HTC One V Review: leading with its chin?

Packaging

The packaging is a departure from HTC’s usual compact packing that we are used to see on the Smartphones. It is a more conventional square white box with minimal line diagrams. In US and some other countries you get a box with rounded edges. The material here is not exactly as thick as we would have liked.

The box contains the usual HTC USB adaptor and a data cable to go with it, a pair of earphones and the relevant docs apart from the main body.

Design and built

The One V is the cheapest of the One series. But that does not mean it did not get any attention from the company. The V is adorned with the same Unibody metal casing we so love in many other high-end HTC handsets. What we don’t like however is that for some reason the battery is non-removable.

The glossy front will attract a lot of fingerprints. There are three soft hotkeys below the screen – back, home and recent prog keys. ICS doesnot have dedicated menu key but long-pressing the recent prog button will bring it up when applicable.

The left side has the microSD card, the right side – the volume rocker; and the top resides the power key and the 3.5mm audio jack. The back side is made up of brushed metal with the 5MP camera and LED flash on top, and the speaker below. The back doesnot have a very good grip due to the pure metal finish and thank God the phone is narrow enough to fit in your hand securely. Still you might the HTC One V to wear a cover. Also note that no screen protector comes from the manufacturer.

The most striking feature in the HTC One V design is the prominent protruding chin! It actually does that OMG to the whole style statement, in a gorgeous way! It also brings back memories of the HTC Legend and Hero.

Overall we are very impressed with the design and built quality of the V.

Display

The display is mind-blowing. The 3.7” super LCD screen, although with a usual 480 x 800 pixels max resolution – looks razor sharp. So sharp, it can probably give competition to the AMOLED screens, and we are not even talking about full brightness level. Crank it up to maximum brightness and it almost gets blinding bright. Sunlight readability is great, and the viewing angles are insane! You can bring the phone to an almost horizontal level and still see the content. Brilliant! It almost single-handedly takes the One V to consumers’ pocket.