When you look through your message inbox and come across a phone number, your smartphone automatically turns those digits into a shortcut to the dialer. It’s a feature that we know is there, yet we most likely take it for granted since it has become the norm for our devices. Well, maybe not anymore. Yesterday, shipments into the United States of HTC’s One X and EVO 4G LTE have been indefinitely held up by the International Trade Commission to undergo inspection. Last December, the ITC ruled that HTC was violating the aforementioned patent which is owned by Apple and issued a “limited exclusion order” which went in effect April 19, making the import of devices using the patent prohibited.

Due to this investigation, HTC has issued a delay in the US release of these devices on both Sprint and AT&T, who currently list the device as “Out of Stock.” Sprint is still taking pre-orders for a launch that was intended for this Friday. According to new reports from the WSJ, HTC has said to have worked around the patent, but the ITC will still need to carry out their inspections. Unfortunately, as far as the public knows, there is no time frame set for when that will be concluded.

Via: The Verge | WSJ

You have to give it up for some tech-tinkerers out there. Someone over in China with too much time on their hands have found that if you pair certain Bluetooth headsets with the HTC One X, that you can remotely control the camera’s shutter. Seriously, that’s neat. Depending on which headset you have, it could be as easy as a single click or sometimes a variation of certain button presses to get it working properly. It’s a nifty video and thankfully, it comes with subtitles. 

HTC released a couple of new videos today to highlight the car and media sharing capabilities of their new One Series. The car software, as you will see in the video below, has been optimized for music (once paired with a dongle), so that you can have wireless tunes throughout without all of those pesky cables. Their Media Link HD accessory gives One Series owners the ability to share media with any screen at any time. You will need to purchase a Media Link receiver in order to make this magic happen, but for those wanting to easily take their phone’s screen and share it with their TV, it doesn’t appear to get any simpler. 

If you were considering the HTC One X that is headed to AT&T, not only for its power, but also because of HTC’s commitment to unlocking bootloaders, you may want to look elsewhere. Early adopters of the device noticed a constant error when trying to unlock it through HTCDev’s bootloader tool, prompting the media to ping HTC for a comment on the matter. What did they have to say? Here you go:

HTC is committed to listening to users and delivering customer satisfaction. Since announcing our commitment to unlockable bootloaders, HTC has worked to enable our customers to unlock the bootloader on more than 45 devices over the past six months. In some cases, however, restrictions prevent certain devices from participating in our bootloader unlocking program. Rest assured, HTC is committed to assisting developers in unlocking bootloaders for HTC devices and we’ll continue to unlock additional devices in the future.

“Restrictions” or better yet, a PR person’s way of saying, “the carrier” is the reason for this phone to remain locked. This is a sad turn of events in HTC’s journey to appease the developer community. Last May, HTC’s CEO Peter Chou announced via Facebook that after an overwhelming amount of customer feedback that they “will no longer be locking the bootloaders” on their devices. He didn’t say “where carriers permit it” or anything of that nature, so this move is a bit shocking. We watched HTC provide unlocking tools for all of their Verizon devices, leading us to believe that the stand they had taken was going to make it.

Only one way to tell if the dark days are on the verge of returning, and that’s to see the status of the Incredible 4G LTE when it gets released in the next couple of weeks.

Via:  Modaco

Cheers to everyone who sent this!

Ready for a spec battle between the newly announced Samsung Galaxy SIII and some of the other players in the game? Here is a quick look at how it stacks up to last year’s Galaxy SII, the Galaxy Nexus and the beast of the moment, the HTC One X.

(Click to enlarge)

HTC is out to reinvent their brand this year after they struggled during 2011. To kick off 2012 the right way, they have presented their newest flagship device, the HTC One X. We have already published our full review of the unlocked Tegra 3 variant of this phone, but this one is branded with an AT&T logo and is powered by a Snapdragon S4 chip to support their 4G LTE network. Could this be the device that saves HTC in the US handset market? Let’s take a look. 

First, if you haven’t checked out our full review of the AT&T HTC One X, then you will want to do that. After doing that, let’s go ahead and start the conversation about benchmarks between the AT&T, Snapdragon S4 version and the Tegra 3, unlocked version of the phone.

With NVIDIA not having LTE modems for their quad-core processors just yet, carriers that want this phone with LTE capabilities are having to swap out the Tegra 3 in favor of the dual-core Snapdragon S4. Both processors are beasts in their own right, so we thought, “What better way to see if we can find a difference than through a handful of tests?” For those that hate benchmarks and think they mean nothing, we would agree with you to a point. We would have to disagree in that these at least give us something to compare against. We can flip through home screens all day long, open and close apps, look for stutters, etc., but in the end, you need to have numbers. Benchmarks give us numbers.  

I know that you probably just finished up reading our HTC One X review from yesterday, but it’s time now to shift gears onto its little brother, the HTC One S. Announced at the same time as the One X during MWC in February, the One S might come off on paper as being less of a phone, however, once you use it you will realize that it is a little beast of its own. This device is headed to T-Mobile, but variations of it will arrive on other carriers – like the Incredible 4G on Verizon. So let’s dive into it and share some thoughts.