HTC One SV review: Picking up speed

Great ICS browser

The HTC One SV comes with the company's own Android web browser, as well as Google Chrome preinstalled.

Anyway, the browser controls keeps mostly out of sight, which leaves the entire screen to the web page. You get the standard Menu dropdown on the right, but HTC have thrown in some extra buttons at the bottom of the screen (you have to pan to reveal them, which is a little annoying).

They let you save a page in your bookmarks or reading list, view bookmarks, saved pages or tabs. You might want to enable Quick controls - they let you tap on any point on the edge of the screen and move your finger to select the desired option from a jog-dial menu.

Once you select some text, you can copy it, do a Google search with that text as the query or share the text over a message or social networking.

The ICS web browser on the HTC One SV

Google Chrome is also on board and it's quite good. We do believe most users will opt for it as default browser.

Google Chrome

Great organizer

The usual set of organizer apps are aboard the HTC One SV, with a mobile Office app to boot, that can both view and edit documents.

The Polaris app has support for viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, including the Office 2007 versions and it can create Office 2003 Word, Excel documents and presentations. There is also a PDF viewer to handle PDF files.

Polaris Office handles .doc, .xls and .ppt files

You can format the text style and color, justify the text, do lists (numbered or bullet points) in the Word editor. The Excel editor does support function editing, which some mobile editors don't.

The app also integrates with Dropbox and SkyDrive, which makes syncing documents between your computer and your phone a breeze.

The calendar has four different types of view: daily, monthly, agenda and invitation. Adding a new event is quite straightforward and you can also set an alarm to serve as a reminder.

The HTC One SV organizer centerpiece - the calendar

The Agenda view shows a list of all the calendar entries from the recent past to the near future. Invitation only lists events with invitation info attached to them. The day view showing the weather forecast at the top of the screen is a nice touch.

The Calendar supports multiple online calendars (including Facebook), one you sync with your computer and easily show/hide events you don't want.

There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized with big, easy to hit buttons. Flipping it horizontally enables some more advanced functions like logarithms.

The built-in calculator

The One SV features an alarm clock application, which can handle multiple alarms, each with its own start and repeat time. You also get a stopwatch and a timer in the same app. There's a world clock, to display the time in multiple locations, as well.

The world clock, alarm clock, stopwatch and timer

The Voice recorder might be quite useful for making audio notes and the weather app brings Yahoo's weather forecast for your area a click away.

Voice recorder • Weather app

Google Play Store

The Google Play Store features several scrollable tabs - categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. Apps usually have several screenshots (some even offer a demo video) so you can get an idea of what the app looks like before installing it. You can also check out comments and ratings, as well as the number of downloads and so on, to help you decide if the app is worth it.

The Google Play Store

There are all kinds of apps in the Android market and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.).

Navigation and location with Google Maps

The HTC One SV has a built-in GPS receiver, which managed to get a lock in under a minute (with A-GPS switched off). To assist the GPS you can use the Cell-ID and Wi-Fi network lock, which makes things even faster.

At this point, Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and we've covered it many times before. It offers voice-guided navigation in certain countries and falls back to a list of instructions elsewhere. You can plan routes, search for nearby POI and go into the always cool Street View.

Google Maps is an inherent part of the Android platform

The HTC One SV also features car mode. It works in landscape mode and offers large buttons for easy access to telephony, music player, navigation, etc.

Car mode