HTC One S: the 4.3-inch aluminium phone that stood the test of time
In mid-2012, HTC had a reputation problem. After a string of hits like the Desire HD and the Sensation, the Taiwanese brand was suddenly fighting for relevance against a rising Samsung and a never-sleeping Apple. The HTC One S, launched in Australia through Telstra, Optus and Vodafone alongside the bigger One X, was meant to remind everyone what made HTC special. It was the smaller sibling, the one carved from a single block of aluminium, and the one that quietly became a favourite for buyers who walked into JB Hi-Fi or Harvey Norman wanting something genuinely different.
For Australians shopping in the $600-$700 bracket that April, the One S arrived at a price tag of roughly $699 outright, or around $0 on a $40 monthly cap with the major carriers. The pitch was simple: a compact 4.3-inch handset that felt like jewellery, ran Android Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4, and looked unlike anything else in the shop window. Years later, this phone still feels like a turning point in how Android flagships were designed, and it remains a fascinating time capsule for anyone browsing the smartphones catalogue on our site.
| Phone | Display | Processor | Rear camera | Battery | Launch OS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTC One S | 4.3-inch Super AMOLED, qHD | Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1.5GHz | 8MP, f/2.0 | 1650 mAh | Android 4.0 ICS |
| Samsung Galaxy S III | 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED | Exynos 4 Quad 1.4GHz | 8MP | 2100 mAh | Android 4.0 ICS |
| Nokia Lumia 720 | 4.3-inch ClearBlack LCD | Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1GHz | 6.7MP, f/1.9 | 2000 mAh | Windows Phone 8 |
| Apple iPhone 5 | 4-inch Retina IPS LCD | Apple A6 dual-core 1.3GHz | 8MP | 1440 mAh | iOS 6 |
Design and build
The single most striking thing about picking up the HTC One S was the way it felt in the hand. HTC used a process called micro-arc oxidation, where the aluminium body was treated with a plasma charge that hardened the surface and gave it a unique ceramic-like finish. The black variant in particular felt like holding a smooth river stone, and unlike the plasticky Galaxy S III that launched the same month, it never creaked, flexed, or warmed up in a worrying way. At 7.8mm thick and 130 grams, it was a genuinely pocketable flagship at a time when many competitors were pushing past 8.5mm and 140 grams.
Build quality also translated into real durability. The unibody construction left no removable back cover, which meant there was no flex around the battery, no rattling SIM tray, and no seams for pocket lint to creep into. Australian reviewers at the time frequently noted that after six months of beach trips, train commutes from Central to Hurstville, and the occasional drop onto a tiled kitchen floor, the chassis still looked remarkably fresh. The trade-off was a non-removable 1650 mAh battery, a sealed SIM slot that required an ejector pin, and no microSD expansion, which felt stingy in a market where Samsung was happily bundling 32GB plus a card slot.
Display and visual experience
HTC paired that premium body with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED panel running at qHD resolution, which worked out to roughly 256 pixels per inch. By the standards of 2012, that was sharp enough for everyday browsing, video playback, and reading apps like Flipboard or Pocket, but side by side with the iPhone 5's Retina display, you could see the difference. Colours were the classic AMOLED story: deep, inky blacks, saturated reds and greens, and a tendency to overshoot on blues, which made photo galleries and movie trailers look more cinematic than they really were.
Viewing angles were excellent, and the screen remained legible outdoors in bright conditions, including the harsh glare of a Sydney summer arvo at Bondi. HTC's software let you tweak the colour temperature if the default profile felt too cartoonish, and there was a useful readability mode for reading long-form articles on the train. The 4.3-inch size itself was a sweet spot in 2012, big enough to type comfortably without feeling cramped, but small enough to reach across with one thumb, something that mattered a lot for Sydneysiders juggling a coffee and the morning commute.
Performance and software
Under the hood, the One S ran Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 (Krait) dual-core at 1.5GHz, paired with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. On paper that trailed the quad-core Exynos inside the Galaxy S III, but in real-world use the S4 chip was so efficient that lag was almost never an issue. Apps opened quickly, scrolling through Twitter and Facebook stayed buttery, and HTC's customised Sense 4 skin over Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich felt far more restrained than the cluttered Sense of older devices. There were touches worth celebrating, like the iconic flip clock weather widget, the clean notifications shade, and the genuinely useful Friend Stream that pulled updates from multiple networks.
HTC later rolled out an update to Android 4.1 Jelly Bean with Sense 4+, which brought Google Now, expandable notifications, and smoother animations across the system. For an Australian user holding onto the phone across a typical two-year contract, this update kept the device feeling fresh well into 2014. Benchmarks told one story, but daily use told another: the One S rarely felt slow, even when running newer apps designed for faster hardware, and it rarely heated up in a way that became uncomfortable during long calls or 4G tethering sessions on Telstra's network.
Camera and multimedia
The 8-megapixel rear camera used HTC's ImageSense chip and a fast f/2.0 lens, which was genuinely impressive at the time. Shutter lag was measured in fractions of a second, burst mode captured several frames per second, and the dedicated ImageChip allowed 1080p video recording while simultaneously taking stills. In good Australian daylight, the camera produced vibrant, contrasty shots with pleasing colour rendering, and the HDR mode helped balance bright skies against shady foregrounds, a useful trick at family barbecues in Brisbane parks or coastal walks along the Great Ocean Road.
Low-light performance was the phone's real standout for the era. The f/2.0 aperture let in noticeably more light than the iPhone 4S, and combined with a backside-illuminated sensor, evening shots at a Melbourne laneway café or a dimly lit Newtown bar looked better than anything else in this price tier. The phone also shipped with Beats Audio processing through the headphone jack, which gave a subtle but real lift to bass and clarity, and made the bundled urBeats earphones sound punchy on a commute. The front camera was a token VGA unit, fine for video calls but little else, which was standard for the era.
Battery and daily use
The 1650 mAh battery was the most debated specification on the One S, and rightly so. With heavy use, including 4G browsing, GPS navigation around Sydney's CBD, and a couple of hours of music streaming, the phone often needed a top-up by late arvo. Light users could push it through a full day, particularly with HTC's built-in power saver toggling background sync and dimming the display at the 20% mark.
What made the battery situation bearable in 2012 was the convenience factor. Australians could pop into JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, or even a 7-Eleven and grab an HTC-branded travel charger, or swap a spare battery into the bundled desktop cradle. By today's standards this seems fussy, but in a pre-USB-C era when charging speeds were limited to 1A, having a car charger in the glovebox was just part of owning a smartphone. For readers comparing Android flagships with Windows Phone options in this generation, the Nokia Lumia 720 sits in an interesting position just below this price bracket, with a bigger battery and a similar focus on imaging.
The HTC One S may no longer be a daily driver for most Australians, but it earns a place in any honest list of phones that changed how Android felt in the hand. Its aluminium unibody set a template that HTC, Apple, and eventually Samsung would all borrow from, and its camera set a benchmark that held up against much newer hardware. Subscribe to New Mobile Arrivals for more deep dives into the handsets that defined the early 2010s, and dig through the archive for full reviews of every HTC, Samsung, Nokia, and Apple release from this golden era. If you're chasing a vintage smartphone to collect, a daily driver with real character, or simply a reminder of what 2012 Android felt like at its most refined, this is the handset worth hunting down.