HTC One V Review: leading with its chin?

Interface

Most of the other half of credit will be carried by the Interface. Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich along with Sense 4.0 on top is a delicious meal, and we found that out in a delightful way!

Android 4.0 is the latest and the best Android yet. It combines the goods from both 2.x and 3.x and you can see that here. The widget menu is a tablet-like as well as resizing widgets. It looks smoother and cleaner than previous versions. Browser is much enhanced. There are the swipe to disable apps, new lock-screen security and better compatibility with external I/O devices like gaming consoles and mouses and keyboards.

Sense 4.0 also is the best Sense UI till now. What delights us the most is that the 4.0 is considerably lighter and streamlined than either 3.0 or 3.5. It doesnot quiver even if you load the homepage with widget. Ofcourse you will have to thank the 1GHz processor for that as well. It retains the four quick-lookup icons on the lock screen – phone, message, mail and camera. You can go straight to these by dragging them to the circle below. Pull the circle up to unlock.

Sense integrates deeply into the Android UI and there’s no difference here. You can hardly see the regular ICS that you know on the Nexus. The homepage has 7 screens by default. Adding and removing widgets are usual, but you can now resize widgets on your Smartphone. There is provision for creating a favorites folder – just drag an app shortcut on the homepage to another one and they automatically create a folder.

There is an appdock with your most used shortcuts. You can customize these. There’s no menu button on ICS, but you can long press the recent button below to bring it up in some cases. In other relevant cases, the menu is listed on the top right. The notification bar is same, but there is a new easier connection menu in settings. You don’t see the reset device button in privacy anymore – we have no idea!

In-house Apps

There are the usual Google apps that come with every Android Smartphone – Gmail, maps, locations, latitude, navigation, talk, calendar, Play store, Google plus, messenger plus etc. No surprises here.

HTC also throws in a few apps of its own. Although they are mostly the familiar ones, some have updated Sense 4.0 look. The car app is one such app which will take you to an easier interface with big icons and menus that will help you navigate while placing the phone on a hold while driving. Apart from that, there is the News and weather news aggregator, HTC like, HTC hub, Teeter game and a slew of widgets. There are also useful tools like a flashlight, FM radio etc.

3^rd party apps

This collection will differ according to your country. In India you can expect a few music streaming and purchasing apps like the 7digital and Bollywood hungama, ebuddy xms which is an online sms app, Facebook, Polaris office pro (can create and edit docs) and Dropbox. Oh, and you get 25GB free space with it for two years – only for One series.

Browser

The browser on HTC One V has a much evolved browser. It has a cleaner and better interface in terms of usability. There are clear one click settings for desktop mode and enabling flash player. On enabling or disabling each, the browser will refresh itself.