HTC 8S - Review

The first device to sport Microsoft's shiny new Windows Phone 8, but how does it fare with its mid-range specs?

It has not been that long since HTC released their new mid-range windows phone called 8S, so it has a lot of competition these days, especially in the face of Nokia's Lumia series. But for a cheap device, this one is not so bad.

The design is simplistic, yet surprising. Smartphones using the Windows Phone OS usually come in a single-coloured casing, and while most of the HTC 8S is black, it has a blue-coloured stripe at the bottom, which makes it very easy to tell apart from other devices in the same category.

The buttons are uniform, like in most windows phones. The casing is built up from a sort of rubbery polycarbonate and the entire thing weighs only about 113 grams, so it feels very light in your hand.

Do not expect much from the screen. It is small, just 4 inches, but it is good enough for the operating system that this device uses, since Windows Phone 8 looks fine even on small screens. Its low resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, coming at around 233 ppi is also fine, but far from impressive.

HTC have chosen to power this mid-range handset with a dual-core 1 GHz processor and just 512 megabytes of RAM, but it is satisfactory for a cheap smartphone such as this one, and more than enough to handle the operating system without any glitches or lag.

The 8S, like most HTC smartphones, also has the iconic Beats Audio, so you will, at least, have a nice quality bass for your songs. The battery might look weak at just 1700 mAh, but it is more than enough for the weak hardware it has to power.

It is a standard practice to put 5 MP cameras in mid-range phones nowadays. Still, for a camera with such a small sensor, this one takes surprisingly good photos. You will not find many options to tinker with, though, and there are no scene modes. Note, also, that the HTC 8S lacks a frontal camera for video-calls.

If you are looking to try out Windows Phone 8 for a low price, and prefer other brands to Nokia, then the HTC 8S is definitely a viable choice, despite its low hardware specifications.

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The Nokia Lumia Series

A great innovation or just funny colourful handsets

Nokia’s Lumia series was a little bit weird when it started production. When the first models came out, they looked more like toys than actual smartphones, with their colourful exterior, yet simplistic and comfortable, with Windows Phone’s metro interface. They are probably the main Windows Phone competitors on the smartphone market, especially after Nokia made the deal with Microsoft, and are yet to become more popular, due to their strange concept.

A colourful plastic exterior is what people usually expect from things aimed at children, but nevertheless, Nokia’s Lumia handsets come in a variety of bright colours, which is confusing for people who have gotten used to most of the Android or Apple handsets that come in not more than one or two colours.

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These bright colours are what people say completely removes the premium look from any Lumia phone. You can always choose a darker colour, if it is available, though. Still, the overall design is simplistic, and most phones from the series are comfortable to hold. And since Nokia have learned their lesson, some of the new models like the Lumia 925 have a much more premium build and metal elements on the casing itself.

Like most of the smartphones on the market, the Nokia Lumia smartphones can come with a variety of chipsets, but since Windows Phone 8 is not a very light operating system, a faster chipset may still have trouble handling it properly. Still most of the series performs fine, and the high-end models run smoothly and without any glitches. They might need some getting used to if you are switching to this operating system from an Android or Apple device, since the Metro interface is unlike anything we have ever seen before on a mobile device. Thankfully, Nokia have optimized the entire device to work perfectly with Windows Phone, so it is a great experience, overall.

This series might have seemed a little bit weird at first, something like Nokia’s attempt to re-establish their brand after their downfall, but right now it seems that Lumia’s popularity is growing. Hopefully, Nokia will release the newer Lumia phones with a more premium design, but what we hope for most, is that Microsoft will not let us down with their new OS and work on enhancing the user experience even more from now on

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