Edible Apple

While Samsung might be the top Android smartphone vendor today, it wasn’t all that long ago that HTC’s lineup of smartphones offered the most compelling Android experience on the market. But as things tend to go in the smartphone industry, Samsung quickly caught up and soon surpassed HTC in both total sales volume and elegant design – which, of course, was made easy by their blatant rip off of Apple’s hardware and software, but we digress.

But yesterday at the Mobile World Congress currently ongoing in Barcelona, HTC unveiled a device it hopes will breathe some life into slumping smartphone sales.

Dubbed the One X, HTC’s most advanced smartphone certainly has a lot to offer spec wise.

• – 4.7 inch screen with a 1280×720 Super LCD Display
• – Android 4.0
• – quad-core processor in Europe, and a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 here in the States
• 8 megapixel camera
• 32 GB of storage
• Just 9mm thick
• Camera with f/2.0 lens, drawing in up to 44% more light

What’s more, HTC has worked hard to improve camera functionality, and taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, worked to ensure that camera speed would be absolutely blazing.

The Verge reports:

Camera performance has been a real priority for HTC with the One series and all three of its newly launched Android handsets come with a selection of important optimizations. Firstly, a dedicated imaging processor has been added to allow the One phones to manipulate pictures before compressing them to JPEG format. HTC expects this to result in lower image noise, greater color accuracy, and higher overall quality.

Most of the improvements in the One cameras actually relate to speed. Startup time of the camera app is said to be 0.7 seconds and autofocus takes a blistering 0.2 seconds, making it quicker than the blink of an eye. Holding down the onscreen shutter button (you’ll find no physical camera keys on these phones) automatically flips you into burst mode, with an intelligent selection menu then allowing you to pick the best shot of the bunch and discard the rest.

On top of that, the phone will enable users to take high quality stills while simultaneously recording video footage. The HTC One X is expected to drop in Europe and the US by April. Stateside, the One X will only be available on AT&T.

In addition to the HTC One X, HTC also unveiled the One V and the One S.

The One S is a tad smaller, with a 4.3-inch screen while the One V is reportedly the revamped HTC Legend. Lastly, and we’ll cover this in more detail soon, each device comes with 25GB of free Dropbox storage.