All HTC One phones have Beats audio built in. Beats audio automatically turns on when you play music, but you can opt to turn it off. I could definitely hear a positive change in music quality, especially with rock and metal music, when Beats was running. Bass sounded richer and the vocals sounded fuller. Beats audio also kicks in when you play a YouTube video. Video not only looked great on the One S's display, but it ran smoothly too.

Performance

In my hands-on tests, the HTC One S actually crashed and restarted. The crash occurred when I was opening an attachment and taking a screenshot of it. As soon as my phone restarted, I got a message in the notifications window informing me that the phone had sent an error report to HTC. I wasn't able to replicate the error, however, and I never had any other instances where the phone crashed or froze--so hopefully this was just a one-time thing.

Otherwise, the One S was quite speedy. Powered by a Qualcomm S4 1.5GHz dual-core processor, the One S felt speedy and smooth throughout the user interface. In our Sunspider tests, which gauge Javascript performance in the browser), the One S did exceptionally well with a time of 1.8 seconds, outperforming the (6.8 seconds), the (3.1 seconds) and the (2.7 seconds).

I also tested the One S using two different benchmarking apps. On Qualcomm's own Vellamo benchmarking app, the One S scored 2365, putting it ahead of the , our top-ranking phone. On the third-party benchmarking app Quadrant, the HTC One S scored a 3451, again ahead of the Galaxy Nexus.