HTC has previewed its latest smartphone to the Hong Kong market – the HTC Sensation XL - in partnership with renowned rapper Dr Dre’s audio equipment company Beats Audio. As a result, the phone features a high-quality sound processor and boasts a much larger screen.
The HTC Sensation XL is part of the HTC Sensation lineage following behind the HTC Sensation XE, which was also a collaboration with Beats Audio. The Beats Audio integration equips the phone with a digital sound processor, so that music and movies played on the gadget can be heard with greater sound quality and clarity by boosting the bass. The Beats sound processor is activated once it detects a Beats set of earphones, such as the urBeats earphones designed specifically for the Sensation XL. If it does not detect the earphones, music is played through the phone’s generic player.
The new phone’s display screen has also been expanded from 4.3 inches to 4.7 inches, hence the name XL, while the thickness has been reduced from 11.3mm to 9.9mm making it the thinnest phone of the series. The phone’s storage has gone up to 16GB, from the XE’s 4GB.
The 8-megapixel camera not only has a BSI sensor, which enables better pictures to be taken in low-light settings, but also a 28mm wide lens with a panorama mode for wide landscape shots.
HTC has also worked closely with the web-based file hosting service, Dropbox, so that its application is pre-installed on the Sensation XL and users receive 5GB of free storage space, compared to the default 2GB of free space for Dropbox users. Users who go beyond 5GB, will be charged according to standard Dropbox rates, which start at US$9.99 per month for 50GB of space.
From the music and camera fronts, this phone outshines the newly released iPhone 4S, which does not have a music processor and has an 8-megapixel camera sans the wide lens.
However, the Sensation XL does not have a dual-core system and neither does it support a microSD memory card.
An exact release date for this phone has not yet been announced and therefore there are no confirmed retail prices on hand.
For more information, visit www.htc.com
Alisha Haridasani
