Given some difficulties with my Galaxy Nexus hardware I started looking for a possible replacement. I had in mind perhaps a HTC, both because I have really liked my last two HTC phones, and that romming HTC phones is a lot more fun than other phones. The reason for this is that you can always get ASOP roms like Cyanogenmod on most phones, but you can only get Sense roms on HTC phones.
Mostly I don't like "overlays" on Android, but Sense is sort of the exception. Granted, they are no longer "better" than the vanilla experience, but they certainly are different. At some point they actually where a lot ahead of the vanilla Android in design and usability.
Anyway I decided to get a HTC One X+, the upgraded version of the 1,5 year old One X. Why such an old phone you ask? Well first of all, before the Nexus 5 / LG G2, this was still one of the faster phones on the market, with it's 1,7Ghz quad core processor. And it sports a whopping 64Gigs of flash. But the best part, it's dirt cheap. Not like low budget cheap, but it's clearly the cheapest of the high tier phones.
So I got the phone yesterday, and even the packaging was kind of impressive. HTC have used this recycled moulded paper box with rounded edges that fit together in three parts. So I open the box, and the first thing I notice is that the phone uses a micro-sim. This was to be expected, but I forgot to ask for one at the store, so out comes the scissors. Fortunately I have been cutting down sim:s before, but there is still always a bit of nervousness involved. It's really easy to muck up the whole thing. Another little thank you to HTC for making the sim tray opener shaped exactly like a micro-sim so I could just draw around that to get the right shape.
Having gotten the sim card right I take a better look at the phone. This is some pretty impressive hardware. It's almost exactly the same size as the Galaxy Nexus. It's matte black with some red highlights. It does have the fixed softkeys that most phones have that are really superfluous in my opinion, but at least it's the right keys, in the right order, unlike the Galaxy S phones.
The screen is a very good screen. Not being an oled, it lacks some of the extreme contrast that the Galaxy Nexus screen had, but the colours are much nicer. And the viewing angles are as good as you could hope for, the colours do not distort before the reflections get so extreme that you can't tell if they do or not. It might actually be the best screen I've seen on a phone.
The camera is good, certainly much better than the Galaxy Nexus. And it's quite good enough for everyday use. Still haven't tested it very much, so I might get back to you on this.