While looking through my drawers for an answer to my aging smart TV problem, I found my first-ever Android phone, an HTC One X+.
The HTC One X+ is a somewhat forgotten smartphone. It was launched between the well-received HTC One X and the legendary HTC One M7. The One X+ represented HTC’s best attempt at a polycarbonate smartphone design.
Released in late 2012, the One X+ came with a 4.7-inch LCD panel and an NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset. It was one of the first flagships to remove the microSD slot and user-swappable battery in favor of a unibody frame.
Holding it for the first time in years brought back fond memories. It was my daily driver for around four years. Every smartphone I owned after the One X+ had OLED screens larger than five inches, metal or glass bodies, and multiple cameras.
Luckily, my One X+ turned on after a few minutes of charging. It took me longer to find a micro-USB cable. I was greeted by the nostalgic HTC welcome chime and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
The software naturally felt dated. Still, I was reminded of how much I loved the hardware features of my 14-year-old smartphone.
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HTC created the pinnacle of polycarbonate phones
It paved the way for metal unibodies
Modern Androids behave more like mini-computers and less like handy phones. It’s the result of phones reaching desktop-level performance in bodies that always exceed six inches in display size.
The HTC One X+ is a relic of how pocketable Androids once were. It doesn’t protrude from my pocket and can fit in my sling bag’s slimmest slot.
This brings me to my favorite hardware feature: one-handed operation and a curved matte back. At less than five inches, the glass panel tapers to the edges, letting me reach all four corners without adjusting my grip.
Combined with the grippy polycarbonate back, it never slipped from my hand in four years of daily usage. I hadn’t put my One X+ inside a case. Nearly a decade and a half later, I still don’t want to waste its beauty inside an enclosure.
The top-mounted power button is another one of my favorite hardware traits of the One X+. It can only be pulled off by a phone of this size.
This offers a few advantages, such as preventing accidental screenshot activations. Normally, the power button rests under the thumb, and the volume buttons are on the opposite end. This can lead to unintentional power button + volume down presses for screenshots.
This also prevents entering the power menu or activating the AI assistant from accidentally long pressing the power button. This ergonomic button setup wouldn’t work with the dimensions of today’s smartphones.
The third hardware feature I love is the dedicated navigation buttons. They’re always within reach and turn on whenever the screen is active.
The One X+’s navigation buttons light up, making them visible in dark environments. Unlike software buttons, this implementation doesn’t require a swipe to make them appear. Since they sit outside the screen, all pixels are free of obstruction and the ambiguity of swipe gestures.
Capacitive hardware buttons disappeared along with smartphone chins. As bezels got thinner, there was less space to accommodate chins for navigation and foreheads for front-facing cameras.
There are some hardware choices I’d rather forget
What happened in 2012 should stay in 2012
There’s one hardware design choice I still don’t fancy: the side-mounted charging port. It didn’t make much sense then, and it makes even less sense today.
Side-mounted charging is the logical position on gaming phones. Since gaming handsets are often used in landscape orientation, plugging in a charger or accessory seems natural in this position. The One X+’s upper-left charging port is awkward when most usage happens vertically.
I’m not going to rag on the phone’s micro-USB port. The sturdier, reversible USB-C port became a standard a couple of years after the HTC One X+ came out.
What bothers me more is the lack of expandable storage. HTC was one of the first Android brands to imitate iPhones and ditch the microSD slot. The One X+ had 64GB of built-in storage, which was abundant for its time. Fortunately, it kept the 3.5mm audio port.
The One X+ also has a notification LED concealed inside the earpiece grille. Sadly, it’s tiny and can barely be seen at certain angles. It’s nowhere near as visible as the Pixel 11 Pro’s rear-mounted implementation.
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The One X+ was HTC’s last hurrah before transitioning to metal unibodies, starting with the HTC One M7. After I got enough of this nostalgia fix, I turned off my HTC One X+ and placed it back inside its drawer.
As much as I enjoyed this nostalgia trip, I understand why smartphones have progressed the way they have. Except for a few foldables, every smartphone looks and feels the same nowadays. That’s intentional, because the consumer market dictated where we currently are.
What I miss is diversity. There were more Android manufacturers in the early 2010s. Each brand had its distinct identity and feature set.
We have only a handful of Android makers now, and their products are more streamlined. Fourteen years from now, I doubt I’ll look at today’s phones the same way I look at my favorite model of 2012.