Anyone using of these?

I'm very tempted to replace my original Desire with one, as I find it now frustratingly slow.

What's Beats Audio actually like? Is it really worth it?

Although I can't comment on the "Beats" part as mine is just the Sensation (no XE) they are really nice phones.

Love mine and I upgraded from a Desire like you.

I am running a custom ROM and have rooted so there are many tweaks under the hood that generally improve the phone's speed etc.

I think for the cost of the XE it is good with the included headphones. I have heard good things about the headphones but the Beats technology on the phone is nothing more than an eaqualizer really. The hardware of the XE is identicle to that of non-XE phone.

Phil

The XE has a faster processor and a bigger battery vs the original, so they have done some tweaks with the hardware

Nope!

Exactly same hardware! Just running a different kernel that runs the CPU at 1.5 instead of 1.2. I can run mine up to 1.5 if I wish.

The battery also fits straight into the normal Sensation.

Phil

Are you looking at contract or SIM free?

Nope!

Exactly same hardware! Just running a different kernel that runs the CPU at 1.5 instead of 1.2. I can run mine up to 1.5 if I wish.

The battery also fits straight into the normal Sensation.

Phil

Hmm... interesting .. *rubs imaginary beard*

Are you looking at contract or SIM free?

Sim free

One of my friends has one of these and hasn't got any complaints with it. He too upgraded from an old htc and is very pleased with the new one. The beats audio is good but remember its only a phone at the end of the day so don't expect huge things from it.

In fact I have just checked and the slider for the CPU goes right up to 1.7GHz. Not that I ever need that!

Even my normal sensation with a pair of skullcandy ear buds has really good music quality. It all comes down to the quality of the music you are playing at the end of the day but I can only see that the Beats audio is an improvement on the normal sound settings and included earphones.

I bought mine from ebay and then sold my Desire. Worked out pretty favourable compared to renewing on a £30+ per month contract.

Also I will note how pleased I was with HTC support recently. I had a couple of niggles with a squeaky back cover and iffy power button so emailed them. Three days later a brand new back cover turned up on the doorstep. The beauty of the back covers on these is that it encompasses the sides and front top bezel of the phone too. So drop and scratch/scuff your phone and just get a new cover. Also because the screen is curved it naturally protects it.

If you're after some decent screen prtectors the official HTC ones can be got for about £3.50 for two and, if you heat them up with a hair dryer, go on flawlessly.

They also support HDMI out through the micro USB port using an MHL HDMI adapter (do a search on ebay). They are really cheap and even the official HTC one can be bought for less than £20 these days.

Phil

From what i was reading, its possible to download the Beats audio settings onto various other Android phones.

Yes and to enable them for any headphones. I don't know how effective that is as not sure if the Beats audio settings are tweaked specifically for Beats headphones.

It comes as standard on the ROM I am using but found it caused major distortion on the bluetooth in the car playing music.

Phil

Sensation XE is a really nice piece of kit but in benchmark scoring -it still falls short of Samsung Galaxy SII. The Beats stuff seems a bit of a gimmick and marketing glitz to me -I have some pretty decent Shure E500 in ear headphones -you'd have to go a very long way to better them as far as I'm concerned.

HTC Sense is great as is the nice metal casing on the phone but I'm thinking of defecting from the brand (I have had 5 HTC phones -started with an SPV C500 many years ago).

What exactly is running slow on the Desire? I find a good clear out does wonders -I run the official HTC Gingerbread ROM and that suits me fine.

i did look at the XE, but at almost 100 more, you could buy the normal flavour and the bigger battery unless you really want the headphones - are they earbud ones?

Cheers folks. Beats audio was not what sold it to me, but the faster CPU. If it is just the same as the sensation but overclocked, I may as well keep my extra money

I have a Cowon MP3/flac player anyway, and that's still better than any iPod I've heard, plus the battery lasts over a week on a charge, even with a bigger battery a phone isn't going to do that

Sensation XE is a really nice piece of kit but in benchmark scoring -it still falls short of Samsung Galaxy SII. The Beats stuff seems a bit of a gimmick and marketing glitz to me -I have some pretty decent Shure E500 in ear headphones -you'd have to go a very long way to better them as far as I'm concerned.

HTC Sense is great as is the nice metal casing on the phone but I'm thinking of defecting from the brand (I have had 5 HTC phones -started with an SPV C500 many years ago).

What exactly is running slow on the Desire? I find a good clear out does wonders -I run the official HTC Gingerbread ROM and that suits me fine.

Won't touch Samsung again after they completely ignored the original Galaxy customers only 3 months after launch so they could push their latest handsets...

Got my XE this morning and had a good listen to the Beats Audio. If I am honest it sounds to me like it is nothing more than a boost to the top and bottom of the sound. this matches the ear buds well if you like your sounds thumping and heavy. But High quality it ain't. To put it in perspective, it sounds better than any other phone I have heard and if you are happy with the sound on an ipod then you will probably be happy with this. What it really needs is a decent equaliser to tweak things a little and imho there isn't any really deep bass, but considering it's coming off a phone, it is fine

Hope that doesn't put anyone off the phone as its a very slick number from what I have seen today, but as a professional sound engineer, Dr Dre delivered exactly what I thought he would.

A slight update to my earlier post....

I had a listen to the phone using a pair of iPod 'in ears' and I think for the type of listening I do (more classical than drum and bass and radio drama/news etc) they sound better. You need to turn the Beats off, and although the sound loses the heavy bottom end and the hard upper mid, the overall sound is better balanced. Personally I can only think people a bit younger than me would like the sound the Beats/Dre combo produces.

Also on a sound point, the radio is pretty good! Quite a robust signal. Somehow even with the bigger battery that the XE comes with, I think it will struggle much beyond a day of medium use though

Still the phone is wickedly quick and I can't wait to start baiting the iphone uses at work

Cheers folks. Beats audio was not what sold it to me, but the faster CPU. If it is just the same as the sensation but overclocked, I may as well keep my extra money

I have a Cowon MP3/flac player anyway, and that's still better than any iPod I've heard, plus the battery lasts over a week on a charge, even with a bigger battery a phone isn't going to do that

From what I have read, the 1.2 chip is underclocked. Compared to my Desire, the XE is lightning quick and the video replay is faultless. Super smooth amd obviously Angry birds looks great too. Btw, the screen is pretty good as well, perhaps not retina or Amoled standard, but sharp and bright with pretty good colours, I suspect it will be better in daylight than the Amoled if my Desire Amoled was anything to go by.

Cheers folks. Beats audio was not what sold it to me, but the faster CPU. If it is just the same as the sensation but overclocked, I may as well keep my extra money

Yeh. That's what the route I went down.

It's really easy to get the phone rooted and a custom (overclocked) ROM installed. This is a very useful guide for it here:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1192300

One of the most popular ROM's and the one I have used since day one is Android Revolution HD. It was the first ROM to actually enable the second CPU core. It does come with Beats but I have a flashable update that removes it and restores the stock HTC music with SRS enhancements.

Also I have a larger battery installed. It's an Anker 1900mah one. Although some reports have put it at around the 1700 to 1800mah mark it is a big improvement over the stock battery and I can get the battery to last a couple of days with light use but I generally charge every night with around half left. It only cost about a tenner so well worth it!

Phil

And yes Amanda the chip is just underclocked in the normal sensation. The stock frequency for the chipset is 1.5GHz.

Also on the Samsung note... benchmarks really aren't everything! I would take a slightly lower score on a benchmark and have good software and hardware support along with a very good custom software by HTC (Sense)... it's miles ahead of Samsung's Touchwiz and their micky mouse looking font and icons! Plus the build quality I find is actually quite shocking! My other half has a Samsung Android phone (Galaxy pro) and it feels very cheap and has had a few problems with it... mainly software!

The sensation is very capable in terms of it's processing and graphics power. I can play 720p and 1080p HD video over HDMI with no problems, plays every game very well (including the really high end 3D ones).

Phil

Do you have a link to the shop you got the battery from?

I can safely say the XE battery isn't all that :( I expect the performance to improve after a couple of duty cycles, but I still managed to kill it in about 9 hours Mind you playing Clouds and Sheep probably didn't help :D

I tried my Beats buds in my Envy lappy (it is unfortunately Beats Audio fitted too) and the sound was surprisingly different. All presence and no bass!!! Very odd. I fiddled about with the Beats settings and came to the conclusion that either the amp in the lappy is poo or the ear buds really are optimised for the eq circuit in the XE.

Anther thing of note............it gets bloomin' hot!! When will we see the first Smartphone with a fan

Edited 10 January, 201214 yr by Lady Elanore

Do you have a link to the shop you got the battery from?

I got it from Amazon. Just checked. I paid £11.99.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0053EZJMC

Well worth it though IMO.

Phil

Thanks.

What size SD does the sensation SIM free come with? Samsung do a nice class 10 series in grey, but can't see a 32gb version, only 2,4,8 & 16.

I think it came with a 4GB but could have been 6GB. Not sure.

Play.com have it. I bought one of these a few weeks back:

http://www.play.com/Mobiles/Mobile/4-/23960650/Samsung-32GB-Micro-SD-HC-Memory-Card-Class-10/Product.html?searchtype=allproducts&searchsource=0&searchstring=32gb+micro+sd&urlrefer=search

My XE came with an 8gb card