Samsung Galaxy Note vs HTC One X

Form
Samsung Galaxy Note - 146.9x83x9.7mm, 178g

HTC One X - 134.4x69.9x8.9mm, 130g

The Samsung Galaxy Note is one beast of a phone, in fact it's bordering on the smaller end of tablet proportions. In terms of visual design, it's a very attractive piece of kit, resembling a scaled-up Galaxy S2 in many ways.

It's a wide and elongated slab and the screen takes up much of this real-estate, the bezel on either side is very thin indeed.

At the top and bottom the expanse of bodywork is considerably wider but proportionally things look good.

The back panel is gently curved, slightly textured and feels like reasonably good quality plastic. The camera port is neatly tucked away and is unobtrusive, meanwhile between the front and back panels is a chrome bezel.

So we've established it looks good. We have to address the size, though. Using the Note for its jazzier smartphone purposes, such as web browsing, using apps, playing games and so on, having the larger size and the bigger screen is a good thing.

However, remembering this is an actual phone rather than just a mini tablet means there's an awkward side to things.

Putting the handset to your face to make or receive calls can make you feel like some kind of clown, which is of course a bad thing. Unless you're a clown.

There are ways round this, though - you can use hands-free kits or wireless Bluetooth headsets.

If this is something you have no problem with you'll probably enjoy the Galaxy Note's phone capabilities despite its gargantuan proportions, otherwise it's probably not going to cut it.

Moving on to the HTC One X. HTC's One range includes two of the best looking handsets we've ever seen from  the Taiwanese manufacturer and the One X makes up one half of this attractive pair, alongside the One S.

One of the most striking things about the One X is the elegance and refinement of its unibody design. The whole device has a slight curvature to it in profile and while the front and back panels are a smooth, high-quality and slightly matte plastic finish the edges are more chiselled in shape and have a shine to them.

Between the screen and the main bodywork is a slightly contoured and shiny black panel, which means for the white coloured model (our preference) a thin contrasting bezel peeps out around the edge when looking at the phone straight on. Overall we like this aesthetic: it's very sharp.

The Galaxy Note is smart enough but the One X has distinguished itself with some very unique design features which really make it stand out as an exceptionally slick device.

Winner- HTC One X

Display
The One X may have the smaller screen of these two devices but it's still quite large by the standards of most smartphones.

It's a 4.7-inch expanse of Super IPS LCD2 capacitive multi-touch goodness, complete with Corning's Gorilla Glass for a bit of extra durability and a 1280x720 pixel resolution giving a pixel density of 312 pixels-per-inch (ppi).

This is pretty sharp as you can imagine, it's well up there as one of the best screens for an Android phone, although Sony's Xperia S pips it to the top spot.

Samsung's Galaxy Note has an absolutely vast 5.3-inch multi-touch capacitive screen. Being a premium Samsung device it uses Samsung's own Super AMOLED display technology alongside Corning's Gorilla Glass reinforcement.

Despite its large size it still achieves an impressive pixel density of 285ppi thanks to its 1280x800 pixel resolution.

The Galaxy Note's screen is quite stunning to behold, having a very sharp picture quality on such a scale.

However, you can expect to notice the difference in quality when looking at the One X's still sizable display.

Winner - HTC One X

Storage
The One X has 32GB of onboard storage and supplements the processor with 1GB of RAM. Sadly, there's no micro SD slot so you can't bump up the capacity with cards.

The Galaxy Note comes in either 16GB or 32GB variants for internal storage and in either case you get 1GB of RAM to help keep things ticking over nicely.

Unlike its opponent, it has micro SD capability and will accept cards up to 32GB in size. This means ultimately you can squeeze 64GB of storage out of the Galaxy Note if you wish.

Samsung wins here by giving more flexibility and a higher overall storage capability.

Winner - Samsung Galaxy Note