With its tapered sides, polycarbonate-clad unibody design and 4,3-inch, 1 280×720-pixel display, the HTC 8X certainly looks the part.

As HTC’s new flagship Windows Phone device and one of the first handsets powered by Windows Phone 8, it delivers the goods in spades – excellent hardware and an intuitive and elegant operating system scores highly. However, a few niggles remain from earlier versions of Microsoft’s mobile operating system that sometimes make it a little hard to truly love the platform.

Although Taiwanese HTC rode to global prominence on the back of Google’s Android operating system, it has lost ground to Korea’s Samsung Electronics in recent years. Even its superb One X has struggled to win over consumers, despite being seen by most reviewers as being on a par with Samsung’s Galaxy S3.

While Samsung has also released Windows Phone devices, it appears it’s Nokia’s Lumia range that will present the biggest challenge to HTC in this round. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that the 8X resembles the Lumia 920, Nokia’s new top-end smartphone, which is being released in South Africa later this week. Like the 920, the 8X is also available in a range of bright colours, although local operators are only ranging black at first.

Like the Lumia range, the 8X is a sealed unit and doesn’t offer access to the battery. Many handset manufacturers are going this route, though it’s enough to put off some users who need to swap out the battery when it’s flat. Given the 8X’s relatively puny 1 800mAh battery, this could prove a turn-off.

The phone should last a working day of moderate use but, like most smartphones, heavy use will require a charge before a day is out.

Battery-life aside, in the hardware department the 8X offers everything one would expect from a top-end smartphone. The screen is excellent and offers generous viewing angles and superb contrast. The slightly raised edges around the display, combined with the polycarbonate body and lack of port covers, make the 8X feel every bit a premium device.

The top of the phone features a 3,5mm audio jack and the power/lock button, which, although difficult to find at first because of how little it protrudes, becomes second nature soon enough. The right-hand side of the 8X houses the micro-Sim tray, a volume rocker and a very welcome dedicated camera button that can be used to launch the camera and as a shutter release.

The bottom of the 8X houses the micro-USB port used for charging and tethering. In addition to the HTC and Beats Audio logos, the phone’s back includes an 8-megapixel autofocus shooter with a speedy f2.0 aperture and an LED flash that produces truly superb images.

Microsoft has packed in a wide range of camera controls and the 8X’s camera can easily stand its ground against the cameras on the S3 and the iPhone. It’s also capable of recording video at 1 080p at 30 frames per second, and there’s the option to use the LED flash as a lamp.

The camera is complemented by the 8X’s fantastic display. With a pixel density of around 342 pixels per inch and 16GB of internal storage — of which approximately 12GB is available to users — the 8X won’t disappoint avid mobile-phone photographers.

Sadly, there is no microSD slot for expanding the onboard storage. This is all the more disappointing given that Microsoft included support in its software for this feature.

As has become the norm with high-end handsets, there’s also a front-facing camera, this time a wide-angle 2-megapixel model.

Although the 8X may not be as potent beneath its sleek exterior as some of its rivals, the 1,5GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM nevertheless ensure a seamless and responsive interface. The fact that Windows Phone 8 is so simple and elegant no doubt helps.

WP8 improves enormously on its predecessor, especially where its live tiles are concerned. Users can fit more of them on the screen, customise their size, and more of them offer live information than previously. The result is that missed calls, messages, upcoming appointments, weather information and more can all be viewed without opening an application.

The Windows Phone Store is also gradually catching up with its Android and Apple rivals. Favourites like WhatsApp, Viber and Skype are all there now, but there’s still a lack of specialist apps and the pickings still feel slim compared to other ecosystems — there’s no Instagram and limited banking apps — but these omissions should become less of a concern over time.

Another bug that Microsoft has yet to iron out is the ability to use multiple Google calendars. The software refuses to display multiple calendars, whether one adds a Google account or uses Exchange, despite having no problem syncing contacts and e-mail from the search giant.

Similarly, the capacitive search key that sits to the right of the home and back keys at the bottom of the display continues to perform only one function: opening the browser for a Bing search. We’d really like to see this button imbued with some context sensitivity, which would render it far more useful. And, hey, we don’t really want to use Bing for search, Microsoft.

Microsoft has, however, finally made it possible to take a screenshot. Pressing the power/lock button and the home key simultaneously does the trick and images are saved to the image gallery.

One of the best features from Windows Phone 7 that has been carried over is “People”. Users can opt to sync contacts from a variety of sources, including social networks Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Aside from combining data from each source, there is the option to view recent updates from contacts, create groups of people who can chat or share content (but only with other Windows Phone 8 users), and even create groups that can be made into a tile on the home screen.

One of the perks of this thorough cross-platform integration is that it’s incredibly easy to pull up a contact and then decide how to interact with them. It makes the integration of social media information all the more useful and means users are likely to spend far more time in the People section than they perhaps would in the contact menu/application on other devices.

E-mail and SMS are beautifully organised and presented, and the on-screen keyboard is fairly responsive and accurate, despite the keys appearing somewhat thin. Unfortunately, there is as yet no option to use third-party keyboards, which might frustrate those coming from Android. But it’s a minor niggle and one that won’t vex those who move over from the equally restrictive iPhone.

The built-in browser, Internet Explorer, is clean and simple to use, though it is a tad annoying that one has to specify a preference for mobile or desktop Web pages in a menu rather than on the fly. There’s no support for Adobe Flash, but thanks to the popularity of Apple’s mobile devices and more websites moving to HTML5, this is unlikely to be too much of an issue.

Beats Audio makes its way into the 8X, which helps boost volume without distortion, among other things. The music player is very similar to Windows Phone 7’s, but now includes the suggestion to download music from Xbox Music. The service is coming to South Africa soon and when it does it could make Windows Phone devices all the more appealing for local music lovers.

Windows Phone 8 now supports near-field communications (NFC) and the 8X includes the necessary hardware, though there are few uses beyond transferring content between phones. It’s a novelty for now.

It’s little surprising that Bing Maps is the default mapping service on the 8X, with Google Maps only accessible through the Web browser. Bing Maps seems to work well enough, but doesn’t hold a candle to Google Maps or Nokia Drive, particularly as it lacks traffic information in South Africa — despite its being offered in the settings menu.

HTC has included an eponymous application that offers weather, finance and news information. However, it doesn’t support live tiles and is thus rendered inferior to dedicated applications that do. This is, however, thankfully the only bloatware the device comes laden with.

More sensibly there’s also an option to create a custom screen for children that can include links to games or other apps, while restricting access to things like e-mail or contacts.

Although Windows Phone 8 improves greatly on Windows Phone 7, issues like the lack of support for multiple calendars and the fact that Microsoft all but forces users into using its other services remain problematic. Frankly, it still doesn’t feel entirely polished, despite moments of absolute brilliance.

The HTC 8X is a beautiful piece of hardware, but we get the feeling that it’s going to struggle to gain traction in light of the fact that Nokia’s betting the farm on Windows Phone and spending bucket-loads on marketing. The 8X is intriguing and, we have to admit, quite gorgeous. But it has to beat Nokia, which is no small task. Can the plucky Taiwanese company do it? Watch this space. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media