HTC One SV (Cricket Wireless)

Cricket's 4G LTE network is finally here, and not a moment too soon. Without speedy LTE, Cricket smartphones were stuck in the slow lane. But now that it's in 18 Cricket markets (and more coming), you should be picking up an LTE smartphone if you're interested in Web browsing or streaming on the go.

The HTC One SV is the middle entry in Cricket's current lineup of three LTE phones. On top, there's the uncompromising Samsung Galaxy S III ($479.99). Below, there's the LG Optimus Regard ($229.99), which MetroPCS sells as the LG Motion 4G. The One SV looks like a happy medium to me: a well-built, lively phone with competitive performance that fits well in a range of hand sizes.

Physical Design and Call Quality
HTC makes really nice phones. The company's materials design is the best in the business; it's better than Samsung. The One SV is no exception. The phone has a black front with red touch buttons, and the back is a great-looking red-orange polycarbonate. The edges are slightly slanted, giving the phone a little bit more personality than more generic smartphones. At 5 x 2.6 x 0.36 inches (HWD) and 4.3 ounces, it's the right size and shape for most hands.

The phone has a 4.3-inch, 800-by-480 Super LCD2 screen that really pops. I've seen higher resolutions on high-end phones (such as the HTC 8X's 4.3-inch, 720p panel) but the screen quality and viewing angle are both very good here. The screen size and resolution fit neatly between the Galaxy S III's 4.8-inch, 720p panel and the Optimus Regard's little 3.5-inch, 480-by-320 display.

Call quality is good but not great, as the earpiece can be a bit quiet for noisy locations. There's no in-ear feedback of your own voice. Transmissions sound very good on the other end, with solid noise cancellation and well-tuned voices. The back-ported speakerphone is of decent volume, if a bit tinny. I had no trouble connecting the One SV to a Bluetooth headset and using it with the standard Android 4.0 voice dialing. Battery life, at 9 hours, 4 minutes of talk time, was solid.

Internet Access, Browsing, and Apps
Cricket's new LTE service is available in 18 metro areas including Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Philadelphia. The carrier aims to bring LTE to the rest of its coverage area this year, but for now, other Cricket users are still plugging along on 3G.

The LTE network uses narrow channel sizes, so it won't show the spectacular peak speeds we've seen with AT&T and Verizon. But in tests in Las Vegas in January, it zipped along with download speeds between 5-8Mbps and uploads between 2-5Mbps.

Cricket's 3G speeds elsewhere are similar to Sprint's; where it doesn't have coverage itself, it uses Sprint's network. Here in Manhattan, I got a pleasantly surprising 800-900kbps down, which is better than I've seen recently on Sprint's network on other devices.

The phone also has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi. I had some problems with the phone occasionally dropping Wi-Fi connections, though I couldn't reproduce the effect reliably.

The One SV runs Android 4.0.4 "Ice Cream Sandwich" with HTC's Sense overlay. There's no word on any 4.1 "Jelly Bean" updates, so don't count on them. ICS is the most popular version of Android at the moment, so the One SV should run everything in the Android Market. Cricket adds a few bloatware apps; there's nothing obnoxious, and Cricket's $5/month Cricket Navigator driving app could actually prove useful.

(Next page: Multimedia and Conclusions)

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/x5lueMPOxms/0,2817,2414452,00.asp

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