HTC Sensation XE review

The HTC Sensation XE sports the clever Sense social media integration which pulls in all the relevant info from the likes of Facebook and Twitter and magically matches it with the correct people in your contact list.

The contacts app, or People app as it's known in the HTC world, has been merged with the Phone app and you can easily jump between the two using the tabs at the bottom of the screen.

The Sense UI provides an overlay to the generic Android address book and makes viewing and editing contacts a breeze – with the update to version 3.6 providing a cleaner and simpler expeience. Select a contact from the list and you can easily view their phone numbers, email addresses and social media accounts.

Set up your various email and social media accounts on the Sensation XE and you will be prompted to sync the contacts with the People app - allowing you to have one central place for everyone complete with mug shots.

There are four tabs at the bottom of the screen when viewing a contact and these allow you to keep track of your communication with each person. The Thread tab shows your call, message and email history with the contact, Updates shows you what's happening on the person's social media account and Gallery pulls images of the person from social media sites into one place.

The Sensation XE supports smart and voice dialling while also showing you the most recently dialled numbers when in keypad mode – useful if you need to quickly call someone back.

Thanks to the 4.3-inch screen it is easy to dial on the Sensation XE and once in a call we were able to easily pull up the keypad to keep our automated friends happy and stick the phone on loudspeaker when our brother started singing like a little girl.

Call quality was clear and the ear piece volume can be turned up to aid you in noisy environments. The Sensation XE held signal well during our tests and we didn't notice any unusual drop in coverage - through both city, town and country tests.