,732 days yeah if you want to see the full robot video check out the link down below and to commemorate such an awesome occurrence we are giving away two $500 gift cards hit the link down below to figure out what you got to do to enter and get some sweet sweet gift card action all right so the first thing you'll notice about the 8X when you pick it up is that it is incredibly thin feels like a razor blade like it can cut chicken or cheese with it uh really incredible it's not that the phone is actually uh that thin it's just the way HTC designed it um 04 in by the way on the thinness scale um but it's sloping design uh really sort of show um HTC's design chops again this is probably the best phone HTC has ever uh designed in my opinion I mean it almost feels like there's nothing there uh the 4.3 in screen here is absolutely gorgeous and we've got a HD screen 1280 x 720 so yay and look at all that stuff you can show I've got I think like 15 icons showing up here and I could you could have much more I could shrink this into four and Shrink that into four and really just have a ton uh showing up I love that you can do that and it really has been a nice addition to the HTC 8X uh so some cool stuff in Windows Phone 8 and some cool stuff with HTC let's go and start with the HTC business if you ever use a Windows phone you know that each manufacturer has its own sort of apps and hub that they've got HTC ain't no different let's go ahead and check out what those suckers got uh so we've got connection setup flashlight which is super handy when I take Luci out at night to poop and I wait for her to poop and I wait and I wait and she doesn't I can see what's going on with that flashlight that's probably more information you needed uh but it is all here connection setup is great if you're using an unlocked HTC device it automatically put in all your carrier settings uh which is pretty neat so one of the big questions people have about Windows phone is the apps hey John there aren't many apps the apps aren't going to work well to some extent that's true some extent it's not true the apps that I use the most pretty much got right here on the home screen Facebook Twitter LinkedIn and F all have native apps uh some of the stuff that's not here that I wish there was uh stuff like native Dropbox support uh Google Drive support and I use a program called sugar sync uh to keep my desktop um folders synced between different computers so no support for those hopefully that will come soon uh there are a lot of apps though in the marketplace and a lot of great options other than sort of those two i' really be able to find an equivalent for just about everything that I do uh including my favorite uh WhatsApp so there really cross messaging anything you need is going to be here um so from a design standpoint a feel standpoint uh I love the color options on the 8X you got crazy lime green blue black this one kind of looks purple uh it's got a soft touch feel to it it feels very similar to what we saw on the 1X with that little bit of a soft touch touch to it I absolutely love it I would have liked to have had some sort of expandable storage on this guy since hey Windows Phone 8 now supports it but that was not to be the case also not here's removable battery but you do get this really cool thin design I've tested pretty much every phone I've manhandled every phone that's come out over the past almost 3 years and this phone feels the thinnest it's not that it really is that thin it's not really much thinner than an iPhone 5 it just feels it so really hatsoft HTC they've learned a lot over the years with their design uh so some cool stuff going on here with Windows Phone 8 let me show you some of that uh first is in the lock screen all kinds of new stuff is going to show up in the lock screen so first hey you can see email is going to show up there uh so you get sort of full text that'll show up uh pictures you can choose whether or not it'll show your Facebook pictures it'll choose the bing picture of the day kind of neat we'll go ahead and scroll that off and I'll show you the settings there uh for lock screen something that I've actually really uh enjoyed we'll jump into lock screen you can pick your background whether you want photo uh bing HTC pictures or Facebook kind of neat and different applications you can have that'll show up there uh as well and you can see the ones that I have selected uh very very nice to have that um here as well I've got a lot of friends that are abroad and they've been happy to have multiple language support here uh one of my Gregs with Windows Phone 8 and this is sort of a silly thing is that you can't turn the phone off and charge it with every other phone I've used iOS or Android I can plug the phone in let it start charging and I can power it off uh not so here you got to put in AirPlay mode and turn the volume down so calendar alerts don't go off uh it's kind of an annoying uh Affair so that might bother you it does bother me it's definitely one of my quirks with the phone but the biggest gripe I have with the phone is right on top uh that power and lock button is almost totally flush with the phone and makes it almost impossible to find and to hit the phone is 4.3 in so it's kind of tall and I've got relatively large hands but to get up to the top to do it you got to sort of shim your finger on up or move your finger up there and it's hard to find and feel where it is uh more of a gripe with the 8X of course and not Windows Phone 8 um but it is something to consider uh other than that it's really the only big gripe that I've got uh the few things I had with Windows Phone are still here when I push this down it just shows me a visual indicator of how much battery I've got I wish I could actually see the number I know I can go into settings and see it but I like to see it right from my desktop I love the live tiles so you can shrink them down to size I've got you something like weather there uh it'll show you what the weather is in sort of tiny little tiny tile uh to resize is pretty easy you just go ahead and select it and you got a little arrow you can shrink it different sizes make it giant uh really whatever you want it's incredibly easy to use so on a previous windows phone I can maybe see six or eight tiles depending on the size of the screen uh but now I can just see a ton so really I don't have to do much scrolling down also Windows Phone 8 uh you don't have any more that sort of black bar on the side uh big chunk of the screen on previous windows phone uh was taken up by really just black to let you know there were apps there now you can just swipe over to the side and you can access all of your apps that way and go ahead and hit home uh still the same way that you multitask hold down the back button and you can scroll through all your apps pardon me kind of wish like I could close them like that uh but not the case unfortunately overall after just a couple days I'm really really crushing on Windows Phone 8 my Windows Phone love affair has been rekindled and for about a 100 bucks uh this phone really is uh steal you're going to want to be wary of the apps though and check to make sure that the apps that you want uh are available uh some other new additions here you can back up all of your application settings and store that stuff offline so it make switching devices a bit easier but overall I'm really enjoying h8x this is going to be my daily driver for a while um so if you're looking for a lower pric phone and you want sort of a fun New Experience uh really look no farther than the HTC 8X so what do you guys think about the HTC 8X is it the phone that you want to carry for the next 2 years a Windows Phone 8 looks to be pretty promising thanks to our friends at Adobe check out the Adobe marketing Cloud if you want to see the full robot video have an annotation just boom right here just click it click my chest and just get going uh and if you want to enter the giveaway to get those two $500 gift cards links also going to be down below and the full link to the robot video is also going to be down there uh be sure to check us out technobuffalo.com for ladies and greatest Tech news I am John ringer and I'll see you the next video bye-bye\n"