HTC Sensation XE / HTC Sensation XE

Black and red colour is attractive ; Included urBeats in-ear headphones ; Unibody aluminium design

Not as snappy as we'd have liked ; Very little improvements over original ; Exclusive to Vodafone

The HTC Sensation XE is by no means a bad Android phone, but none of its features blew us away. We love the red and black design and the urBeats headphones are a nice inclusion, but average battery life and less than stellar performance detract from...

Great build, High quality bundled earphones, Fast processor

Screen quality iffy, Camera autofocus unreliable, Red trim a bit tacked-on

Good build quality and aesthetics ; Great packaged headphones

Beats Audio software is largely a gimmick ; Aging display technology ; Camera isn't up to par, especially with video ; The extra speed isn't worth the battery drain

The XE doesn't improve much on the first Sensation and better phones are hitting the market. Did we mention Beats Audio is a gimmick?

Build, smart branding, inclusion of iBeats buds, fast and intuitive, clean, clever interface

Video struggles with dark scenes, over-cooked bass, battery life isn’t great

Good but not great, this is a decent package let down by its bottom end

Bass-blasting Beats Audio ; Speedy performance ; Good build quality

Light on built-in storage ; Non-AMOLED screen ; Beats doesn’t suit all music

Powerful handset, great audio performance with great headphones in the box, good screen, responsive camera

wkward timing means it doesn't deliver the latest from Sense or Android, Beats isn't integrated throughout, sometimes Sense doesn't make sense

The HTC Sensation XE, the first Beats handset, perhaps should be something more than just an upgrade. But that's a position it can never really escape from. It feels like the Sensation released back in May 2011, but then that was a fantastic phone.

Updated to Ice Cream Sandwich ; Great screen ; Contacts and social networking implementation is top-notch ; Fantastic keyboard

Seven home screens not expandable ; Autofocus can be erratic ; Resizing video for MMS issue

The HTC Sensation XE built well on the success of the original Sensation, but since the launch of Ice Cream Sandwich toting handsets at MWC 2012 it is in need of an update to keep up with the pack.