HTC One V goes on sale, gets unboxed
updated 12:25 pm EDT, Fri April 6, 2012
HTC One V gets early look in production
HTC's One V on Friday had its first official release in the company's home area of Taiwan. The more affordable of the Android 4.0 lineup is currently on sale through Chungwa Telecom for the equivalent of about $339 off-contract. To mark the occasion, Netbook News has conducted an unboxing as well as some early tests.
While the performance of the single-core, 1GHz Snapdragon is normally in between the Galaxy S and Galaxy Nexus in speed, it can score unusually well on the Vellamo browser test, roughly as well as the quad-core Tegra 3. Its single-core limitation was most apparent with the SunSpider test of JavaScript in web browsing, where it took almost twice as long as modern dual-core phones.
Real-world tests, as expected, were noticeably slower, although the interface was still fast, and the HTC ImageChip processing meant the five-megapixel camera was still very quick. The camera results were noticeably less impressive than on the One X or the gold standard iPhone 4S.
As we saw in our hands-on (above), the aluminum unibody shell feels good in the hand and is very sturdy.
A US release is still an unknown, although leaks have hinted it might come to Virgin Mobile and could have an even better price of as little as $200.
