You could always wait for the next greatest phone to come along and make this one look old and expensive.

I've been living for with HTC's One X for a week now - trying to find fault - but I give up. There are other phones that do certain things better, but as an all-round package this has to be the best smartphone on the market.

And what a market it is. While many areas of tech have become commoditized, it's good to see smartphones constantly innovating and introducing new features which make the last best-thing-ever look instantly old. That's particularly important in a product category where people tend to mould their lives around a device.

While phone reviews have a habit of wildly differing depending on who's doing the writing and what their prime requirements are, I suspect that the One X's are likely to agree more than usual. From my own point of view, I'm lost without my phone and so I expect it to excel at day-to-day functions while I care less about gimmicky features.

In short

HTC's new flagship 3G phone has an impressive 4.7-inch screen, has an outstanding eight-megapixel camera, runs the latest version of Android (version 4 - aka Ice Cream Sandwich), the latest version of HTC Sense (also version 4) and is superfast thanks to its Tegra 3 1.5GHz quad-core processor. It also has a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip meaning you can exchange data just by tapping it against compatible objects plus it has enhanced audio playback thanks to "Beats" compatibility. The only potential hiccup is battery life, but this depends on usage.

Design and screen

The white chassis is carved from a single piece of white polycarbonate andhas a curved black screen sitting on top with the display appearing very close to the surface. In these regards it's similar to Nokia's Lumia 800 which actually edges ahead due to its amazingly high-contrast 'borderless' screen seemingly floating on the surface along with its colourful chassis options. Indeed, the One's white chassis (also available in black) got a bit grubby and required regular cleaning.

However, the One's larger screen still offers superb colour reproduction and gets very bright: it's easily viewable outside on bright Aussie days. The chassis is uncluttered thanks to volume buttons on the right, a power button on the top and its USB port on the left. The headphone jack is on the top which will please those put off by chief rival, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus' bottom-mounted jack.

Compared with the 4.65-inch Nexus, which phone looks better will depend on personal preference. But the One wins through thanks to its more-solid build quality and brighter, more-colourful screen. You can't open the back and replace the battery on the One, however, and neither have an SD card slot to boost the built-in storage. However, the One wins again thanks to having 32GB of on-board memory compared to the Nexus' 16GB.

Both screens have a 1280 x 720 resolution. The One's screen certainly seems incredibly sharp. It can't quite match the sharpness of the market-leading iPhone Retina display's (pixel density: 330ppi versus 312ppi) but it's not far off. More importantly, the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen is much smaller and has a lower resolution (640x960).

The One also leads the (glass-encased) iPhone in that it's less likely to fracture when dropped on a hard surface and the lack of sharp edges makes it more friendly to tight trouser pockets.

It feels light at 130 grammes and the sub-9mm thickness is amazing considering what's inside. Combined with the 135mm x 70mm footprint it's surprisingly easy to hold and use in one hand despite the large screen size.

Ultimately, while its screen facets don't quite top the charts across the board they're top two by almost every significant measure and this makes it an overall winner in this area.

Speed and usability

Some reviewers give the HTC Sense application a hard time, but the improvements it offers over the basic Android operating system are a boon. Being able to swipe to unlock and go directly to your Mail, Messages, Camera and Phone apps is something I've always found particularly useful. Now, however, the combination of Sense 4, ICS and the speedy Tegra 3 chipset means doing so is near instantaneous. What little lag existed in HTC's previous flagship phones has all but disappeared with the One X - it just flies along in almost every application. It's very hard to slow down and going back to slower phones, even those with minuscule lag times, has already proved annoying.

Another huge winner for Sense is its best-on-the-market contact management. Its ability to automatically link contact information from Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, SIM card, phone contacts and Google accounts, while avoiding duplication, is seamless and incredibly useful. It's something that Apple especially should take a long hard look at.

As day-to-day apps go, Twitter is illustrative. Recent feature-enhanced versions of the app have seen smooth scrolling replaced with jerky, less-responsive movement through large Tweet streams. With the One X (for the most part at least) it's smooth again. Lag is incredibly rare. This is easily the fastest phone on the market right now.

One area that I had issues with, though, is the new button layout that comes with ICS. Previous HTC Android phones have had four touch buttons below the screen - Back, Home, Search and Menu. ICS encourages the use of just three - Back, Home and Recently Opened. While three buttons might look neater, it's something of a retrograde step in my book. I still never use the Recently Opened button, which scrolls between different apps, because Android already makes it simple to find your favourite apps. Also, the ICS system of displaying menu buttons more-visibly within apps is hit and miss - the menu button changes size, jumps from top to bottom of the screen and sometimes isn't present at all. Annoying.

However, at least the nav buttons are always visible on the One X. On the Nexus, where they take up part of the screen, they too-often disappear leaving you to guess where they are and remember what order they're in.

Samsung makes great Android phones, but the tweaks that come with Sense suggest to me that HTC's software engineers love using their own phones: they seem to respond to criticism every release while constantly adding minor tweaks to remedy annoyances that stem from day-to-day, raw-Android usage. That said, there will always be many in the Android community who take exception at Sense doing anything differently. All in all, however, everyone should be pleased as Sense 4 manages to be both less-in-your-face while simultaneously providing numerous, discreet productivity enhancements.

Camera

If you just take a quick picture with the eight-megapixel main camera you'll be impressed at the near instant shutter, the sharpness of the image and the colour reproduction which rivals the best cameraphones on the market. However, thanks to a dedicated camera chip and a system HTC calls ImageSense, the camera soars away from the field.

You can take 99 shots in a minute. Ninetynine! You can take photos while recording video. You can take photos while playing back video. As such you don't have to switch between camera and video mode, just pressing either button will instantly activate the shutter. It's so much more responsive than other cameraphones.

The relatively-large lens has a wide aperture (f2.0, 28mm) and lets in more light than normal. Low-light pictures with the LED flash are impressive and even without the flash are more-usable than most competitors (expect heaps of grain though).

But it's the effects that really stand out. The Panorama mode lets you take 180-degree, Ken Duncan-style panoramas just by moving the phone in one direction. The standard of stitching is not bettered elsewhere. But it's the speed that makes the difference. Normally, if you take many panoramas on a camera phone you'll feel it heat up as the processor maxes out and takes many seconds to complete the task. It takes five seconds to stitch a panorama on the One. The same goes for High Dynamic Range photos. Normally this feature involves taking three different photos using bright, medium and dark metering to produce a picture with no blown-out highlights and no dark shadow areas. It usually takes a few seconds to take the three pictures and holding a camera still while it does so is tricky. After that you then have a lengthy wait while the camera processes the images. On the One this all takes barely a second making for sharper pictures with superlative colours and dynamic range.

This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the battery doesn't get caned as much - due to a constantly maxed-out processor. However, because the system works so well, you can find yourself using it more and more often. As such, the processor could start warming up and affecting the battery. But that's a harsh complaint.

Also noticeable is the speed at swiping through photos in the gallery. This can lag badly on other phones but it was a dream on the One.

Video can be shot at an impressive 1080p (or 720p using the front-mounted, two-megapixel camera). Naturally, image quality at the front ain't all that.

Battery

It was only during image processing and 3D games that saw the phone warm up - all that parallel processing afforded by the quad-core processor makes for some efficient power usage. In general it lasted the full day that one would expect from a modern smartphone. As usual, much will depend on how different people use their phones. When I took heaps of pictures or spent longer-than-normal web browsing, I found it running low late in the day, perhaps slightly-more so than with other phones.

It's worth noting though that the Tegra 3 quad-core processor actually has a fifth core. This special low-power core takes over when the phone is at rest to avoid keeping the quad-core monster ticking over. It's hard to say how well it works, but it's likely responsible for keeping such a powerhouse running during daylight hours.

Other features

The Beats Audio enhancement chip makes for better audio playback with better bass response. However, unlike the Beats-wielding HTC Sensation phones, the One doesn't come with high-quality headphones - just mediocre earbuds.

BlueTooth 4 is catered for. You can also connect the phone to a TV using a special HDMI/USB cable (optional). Just remember that you won't be able to charge the phone while playing back video.

The Near Field Communication chip allows for data transfer just by tapping the phone. However, it won't yet work with PayWave-like technologies so its usefulness remains to be seen.

Value and alternatives

Both Optus and Vodafone are offering the One X for free on their $59 plans. Online it's available outright for around $660 to $700 depending on where you buy it. This puts it firmly at the top end of the mobile market along with the iPhone 4S.

The premium you pay is highlighted by the price drop of its main rival, the all-of-a-sudden-long-in-the-tooth Samsung Galaxy Nexus which can now be had for around $400. That's a great buy, but it's now distinctly second best. You can also get the much-larger Samsung Galaxy Note for around $500 but this hybrid-tablet 'phablet' is not for everyone. Also tempting is the $500 HTC Velocity which is worth considering if you need 4G performance. Personally, I'd wait for 4G to settle down and mature as it can murder a phone's battery life at present.

Another old favourite is the HTC Sensation XL. However, the One X improves on this in every single way and makes the XL suddenly look expensive at $500.

Elsewhere there's the impressive Nokia Lumia 800 - the top Windows Phone. It's good in its way, but not for everyone. That said, its $400 price tag represents good value.

Conclusion

The HTC One X is well designed, it's the fastest phone around, it has great software, has got the best all-round screen, sports a superb camera set-up and has some potentially-nifty features like Beats Audio and Near Field Communication. You're paying a premium but what you get is the best all-round phone on the market... at least until the next one appears. Battery life is the only concern for heavy users.