“It’s What You Do With What We Do”

A couple weeks ago I got an email with a fun opportunity from Megan and AT&T. Their new campaign and tagline, “It’s what you do with what we do”, is all about how people from different walks of life can customize their technology to fit their lifestyle. Megan offered to send me an HTC One X with a month of service to share my honest feedback and share how the technology fit my work as a food blogger and I jumped at the chance.

To be honest I’d been thinking about getting a new phone for a while now, and not because of any service or dropped call issues. Engaging in social media is a big part of being a food blogger, whether it’s tweeting, pinning, facebooking or instagramming. The HTC One X drew me in with it’s 4G speed(faster than my 3G) and an impressive 8 megapixel camera. My hopes were that the HTC One X would encourage me to share more food candids from grocery shopping to cooking and photographing and everywhere in between. So far it’s gotten me to reclaim my Instagram account after a year of inactivity and begin posting again; that’s definitely a start.

Setting up the phone was rather simple. It easily tied into my email and social media accounts to get a lot of contact information from there. Even better, I could use their website to set up the interface and change things around instead of having to do it all directly on the phone itself. The breadth of options of widgets and apps was slightly overwhelming, but in a good way. All in all I spent over 3 hours setting up the phone, but at the end I felt like I truly had a device that would work best for how I wanted to use it.

It was really easy to move things around on the different panels, get rid of the apps I know I wouldn’t use and highlight the ones I want to keep going back to. I also have a panel for my photo gallery and a panel for text messages(You could also easily add a panel with all of your contact numbers just in case you forgot that this was actually a phone).

When I was last looking for a smartphone a few years ago, a major factor in my decision was the availability of mobile apps. I chose an Apple product because the Android app selection had a reputation for being thin. I was really happy to see that that’s changed over the past few years because I felt like all the major apps I was looking for were there.

The camera on this phone(really the main attraction for me) is nothing short of amazing for a mobile device. The quality(8 megapixels) blows away the one on my old phone which actually encourages me to use it more. Even without an apps, the camera comes with options that allow you to create vignettes, change the ISO or switch to a fisheye lens, which is all pretty cool, too. It’s certainly not a DSLR but I feel like I can carry this phone around and capture moments with friends without having to lug around my actual camera.

One of my favorite photography apps so far has been Pudding Camera. It’s a free app I hadn’t heard of before that comes with a fun interface letting you swap between “cameras”(framing) and “films”(tones). It’s missing a social component like Instagram has but the photos and filters always seem to come out clearest when I use this app.

At the end of the month I’m going to share my thoughts on the phone and the photo apps I’ve tried and host a giveaway for a brand new white HTC One X. After just a few days I’m starting to love mine and I’m excited to offer the opportunity for one of you to fall in love with it, too.